Tripping 'round the sun

Today, I am fifty shit in my tiny hat and hand it back to me six years old.  Start the...

What did I get for my birthday other than a lingering cough from a cold I picked up somewhere and a day of cleanup from the 500-1,000 year rain event* this past Thursday that turned my frown even more frownier?

Trying to get my lungs back to something close to fully operational and not lose what I'd call the "fitness" I've gained from recent cycle sport escapades, I took all the closed trails in Charlotte as a sign that I should get my Sad Dad™ on.  I kinda needed to anyways, as I'm heavily considering bringing back the Horny Cat 69, but there are a few snags in my plan, so assploring I must go.

A lot of people would like to tell me that my potential issues that I foresee are just small bumps in the road, but I like to have 95% of my ducks in the row before I start asking people to play my stupid game.

Planning this silly thing does force me to go out and poke my nose around where it don't belong.

This is nowhere near where we will go, but Saturday's adventure and the persistent cough tempted me into another "adventure" on Sunday.

As I wandered around this vast, couple hundred acres of mostly dried red clay mud wasteland that apparently will one day be "progress," I pondered, "is this a good thing for an almost fifty six year old human person to be doing on their day off?"  The only thing driving me forward in my obvious trespassing, given that I had no proclivity towards theft or mayhem, was my desire to not leave from the same place I came in, thus admitting what I would deem as "defeat."  As someone who resides and works in a "big city," it was nice to be somewhere on the planet about as alone as I ever get, although I was truly never more than a half mile from shit stain suburbia, a strip mall, or seven QT gas stations.  

I Unbounded myself.

Horny Cat might happen again.  It might not.  I have no idea when the go/no-go moment will be, but I'll assume it will make itself obvious.

Tonight I will celebrate my birthday in a very low key manner and just hope this coming weekend will bring much needed single track time on a single speed bike mebbe even with single speed frands.

* My issues obviously seem small in the wake of all the flooding in WNC, but The Pie often reminds me that comparative suffering does more harm than good.  Feeling bad about feeling bad is almost as terrible as feeling bad about feeling good, and Tony! Toni! Toné! would not approve, so tonight I will feel good about feeling good.

Mountain Cat 100 (109.something?) 2025

I think there are a plethora of reasons why I had to go back to the Mountain Cat 100 for the third time.  There are still so many mysteries to unravel.  How is it possible that this event has so much rider support for only $30?  Why are so many people amped up for it, and given then amount of amperage, why do so few folks finish?  How do people ride 108 miles in denim in the heat and humidity of Richmond, VA in June?  How is there this much interconnected dirt, gravel, and whatnot in such an urban setting?  What's wrong inside my head that allows me to think "of course I'm going to always come back until I physically can't?"

I headed back up to Richmond with Watts, but also to meet up with Dr Mike.  I would say we were much better behaved the night before the "race" than we were in 2023, but mebbe we came a little more off the rails than we did in 2024.  If I had to pin the blame on anything, I guess it would be the fact that we got an email letting us know that if any of the strong rains that were predicted were to fall, we were expected to be good trail stewards and abandon our quest for a dirty 108 miles.  There were slim to slightly chubby odds that we would be denied our finish.  It also didn't help that we were a one minute walk from so many beer taps.

Late night squeezings...

Up at 4:00am regardless of the potential for sadness and out the door after some expired-date donut sticks and coffee.

This year, we were given an interesting scenario.  Instead of getting the GPS route sent to us with plenty of time to deep dive the squiggly lines and contemplate our fates, we were only getting "half" the course up front.  Once we hit the check point at mile 66.6, we would then be able to download the second "half," assuming you studied up on how to make your phone talk to your data acquisition device without having access to Wi-Fi.  I've done a fair job letting myself down with electronicals in the past, but I did a few practice runs at the Trans-Sylvania Epic, and mebbe I got it dialed... because twice I had the route loaded backwards?  Yeth, I got this.

The first "half" is quite the slog, and other than being stuck behind multiple families of geese that are enjoying the single track experience on the Poop Loop, we move through it at a pleasant pace.

We only stop for occasional navigational head scratching and some eating and drinking of all that the land had to offer.

Both Dr Mike and I have a guess about the second half of the course that we agree on (admittedly, Watts hasn't give it too much thought).  We agree that the math doesn't suss out to get the 26 mile round trip to the extensive trail network at Pocahontas State Park and enough riding down there to make it worth going that far south like in previous years. 

