I heard two teams are going to the Super Bowl this year

Back pain, chance of rain, threat of Bane...

Nothing stopped me from getting the rides in that I wanted... as I so loosely planned them late last week.  Icycle shakedown ride on the Vertigo.  Everything seemed top notch and ready to go.  New chain on my most-used cog of 2014 (19T) making a little crunchy noise, but I can deal with it.  Finally even threw down my $40 for a parking pass at the US National Whitewater Center...

which means I now have to go seven more times (by car) to break even.  Shouldn't be too hard this year, so much trail up there now with the prospect of even more being built soon (without volunteer labor, I might add), so yeah.  My go-to local playground in 2015, especially considering that the nearby Backyard Trails should be under temporary destruction some time soon.

Monday drooper testing and geared bicycle riding in the mountains.  It's been two years since I've ridden gears in Pisgah (hated it then).  As winter always tends to bring out never seen before assemblages of persons, Monday it was Eric "PMBAR Honcho" Wever, April, and Todd.

photo cred: Eric

Todd 

photo cred: Eric

April

Eric "PMBAR Honcho" Wever

Gears... strange beastly implements.

 photo cred: Eric

Combined with the slower-than-the-Industry-Nines-that-I'm-used-to engagement, I was a mess.  More than once I shifted my drooper and drooped my rear derailleur.  Wrong gear most of the time combined with a false start on a slow-reacting free hub meant that I found myself in a pickle quite often.  Like going from Atari 2600 on a rear projection screen straight to Super Nintendo on a 13" black and white... too many buttons VS some well-developed muscle memory and a warped sense of what's just right.

Also, the whole one water bottle thing left me a jersey pocket shy of being able to carry everything, so I had to break out the Titan Tank to make room for ALL THE THINGS.

If you know me, I don't like extraneous things on my bike, but I had to do what I had to do... and secondly, not my bike anyways.

Full zip-tie routing of the drooper.  Once again, not my bike.

There were some upsides.  I haven't ridden up Daniel's Ridge from the Cove Creek connector to Farlow in years (a decade?).  I have walked it many times alongside my single speed, but without gears?  Dunno if it could be done.  That was neat.

Gears don't mean that I'm gonna ride skinny log bridges with a precipitous entrance and the end of a steep descent though.

photo Cred: Eric

Gears don't make the (super) man.

An incredible ride with friends spanning a few different parts and periods of my life.  Coming down Butter, I told Eric I had sads, as this was one of those rides that I didn't want to ever end.  January, dry trails, primo conditions, sleeveless jersey weather...

A good day to be alive and in the woods, despite coming home to sit on the couch with an icepack the rest of the night.