Exactly What It Says On The Tin!!!!

Oh Yeah!!!!!



A 'kin classic!



I knew it would be, a good old fashioned throw down, 2 and1/2 hours of canned insanity!



Night riding as it should be, exactly as advertised. All the cycling planets aligned, the cycling gods were in benign mood and all was well with the world. All present and correct were "Hard Ridin' Rodge", "Todd the Terminator" , George "he who knows no pain" and Yours Truly. The only no show was Doug - who had he turned up would have assumed the monica "Big Man" replacing (in that role) Spence who has abandoned us MTBers in favor of pastures greener (or waters bluer I guess) and taken up white water kayaking!

Well the ride started as usual with a quick skip up through Belmont and over to Cascade - then Rodger took over the reins and all hell broke loose! His first bright idea was a trundle up Soapstone then a ride along the Superhighway and down Hose of Pain. At this point the ride took on what was to be the pattern for the rest of the night - Rodger blasting off the front like the madman he is, Todd not giving a bloody inch and George and me suffering like dogz at the back trying to keep up! Oh what fun.

Having survived House of Pain Rodger (bless his cotton socks) wanted to head up (up mind!) Double Drop to allow us to ride down Sudden Impact! Holy Mary mother of God! Well on the steep uphill of Double Drop the group was well and truly blown apart! Rodger disappeared and closely following was Todd (sporting his shifty tonight - you fairweather SSer). By the top of the hill , when I finally caught Rodg and Todd, George was a fair bit back. We then missed the turn down Sudden Impact and ended up at the road, necessitating a retracing of steps. And here is where the night began to go horribly pear-shaped. George having got to the top of Double Drop and not finding us there had assumed we had buggered off and left him - as if! So in true George "he who knows no pain"-stylee hurtles down Sudden Impact at full speed to try and catch us. The result is that when we finally find our way back to the right trail and negotiate the steep down hill George is curled up in a ball on the road beside his bike! Clearly all is not well......

Half way down Sudden Impact (and I suspect achieving something close to terminal velocity) Georges left hand makes full contact with a protruding branch of a tree OUCH! Initial diagnosis (later confirmed by the kind souls at Howard County General) is a broken hand, bummer. Double bummer actually as George is scheduled to fly out to Utah to ride on Saturday!

As George "he who now knows pain"couldn't even put his glove back on we limped back to the cars - a trip elongated somewhat by the new trail layout on the HC side (which had us riding in circles for twenty minutes) and enjoyed a somewhat rapid beer before George headed off to HCGH for the night.

Good thing is his Doc is sympathetic and casts his wrist such that he can hold his handlebars and tells him that riding on the flat will be fine but uphill/downhill is going to hurt. That's O.K. then...... How much uphill or downhill can be involved in a MTB vacation in Moab?

Keep on Rockin' (in the Free World)

DogzBollux