Twenty six miles of sweet, mostly flat, spinning glory takes a fair chunk outta the hundie.

I gleaned my suspicions from the pre-race email we got earlier in the week.

“One thing about us: our trails are open to all and multidirectional. A curse, a blessing.”

We both guessed we'd be turning this thing around in some form or another.  "Form" TBD.

When we se some fasties coming right back at us at Forest Hill Park at about mile 52, we're pretty sure we figured correctly.  This is somehow the mental blow that I'm guessing was intended.

We get to Larus Park and the checkpoint with the second half deets... but we have to complete the trails there before we can get at them.  All three of us struggle to get the arrows on our devices to point in some agreed upon direction (or show up at all), so we hop on some wheels and get to 66.6 miles (and then some) back to the aid station.

Deviled eggs?

Might be a mistake, but I have five.  And a few other things I probably shouldn't eat as well.  YOLO and all.

Sigh.  The route is basically reversed.

Not my art but art worth appreciating.

Dr Mike's Garmin is choking on the upload, but Watts and mine own Wahoo data acquisition devices pick it up seamlessly (or so it seems).  That doesn't stop us from compounding a problem that we don't anticipate.

I eat all the wrong things and also add Nuun tablets to my bottles which now contain a combination of Carborocket, water, Gatorade... who knows what at this point?  We leave the aid station with 42 something miles to go, but we've already spent eight hours on course?  Dr Mike cramps and difficult discussions are had amongst the stupid single speeders.  He still doesn't have the route loaded, but we've always known that gears and squishy riding VS 32 X 16 and rigid might make it hard to spend the whole day together.  As the way of the Mountain Cat is, you get used to making frands and then just losing them to the unknown ahead or behind.  As easily as the bond was forged, it is also sacrificed in the name of forward progress.  After reaffirming Dr Mike had finally got the route loaded, we lose him to the abyss that is the Mountain Cat around mile 75.

After that and mebbe around the 80 mile mark (if I had to guess), the wheels quietly fall off the bus, but in the most private of manners.  It's not audibly communicated between us, but Watts and I have spent enough time in the woods together to just know.  The longer climbs are demoralizing, the heat and humidity are oppressive, the act of holding on to the handlebars feels like something I don't want to do anymore, and the deep-fried pickle and ham/egg/cheese biscuit I washed down with a Modelo decides to stick sideways in my lower left gut.  Steep stairs up and down, scrambles up an impossibly steep hillside under an overpass but still in the direct sun, familiar hobo paths from earlier, freshly mown "paths" through an overgrown field... and eventually to trails that we rode eleven hours ago? 

Oof.  How?

Knock out the trails behind the cemetery, back out to the aid station... and PBR me ASAP.  

Four miles of road and two miles of gnarly burger trail left and then we done.  Woohoo.

Hmmm.

Of note...

We were out there over thirteen hours... totally unaware there was a cutoff'ish at fourteen hours.  We probably wouldn't have mucked about so much had we known we might not finish.  Also, there was a cutoff to get to the Larus Park just to get the second half of the course data.  Many had missed the cut, while others got the "good news" from riders coming back at them and threw in the towel right there.  Suffice to say, the attrition rate was higher than many of the participants. 

That was, and I mean it, hard.  

Dr Mike ended up coming in shortly after we did, zero cramps the rest of the day and stoked to be one of the few, the proud, the Mountain Catters of 2025.

Apparently, it takes 10,000 calories to move a four apple tall man and his sorta mountain bike this far.

Watts literally walking a woman to a church service in a movie theatre Sunday morning... because... Richmond.

New Mountain Cat 100 patch acquired and painstakingly sewn into my stupid old PAC Designs messenger bag that will one day be hanging on a hook back in my bike room when my kids tell the dozers to take down my house because I'm finally ded not like single speed and 26" wheels and me after Mountain Cat but more like Abraham Lincoln and Ronnie James Dio.

Three or four things or so

Hmmm...

Did someone order a well-beaten dead horse?

