We were thirty minutes into the drive to Knoxville when I realized I left my wallet (ok, actually a binder clip that contains what we olds call "cash," my Real ID, insurance card, and debit card in a 30 year old Tyvek Nations Bank card protector) at home.
Poop.
As a grown ass man who grew into adulthood going out into the wild with nothing in my pockets but small hopes and dashed dreams, I generally don't leave the house without my wallet and phone in the year 2026.
But here I am.
It wouldn't have been such a big deal, but when I got carded at Señor Taco for my grande-sized Dos Equis, I had to scramble. Out to the car to grab my expired license from my Tülbag (for body identification purposes), come back, show it to the server, the manager gets involved...
No cerveza for Dicky to wash down his 8:00pm burrito.
Two things I don't like:
Eating a big meal at eight o'clock at night.
No beer with my burrito.
Türd and I were present when TVB Scott had to make the hard call to swap from the Steamer long course to the "rain route," AKA the Long Wet Hot American Steamer (unmarked, navigation required). Suffice to say, the rain that dumped on Knoxville around 4:00pm on Friday kinda pushed the moisture past reasonable limits. The local trails vary from loamy good-good to clay and limestones that turn into Teflon is you bat a moist eye six feet from their exposed surface.
Other than sorting out Türd's dead SRAM battery that he killed by driving his new bike around for thousands of miles not knowing that kinda sucks its life juice because nobody told him and bleep bloops are new to him and also not cracking my first beer until almost 9:00pm, everything went according to plan the night before.
We schemed on sorta sticking together for the purposes of shared navigation, but I was definitely too lazy to swap my 30X20 (on a 32" wheel) for something more suited to the updated, less-climby, long route. As we rolled out of the start, I'd wanted to stay with the fastest locals like I did last year to keep personal navigation minimal, but I couldn't maintain pace with the five or so riders that rode away from us. Now Türd and I are at the front of the not-so-select group, and after a coupla wrong turns with everyone following us (why?), we made it to Sharp Ridge.
New bike fever musta hit Türd in his grey matter because he dropped me like a small hot potato, and I found myself on my own... until somehow I caught up to him and a couple others... and just following along once again... I took a wrong turn. By the time my Wahoo data acquisition device started bleeping at me, and I had time to pull over and sort it all out, Türd and his two new buddies were outta earshot.
I'm alone. Again.
Meh.
One of my favorite parts about the Steamer last year was falling into a crew of riders and spending the day together (while our numbers slowly dwindled). Where are my little frands now?
I pop out at the first aid station, and there's a whole mess of people up there... including Türd.
"People are coming from every direction."
Reunited with Türd, but a little confused as to how to continue, I tell him I'm going to dip into the woods and see if I can find the start of the next trail. I locate the top of Sharp Shin, remember it from a ride here last year, and go back to tell Türd I'll see him at the bottom (he's way faster on descents). The sequence of events from there didn't make much sense then, but somehow we find each other going opposite directions...
Türd tells me that he and his two new homies are going back to hit Push Trail (which is just that) that they had missed so they could do the Knightfall DH trail... which also means they're also going to probably nab the Independence Trail that they'd missed earlier.
"Wanna come with us?"
Despite my desire to have frands, I didn't relish the idea of another push up Push or repeating three to four miles of trail on a long, humid day, so I just kept going and dropped out of the Sharp Ridge portion of the day by myself.
From there, I picked up the pace a little bit hoping to find some frands ahead of me. I almost successfully navigated Fort Dickerson Quarry trails... or mebbe I actually did because I'm finally learning how to stop and restart routes on my Wahoo data acquisition device... except for the hitting the "resume" button to keep the ride going.
Da doi..
I hate being old.
I did manage to snag the out-and-back to the secret swimming hole AKA homeless laundry facility before leaving out of the area, collecting all the spider webs on my way down.
I ended up having more navigational issues that required pulling out my phone and figuring out how to get into Ride With GPS with sweaty fingers, nose, elbows... and more course stopping and restarting the route and finally I roll into the second aid station solo.
"You're the first one here."
Well, my plan did not pan out.
Knowing that I wasn't gonna find any frands ahead but no idea how far frands would be behind, I worked my way through the William Hastie Natural Area (neato history there) with only two u-turns, through Baker Creek Preserve (zero u-turns), over to the gnar gnar of Marie Meyers (so many u-turns)... to finally have a new/old frand Bob catch up to me whilst wet fingering my phone and restarting the route (again). I thought we'd finish together until who knows what happened and Bob went from on my back wheel to ghost status.
Figured my way out of the re-routed for reasons portion of Meads Quarry, and rode the rail-trail back to the finish and beer and hot dog and good hangs and war (but not real war like the one we're in) stories.
Gawdam I love Knoxville and Steaming and good times... and it was a different experience than last time but still all the buenos. Here's hoping to a less moist return in 2027 (we're still doing 2027 and calendars and crossing state borders next year, right?)
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