I don't need very much Brain™

Saturday.  Beautiful.  Trails closed from all the recent rain.  Decide to take it easy and do as little as possible thinking that one day of nothing will let me recover from months of ignoring the problem.  I accidentally pick up sticks in the front yard, because I see one and pick it up, then another, then another... I can't stop.  Must pick up all the sticks because if I don't, who knows what might happen?

Also end up rearranging the "junk room..." because I accidentally looked at it.

But for the most part, I watched three movies, The Pie threw elbows at my back for an hour, and I still woke up Sunday morning feeling the same.  Decide to go ride on Sunday regardless of my feels.

The only thing open is Steve's... I mean Rocky River Trail.  Ungghh.  Sweet local trail, but with punchy, slightly longer climbs that will hurt.  I'm running a 32X18 right now, and am in no mood to swap for what will end up being 12miles, because I know when I get back to the car, I won't go back out for a second lap.  I head out the door at 12:03 when I look at my phone and see Lake Norman just opened up for business.  Change of plans.

Fewer punchy climbs and easy to commit to more than thirty miles without doing any trail more than once. 

First ride with the Brain™ fjork. 

As much shit as people give me for picking this fork over anything else I coulda bought, it works.  I don't think it's better than having any other sort of adjustable compression damping dial mounted up top.  With the Brain™ in the off position, the fjork was too active on this particular local trail that requires a lot of pedaling and accelerations.  With the Brain™ in the full-on position, the fjork felt nicely locked out and rigid'esque, but with a blow-off... if you could find anything at Lake Norman big enough to activate it. 

But using settings in between?

I settled on just turning the Brain™ slightly to the right of being fully off.  Kinda felt like it was in the Trail mode of a Fox fjork or Pedal mode on a normal Rock Shox... which was/is how I rode/ride both of those fjorks most of the time I'm using them unless I'm blasting full-on down something in Pisgüh. 

I like it enough to keep it for PMBAR and the Pisgah 111/55.5K, at which point, I'll probably unload it.  I like the Vertigo Meatplow V.7 much molar betterer rigid than fjorked. 

The ride?

Yeah, totes forgot that two toaster pastries at 7:30AM plus three eggs with salsa and toast at 11:00AM does not equal much success for a 2.75 hour ride starting at 1:00PM at "high intensity" (in quotes because the only things that were highly intense at the end of the ride were my hunger and self-loathing).  Woulda been plenty of juice for one lap at Steve's... doh.  Conditions were atypically soft, so "getting it" was a bit more difficult than normal... felt like I was riding around on two flat tires.

And the strange thing being that although my lower back is a little sore from the effort, my upper back felt better after the ride than it did after doing nothing but sitting on a heating pad for a good part of the previous day watching a movie about a post-apocalyptic train ride, Kill Bill 2, and The Hobbit.