*epilogue enters the chat*

"Winning" wasn't as fun as it looked.  It's been years since I was in the hunt at a stage race, and I'm a whole 'nother animal now.  Where I used to descend with somewhat reckless abandon and sheer joy, all I could think about this year was how many times I'd let 'er rip here in the past and ended up with a flat.  I've done so at least four times in thirteen attempts, with one finish on a flat for a stage win and one flat on the last day that bumped me from second to third.  Not only was riding on the brakes reducing the size of my smile, I was looking over my shoulder constantly for the first three days.  I didn't open up a comfortable gap (like enough time to deal with a non-hassle free flat) until I started stage four, and I think I can only attribute that to Colin being even more poorly dressed than myself for the cold rainy conditions on stage three and losing energy just trying to keep warm.

That said...

My legs never felt bad... like "mountain bike stage race bad."  I did some things right.

I squoze my legs.  A lot.  In the morning, post-stage, and at night before bed.  I drank something for recovery and ate massive amounts of Pringles within an hour of every finish.  Not only was I drinking Rocket Red before every stage, I'd been loading with the cheat juice since the week before PMBAR (daily for a month straight).  I took a nap every single day, except when I found my woobly crunk that required attention.  The Upper Eagle bunks were basically empty, except for Jeff and I, so it was easy to take some "me time" and not get caught up in all the "what are you doing right now," 'how did your day go," or "you need some help with that (insert broken bike part here)?"

Relatively speaking, I still had what people call "a good time."  Certainly looking forward to being a "washed-up, has-been" pack fodder single speeder at Breck Epic in two months.

Thankfully, I'm not burned out, and I'm looking forward to Mountain Cat 100 (108?) this Saturday.  It's sure to be a long, grueling day riding around Richmond on trails, roads, and hobo paths with Watts on what we used to call "mountain bikes" back in the day, but it certainly is one of the best of days.

My mandatory Mountain Cat 100 Valentine card to complete the registration process.  It's that kinda event.

I could/should mention that last weekend, I did the Cutty Cap Challenge: Charlotte Chapter.

I woke up early with the intention of just getting out as soon as the cap locations dropped at 8:00am, try to snag one that might be close to my house, and then ride to some other locations hoping to bump into someone fun and have a limited adventure and mebbe a beer?  I ended up having some strange thing going on the with my Ride With GPS app (olds and tech don't mix), letting it frustrate me for forty five minutes, just leaving the house on my bike because I was dressed and bored, deleting the app, and reloading it...

And then all the locations lit up.  

Dammit.

I went to the closest one to my house less than a mile away.  The cap was gone.  I decided I might as well follow through with my plan of hopefully meeting up with random frands along the way and plotted a route for a couple more stops... and after one more, the RWGPS message alerts started coming through my headphones.

I don't know that's what I'm hearing because I'd never heard them before.

I ignored them at first until I ran into someone at another location where the cap had already been snagged.  He said something about "how about all those side missions... and some are down at the state line?"

WTF.

I looked at all the side missions that had dropped.  What had been eight (or ten) cap locations was now close to twenty two cap locations and missions... and some of the side missions were really close to where I'd already been.  Argh.

It was at that point that I texted The Pie and said I'd be out a lot longer than expected.  I decided that despite my hour late start and zero chance at a cap (or probably running into a frand), I was going after all of them... for... "reasons."

And stupidly, riding hard from mission to mission fueled by anger at my own technological stupidity coming between me and my original plan.

I ended up with all the checkpoints at the South Carolina state line at mile 43 with a 10 miles ride back home to go. 

Pulled out my phone, and now with time to "explore" the challenge and other aspects of the game...

Hey, a leaderboard.  Who knew?  I'm on top.  For now.  Neat.

Hey, messages.  They were keeping track of my progress and my fuddling through the process of loading bonus photos.  To say I struggled with this part is an understatement.

Hey... it says there are still two side missions I missed... to include one I'd already done at mile 14?

Mmmmm.  Head back out to grab an image of a mural and back north to the Seigle Ave skyline location.  Again.  Ten "bonus" miles.  End up back at home with 64 miles.

Sitting on the couch and squeezing my legs and checking the leaderboard to see if anyone is moving up...

And now my mural mission points are gone.  Dammit.  Guess they didn't consider the pinup girl on the wall of Brawley's to be a true "local mural."

Get outta the squeezy bags, jump back on the bike, ride another five miles to snag not one but two murals.

I guess I won Charlotte?

