Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Slummin'

Last evening Erinna hosted a ladies-only clothes-swap party at our house so I had to get out of there for a couple of hours. I loaded up the SS for a bit of Bent Creek with the idea of finishing the route Sophiedog was unable to complete on Monday. I arrived to find I had forgotten to refill my camelbak after my last ride so I bummed just enough from a loyal ride-log reader, Jeff, to make it through an hour and a half of SUPER high paced riding. It's amazing how just changing things up a little bit can rejuvenate my excitement for riding. Not that I haven't been psyched to do 4+ hours of over-the-top-technical slow-moving deep-woods Pisgah riding on a 5+" forked /geared machine but..... 90 minutes of buff singletrack and gravel as fast as possible on the single speed at the local recreation area was exactly what I needed. Let's see, some highlights: Realizing I was going to have to really pick up the pace if I wanted to catch the badass girl runner that passed me while I was taking the above butterfly picture, catching a little too much air coming down sleepy gap, descending past the SORBA crew at mach7 as they were climbing Explorer, helping a brokendown rider only to realize I had left my tools at home (with a bolt on front wheel and tubes! yikes!) and making the spur of the moment decision that, no, I was in fact not done yet, and knocking out another 30 minutes of fastfastfast riding at the end. Yup, that was exactly the ride I was looking for.