Santos Sunday

Sunday was a long and tiring day. Not one of those dreaded long and tiring days though. It was more like a whole day of being a kid on Christmas eve. Excitement!!! This wasn’t excitement from Santa’s presents though, this excitement was from Santos’ presents! Yep, that’s right, I went to Santos! This was my first trip there and It couldn’t have been better. I was in great company with Luis, Kevin and Wayne. The weather, probably in the mid 70s, was absolutely perfect and the humidity was low. We rode a good range of yellow (easy), blue (intermediate), and red (hard) trails.

My day started fairly early with the alarm clock sounding at 5:30 am. I got out of bed, showered, ate some breakfast, and loaded up the bike and gear then headed over to Luis’ house. Apparently Kevin had been so excited that he forgot to set his alarm clock back for DS and showed up at Luis’ an hour early. Needless to say he was ready to hit the road by the time I got there. I transferred my gear and bike to Luis’ truck and we were on the Interstate by 7:10. With a short stop off to pick up Wayne we were in the Santos parking lot by 9:00 and hammering down the trails by 9:30. We started out on some yellow trails (easy), working our way to some blue trails (intermediate), and then on to some red trails (difficult). I was impressed with the seemingly endless miles of single track out there. 

We rode most of our warm miles up on blue trails but a majority of the 18+ miles we got in that day were done on the red trails. I was quite obviously the weakest of the 4 riders but I managed to do ok, especially considering that this was my first trip to Santos and I wasn’t familiar with the trails. The guys were great about it though. They would wait for me after each difficult section at which time we would all discuss any difficulties we had or didn’t have. They would also give me pointers on things that might help me through areas I was having trouble with. It was a great learning experience for me. 

After the ride we loaded up the truck and headed straight to Sonny’s for some southern style home cookin. I, of course, had the fried cat fish! Mmmm! During the drive home we were stuck in some pretty nasty traffic but we managed to stay sane through most of it (I was asleep). I rolled into the drive way around 7:00 pm. 

What a day!