Dunno.  Didn't hear anything as of yet.  I found out I had two accounts, one on the app I was using and one when I'm in a broswer.  There was also a global competition that was HUGE, so I'm doubting my late attack from the back will be prosperous there.  All my pestering Ride With GPS at least halped me sort out my issues some issues, so mebbe we know a winner before the end of the week.

Anyhoo, it was a fun distraction from reality, and I got a butt-load of unwanted but needed exercise and mebbe I do better next year because mebbe I less dum.

Now that I'm used to pointlessly riding all over a city, I gotta be ready for Mountain Cat.

2025 Trans-Sylvania Mountain Bike Epic Stage Race: Part Two

I spent the better part of Stage Three thinking about mebbe making the effort to bring the Optimus Meatplow V.10 back out to play.  It would save me from changing the brake pads on the Radimus, but I'd have to figure out how to bust that bolt that's torqued to 52nm outta the eeWings without my cheater bar (busted 30.4 Syncros seat post) and the strap to hold the non-drive side arm to the chain stay.

Gorilla tape and a 130lb man standing on a ratchet might could do.

Remove the eeWings, remove the broken plastic cranks, shove shiny cranks into sad, empty crank hole...

Shit.

I always forget that my plastic cranks use a spacer orientation that defies all instructions and manuals, and the eeWings are 2.5mm of space from being happy.  Reinstall cranks, install new brake pads (the rear ones were down to the spring), and forget the dream of riding the Tussey Stage on the Optimus, something I'd been fantasizing about ever since I bought the bike last year.  

Stage Four.  Tussey Ridge: 38 miles, 4,100 feet

At least it wasn't going to rain (a lot) today, but the previous two days of precipitation meant that some trail had to get taken out and replaced with BONUS gravel mileage.  We were still gonna get John Wert's ill-shaped, fuck-faced rocks and the joy that is Tussey tho.

I always get dropped on the gently rolling gravel outta camp at the start on Stage Four.  At one point, I found myself in fourth place reminding myself that I'm racing a stage race, not racing for stage wins.  Let it go... but less than a satisfying feeling of finally getting to wear the leader's jersey outside in the world like a champ and falling off the back like a chump.

I honestly can't remember when or where I got around who, but eventually I was back out front and mashing the potatoes.  Gob bless you, John Wert, inventor of rocks... I guess.

For what it's worth, trails like John Wert are why I kept coming back all these years.  I just love the constant battle of trying to move forward and plan three steps ahead, only to have that plan fall apart two steps in and start all over again.  It's so mentally engaging, I don't know how to make the normal people I work with even come close to understanding how I get so much joy doing such a silly thing.

Tussey was a sheer delight, and I can't remember many happier moments up there.  It's never felt easier or shorter.  I felt like all the rocks and log-overs were air-hugging me.  I ended up with the stage win and a better buffer back to second and third.

Stage Five.  Bald Eagle: 22.5 miles, 3,300 feet

It was really up to the guys to decide if we were gonna party pace or not.  Colin and John were separated in 2/3 by only three minutes, so it's not my decision if they wanna duke it out and actually race five outta five days.  Fortunately and also unfortunately, they decided to lay down arms and throw up high fives.  Fortunately, because it's tradition (sorta) and fun to finally ride with all the other single speeders.  Unfortunately, because a lackadaisical start means getting on the trails intermingled with slower company, and at 150 feet of climbing per mile, the moderate paced roll was gonna hurt on stupid single speeds.

It rained.  Of course it rained.

Not in the photo, Colin... who was smart enough to snap the photo...

But mebbe not smart enough to dress himself for the coldest, wettest day on Stage Three.  Heroic display of guns.

There were no drop bag beers and very few shenanigans outside of a broken dropper lever (manUfaCtureR: iT's a FeAture!).  We made sure to honor the year one tradition of reversing the podium on the day, and I was stoked to finally celebrate a hard earned DFL.

Only slightly bummed that we weren't up to no good, but for the most part, not too many (if any) racers stick around to hang out Saturday night.  Not a difficult choice to avoid tipping back a few when I'm planning on driving halfway home after the awards.

I'll probably epilogue this whole thing if I can find the wherewithal to do so.  

2025 Trans-Sylvania Mountain Bike Epic Stage Race: Part One

Do something a few times, and you figure some stuff out.  Do something thirteen times, and you might think you have it all sorted.  If you're me though, you don't.

