All kidding aside, I really did ride 40 miles at Boyette on Sunday. I hadn't been able to ride my bike for almost 4 weeks due to a frame failure. After getting the new frame Friday afternoon I headed out for a 10 mile ride with Luis. I hadn't had time to "dial in" the bike yet so Luis had quite a few suggestions for me including the seat fore/aft adjustment and fork adjustments.
Putting all the adjustments off until late Saturday night I headed out to the garage at about 11:00pm. I slid the seat back a bit, set the sag according to FOX's suggestions, adjusted my specialized ergonomic grips, and swapped the cleats on my shoes to get more float.
We hit the trails at 8:00am Sunday morning. Everything was moving along smoothly until I came up to a sharp turn and tried clipping out. Apparently the difficulty required to clip out increases when the cleats are swapped to provide more float. Who knew? Needless to say I didn't get clipped out soon enough. This mistake resulted in my left cheek giving the ground a big ol smooch.
About 10 miles into the ride my spokes picked up a stick. I glanced down for a split second to check it out. The instant I raised my head my left shoulder slammed into the remains of a fallen yet trimmed tree. This instantaneously thew me to the ground. My arms went sliding into a palmetto bush, my upper right leg met a broken branch, and my shin rode up some part of the bike (Not sure what part). This was quite a painful and bloody experience (see slide show for the blood). Luckily nothing too serious happened. I hopped back on the bike, caught up with everyone else and continued the ride.
We rode quite a bit of the quadrants and unfortunately during the longest section I started having blood sugar issues. I was right on Wayne's tire and I didn't want to loose the group. At the same time I knew I wasn't going to make it to the end of the section without eating anything. I decided I was going to attempt to retrieve the Cliff bar that was in the rear pocket of my Jersey. After several attempts and a few close calls I managed to get it. I took a few bites and things started to come back into focus again. Crisis averted!
The rest of the ride went without incident. I even had a pleasant surprise waiting for me up our return to the parking lot...BEER.
A Few Notes:
- I need to figure out how to get food in front of me and readily available. I can't afford blood sugar issues on the trail.
- I had a lot of chafing from my "form fitting" shorts. Get some chamois butter.
- Even with the ergonomic grips my hands were still going numb. Ask around and see what others are doing for this.
Nice Pics, I have one question though? In non of your pics do I ever see and mountains. How do you mountain bike without mountains :)?
ReplyDeleteCareful there BigTyme, most of the people who read this blog are Florida riders. I'd hate to have to have to ask them to attack an old friend. Actually most of the trails we ride are built on old sulfur mines. I'll send you a link to some good trail images.
ReplyDeleteDamn Washingtonians!
Trust me I am jealous, its about 25 degrees here and snow in all the mountains and even in Seattle. Since people don't know what to do when it snows in Seattle the whole city shuts down. you guys wear shorts we freeze our balls off.
ReplyDelete