The Van with One Red Shoe 1/3 Tour: Pt 2.b

 ... and then we all start heading down the final six or seven miles of trail. 

I decide to "ride it out."  We hit this lumpy section of trail Matt said they're calling "Little Gooseberry Mesa" or something of that sort.  I try and pump though the slickrock, but my body says we shouldn't be doing this.  I'm off the bike and walking pretty quick like.

And that's just about it.  When the trail surface goes back to dirt, rocks, and sand, I try to get back on the bike, but I'm heaved once again off the trail and land on my side.  Again.  Ooof.  I should not be doing this.  Just hike-a-biking, I'm having to find different ways to grab the bike to keep my right side from protesting.  I get to a steep rock feature and...

How am I gonna get down this?

Carefully.

It probably took me two minutes to make my way down about twenty feet of trail.  How many more of these things am I going to have to manage over the next five miles?

Bill Nye is waiting for me, and when I finally get to him...

"Hey, next time we get to something like that steep, rocky bit, any chance you'd wait and help me get down?"

"Oh... sorry... I wondered if you were gonna have a problem with that."

So Bill Nye got to enjoy all the steep bits a second time... wearing Five Tens... rolling on SPD pedals.

We caught up to Matt.  He didn't realize how bad I was until Bill Nye told him that he'd seen that look on my face before.  The Trans-Sylvania Epic where I broke my butthole.  Defeated.  Dejected.  Ded.

That was my fault.  I told him I was "okay," but like Marcellus Wallace said, "I'm pretty fucking far from okay, Butch."

What a long, laborious, painful walk down.  I'm sure the views were glorious, but since the trail was so narrow and exposed, I was concentrating on where I put my feet.  Every stumble was answered with shooting pain, so I was better off looking no more than five feet ahead.  The few times I went to take a sip outta my water bottles, I was unpleasantly reminded that my CarboRocket was now an unrefreshing 95° warm.  Yum.  So much for self-care.  

Oh yeth, I forgot.  I hadn't really eaten more than a handful of gummie bears since my 7:00AM breakfast shit sammich.  It's now 5:37PM... and I don't care.  Walk, trudge, shuffle, get on the bike for ten seconds, back off, trudge... hand Bill Nye my bike so he can ride it down yet another steep section.

All the way to the bottom.  Van and beer and time to take inventory.

I tell Bill Nye the obvious, that my part of the vacation is over, at least the riding part.  I'll go buy some hiking boots if he wants to forge ahead with the original "plan."

"Let me take off my shoe and see how my toe looks later."

Oh yeth, I forgot.  He had banged his toe something good way back up on the mountain and just rode it out.  When he finally took his shoe and sock off...

*urp*

It had only been a few hours but his toe was already all kinda of black and purple.  If it's not broken, I don't know what it is.

Head to Palisade Brewing Company to drown our sorrows and fill our empty stomachs and figure out what to do next.