I'll consider myself a Trans-Sylvania Mountain Bike Epic Stage Race veteran.  Mebbe the veteran.  I don't think there was one familiar face on the start line from 2010.  Not that I was expecting to see anyone, but it would be nice to know that someone is as stupid and also as old as I am.

What I do know...

Bring a box fan, a drying rack, and more socks and gloves than I will ever use.  There will be enough food that's good enough to get me most of what I need from an off-the-bike nutrition standpoint.  Some supplemental Pringles and recovery drank for some post-race recovery, and then just cram whatever they serve for breakfast and supper down my gullet.  Don't put beer in the fridge until I get back from racing so I have to wait for it to get cold before having my first sip.  A spare bike is a great idea because it's not just a bike, it's a bike's-worth of spare parts (or not, spoiler alert) in an easy to transport package (parts on wheels, duh).  A large plastic tub of "oh shit" parts and tools that I'll hopefully never have to get at remains in the back of the Honda Fit of Rage all week to provide me some peace of mind.  I'll only be on the bike for 2.5 - 4 hours a day, so use the down time wisely.  Hygiene and bike maintenance aside, there's plenty of time to recover, using the Squeezy Leg Bags™, and taking a nap or two or four.

That said, it's still a five day race over some pretty brutal terrain.  Throw in some inclement weather, and there's a good chance for disaster and/or mayhem.

There shoulda been eight single speeders at the start.  One rider dropped out of the field a week before the race.  Dave Harris, someone I've met/raced with before, banged up his ribs and couldn't make it as well.  Then there was one no-show, so we were just five.  Looking back at the last few years, aside from '21 when I guess fifteen single speeders were chomping hard at the bit after COVID 2020, that's just the norm now.  Single speed is not ded, but it gets a lot of junk mail from AARP.

Stage One.  Poe Valley: 32 miles, 3,400ft.

Dare I say, the only typical Singletrack Summer Camp day at TSE in 2025?  Some mud, some dusty dry, plenty of roots and rocks, and some sunshine.  The Optimus Meatplow V.10 was everything I'd hoped for when I acquired it last summer.

It couldn't have been better (well, sorta).  I was worried about the Aspen 2.4 in the rear, but it was choice.  The 130mm travel Fox 34SL did the business.  Granted, I've done the vast majority of my (almost) twelve weeks here on a rigid fork, this bike is mucho capable, and the fork is so damn good.  This thing and me did just fine, and I took my first stage win since 2011 without mishap or mayhem.

The good news being that I got the leader's jersey, and perhaps the chance to hold on to it for more than the one day it lasted for me fourteen years ago.  The bad news being that my data acquisition device is throwing up some hooey numbers for my heart rate, from sustained periods of 225BPM down to I'm probably dying in my sleep 45BPM on a climb.  I use the calorie counter function to remind me to eat, so toss all that out the window if I can't get it sorted out.

Any other bad news?

Sure. My first day back in the leader's jersey and no one is going to see it because it's gonna be cold and moist all day long tomorrow.

Stage Two.  Gettis Ridge: 26 miles, 3,600 feet.

Being that Stage 2 was in the same part of the forest where I broke my butt ten years ago, I was less than stoked to be out here in the wets.  I descended a wee bit gingerly thinking about mebbe not hurting myself this time, and also about how much I didn't wanna be messing about fixing a flat in the rain.

How gingerly?

Stop and pick up the overall race leader's glasses that twenty something riders rode past and get down with them clenched in my teeth... gingerly.

I put all my focus on the climbs and just had the map pulled up on my data acquisition device since my heart rate numbers were still total garbage, gobbling the arrows up as I pedaled along mindlessly.

At least I held on to the jersey for more than one day this time.

That's the good news.

Now the bad.

Recovery, hygiene, maintenance.  Checking the bolts because that's what the mechanic that took care of us at the 2006 Trans Rockies taught me to do... because things come loose.  

Huh... wobbly crank... grab the 8mm... but... the bolt is tight... which means...

I've been crabon crunked again.  The fourth (or fifth?) time I've had an aluminum bit come unbonded from the plastic part.  Options?  Swap to the eeWings from the Radimus or swap the XC wheel set up and other racer boi stuff to the Radimus?  Such the dilemma when your bikes are only slightly different from each other.  The latter seemed the easiest, although while I was adjusting the rear brake, I think mebbe I noticed one pad that was more worn out than the other?

Whatever.  What difference would that make?

