Packing for Mars (or close to it)

What a strange nine days away from work.  It feels like I'm hurtling through space and time at an exponentially increasing rate.  Rides in the mountains.  A trail ride at the beach.  Seeing remnants of the destruction from Hurricane Isaias.  Watching storms come in from the ocean.  The power of nature can make you feel so small.  Local trail rides.  Watching the best Tour de France I can remember.  The loss of someone in the world that just makes the world seem to be spiraling even more out of control.  The loss of yet another human in my personal realm... making it four or is it five people in the last year or is it the last six months?  Eating tater tots for supper... and nothing else.

And here I am, healthy, happy, content, and back at work.  We moved our daughter out into her own apartment over a week ago, and now The Pie and I have entered a new chapter in our lives.  It's actually the first time we've been without a another human being living under our roof since we first shacked up in 1992.  We also finally have room for all our shit in the tiny house of our (my?) dreams.  

So there's that.

And now I'm working on heading out first thing this weekend bound for Moab with Bill Nye TSG.

I finally rode this stupid feature I built like a million years ago but was always too afraid of the consequences of stalling out at the top and toppling to my certain death if I attempted it.

Yeth, it felt innocuous as it mebbe looks, but I don't honestly trust that guy who built it, so there's that.  It was a shit ton of work to drag all those rocks through the woods (not the biggest one, obvs), and I'm satisfied that I will now enjoy the fruits of said labor.

I finally saw the infamous white squirrel at Sherman Branch.

Is there only one white squirrel at Sherman Branch or are there a plethora or is a just a squirrel ghost... or are there a plethora of squirrel ghosts?

I finally got to ride the Chupacabra Trail at the Brunswick Nature Preserve without it being littered with black mud sippy holes every hundred yards.

Yeth, it's just "beach trail," the best trail you can ride is the one your on.  Such sweet respite from staring at the beach and strolling past a billionty Trump/Pence signs.

This trail head truck is dope... if you're into such things... I guess.

A Pisgah ride with buds where once again, I request wheelies in the rhodo tunnel at the top of Spencer Gap.

And y'all can @ me, but Trace Ridge has become my favorite descent in the Pisgah Ranger District.

Such rip shit, straight line, rutted-out, pure speed and chunk with a few chances to get some air under your tires.  I can't get enough of it.  I still have a place in my heart for the gnar gnar of Upper Black and Bennett and Avery and...

But just letting off the brakes and dropping a thousand feet in something like two and a half miles in pretty much a straight line.

Okay, let's get packing for Moab.  The desert is calling my name.