Stage Three.  Coopers Gap:  36 miles, 5,100 feet.  The "Queen Stage?"

Wake up to the Stage Three start line visible from my kitchen window.  It's actively raining.  It's cold.  I'm rethinking all my life choices.  Why, just WHY do I willingly do this?

The good news?

I left my heart rate monitor strap behind.  It was just annoying at this point.  Oh, the more aggro position on Radimus gives me a little more confidence in the wet tech.  It's probably just mental, but at least it's something. or I'm just mental.  That's the only couple bits of good news.

The bad news?

My data acquisition device has the route pulled up backwards, so I can't play the Pac Man game of gobbling up the course in front of me.  My cold fingers can't manage to wrestle a gel from my jersey pocket.  My glasses are all spotted up with rain and mud, and I didn't want to drink because the idea of putting 49° liquid inside me wasn't all that enticing... even though I was counting on those calories to fuel my sad little body. In the back of my mind, I can't stop thinking about that one brake pad that was more worn than the rest and whether or not it would last the whole day.  I favored the front brake as much as possible, anticipating the need for two brakes on the late-in-the-day rowdy descent down No Name Trail.

Surprisingly, it was very easy to just get lost in the moment.  My world was reduced to whatever I could see in front of me, and that was that.  I was neither sad nor happy.  Just present and moving.

I ended up winning the stage and the race back to the hot shower.  Now, what does my bike need from me now?

I said I'd do something...

Well, I had full intentions to post up something last week, but I got thrown a curve ball.  I was going to sign up for the Trans-Sylvania Mountain Bike Epic two Sundays ago before registration closed, but I woke up that morning with a funky left eye.  Me being me, I chose to ignore it, but I did reach out to see if I could register after seeing if I still had two eyes for the purpose of seeing where I'm going.  It's a useful sense to have when riding over piles of rubble and fuck-faced rocks that an untidy glacier left lying all over the place seven thousand years ago.  Ryan said NBD, and that registration was now closing on Wednesday, so...

Start self-medicating and hoping and...

then I'm at the doctor's office last Wednesday morning looking for the drubs.

Argh.

Based on the number of very unflattering selfies I took of my eye, it was weighing heavy on my mind.  I kept wanting to look at it for signs of a miraculous recovery.  It honestly started looking like the inspiration for a Star Wars character with irritated gills under its eyes.  Also, there's a mugshot of the guy that mebbe blew up his own house that I kept mentioning in my PMBAR posts in there... and the blowed up house too.

The last time I was going to do TSE was 2023, and I came down with an illness that put my ass on the couch the day before leaving.  That's a tough pill to swallow for an old person who's only called out sick fewer than five days in my entire life (COVID aside).  

This was gonna be my comeback.  Well, it is my comeback.  No stage races in 2024 because life, but two this year to make up for it.

I'm all in for five days of East Coast Rocks™.

It was a bit of a scramble to get everything together in such a short time while also halping put on the Backyard Experience this past Saturday.  I will not be coming into the race with a relaxed state of mind, but mebbe eight hours in the car listening to Stuff You Should Know will put my head in the right space.

It feels like going home.  I'm bunked up in Upper Eagle and ready to make great bike race.  For the thirteenth time.

Enjoy the "baby picture."

2010 me

'25 Pisgah Mountain Bike Adventure Race

Eric "PMBAR Honcho" Wever is going through the announcements, and I'm just standing there shivering enough to miss some of what he's saying because I'm still thinking about how I'm gonna need to fix my iPhone when I get home tomorrow.

Practicing my "Jordan Move™" in case there's any small drops to flat.  Scott in the background joyfully taking in my olfactory ambience.

"No bridges on some trail... trees down... construction... insert something somewhere..."

Yeth, my heart rate is 108 just standing there, either because I'm shivering, or I'm anxiously awaiting the news about the surprise checkpoint at a house that blew up in Charlotte Friday morning.  

"All racers must start and finish on (whatever that road is named or numbered) and Black Mountain to/from the start/finish."

Good enough.  Fight the 8:00:01 scrum, get our passport, shove our bikes out and get riding.  We're first place... for now.  Then the unavoidable passes as we make room for the "athletes" and the single speed teams that I anticipate will beat our dicks off unless they make a really bad decision.  Eventually we're walking long enough to look at the passport for at least a vague concept of the checkpoints, rules, off limits... surprises.  Rumors abounded the day before at various watering holes and campsites.  I've got a grasp of the locations, but I'm gonna need to drill down when we get up to Hot Dog Gap to check the passport for fine print.

Three of the five checkpoints are no out-and-back, one of them being the one mandatory with three ways in/out, and the other two sitting at a four way intersection.  The good news is that I know the intersections very well, and the two that sit alongside a trail are both checkpoints that I'd previously and regrettable miscalculated for in the past, so much so that they are deeply scarred into the folds of my gray matter.

Watts loves when I give him, "the good news is..." almost as much as he likes "the bad news is..." "the strange thing is..." "the funny thing is..." and "the really fucked up thing is..."

I know we'll be at our first checkpoint in about two hours because I've gone there the wrong way before and taken two and a half hours to get to that side of the Pisgah Butthole, and these are the things that stick with me (and haunt my dreams).  We roll into the back of single speeders Montucky and his partner Montchucky right before the checkpoint looking at a map, and they roll into the site with us.

"You're the first single speeders here..."

Hooray or mebbe not?

It means everything and nothing.  There are two fast teams that were ahead of us, so someone chose poorly or something.  Who knows until you know, but even when you know, you don't.

Rolling out of the first checkpoint with the Montchuckleses in front of us, I know Watts doesn't want to "race" and neither do I.  We reverse attack and start slow rolling the flats on South Mills River... and they slow down too.  Poop.  I'm assuming they want to use us to make the route.  When we get closer to the next turn and the following hike-a-bike up Horse Cove, I start stomping with intent.  I want to get through and on to the next one before they can follow along.  It works but...

Here comes strong men SS'ers Chris and Eric right up our butts.  They said something about a missed turn on the way to Turkey Pen, and before they can get out of sight  POP SLAM BANG OOOF.

Chris's tree trunk legs snapped his chain and sent his leg elbow into the stem.  Great.  I can't wait for them to rally back from another setback and pass us again later... like they end up doing on the way to our third checkpoint. 

It's the only real out-and-back we're gonna see, so when we get down there, it's a single speed reunion with two (or three?).  Arrghh.  This is too similar to "racing."  We came back down the mountain, and at about thirty miles in, I think the wheels on the Watts bus didn't fall off completely but mebbe lost a few lug nuts.  I did my best to give him "the good news is..." but it's hard to downplay the fact that even if it's mostly gravel and pavement to the finish with only one gnarly descent left, we're probably not even halfway home (we're definitely not halfway home).

I slow down and do the "do you want some gummy bears or do you need a gel or is there anything I can do?" but we've both been in the same situation in the past, and being left alone with our personal demons is about the best you can do.  I member Watts trying to "there, there, Little Bear" me through some dark moments in past PMBARs, specifically PMBAR From Hell '21.

The sky starts to drizzle and we get around the tech-gnar of Daniel's Ridge to scoop our fourth check point... and there's beer and pizza at the trailhead parking lot?  Very nice.  The vittles mighta put a little pep in Watts's step, but the unavoidable reality is always there, and the only carrot I can dangle is that this will be a quick (in PMBAR terms) loop, and then we'll be back at the pizza and beer in about an hour of primarily double track and gravel with mebbe an hour and a half and one big climb to go after that?

It sounds as stupid as it is.

Nary a complaint came from him, nor any mention of quitting even tho he knows full well that when we turn left for the final climb of the day, we're only a mile from a quick DNF and beers and burritos and showers... 

One minute, one hour... what's the difference?

We made the loop in decent time and came into the finish after 9:23 saddle time in third place single speed, eleventh overall, once again falling ass-backwards onto the lower steps.  

The good news is...

While I was able to collect the whole set of OG Pisgah Productions two gold, one silver, one black rectangle "most difficult" buckles, I only had two gold, one silver and no bronze of the current (and according to Eric, the last ovals to be handed out) buckles.*  Yeth, more things that the bulldozer will add to the pile after I'm dead and gone and my house reduced to rubble, but I'll be sure to stare at them once a week until that day.

Another year of telling myself it's my last PMBAR for the first few hours, to mebbe thinking I got a couple more left in me on the way back up Hot Dog Gap towards the finish, to most definitely coming back next year while hanging out for hours after the finish until the last cow comes home.

* Gotta be some significance to having the same exact numbers of each type of buckle.  Gotta be.