A ride today was initially intended to track down a super D route however some discussions at the start line soon showed that the land managers likely to be involved along all the proposed routes would be all but impossible to organize. As such, we left the idea for another day and just rode.
We smashed ourselves up Martinsville rd and then headed off along moto trails to god knows where. To be honest, I would still be there riding around in circles if we didn’t have someone who knew the area to ride with.
Given all the recent rain and past experience in the area, I chose to leave the race bike at home and took ‘the pig’. This was both a good and bad idea since the anthem didn’t get chewed to pieces in the grit, mud and water, however ‘the pig’ was showing its age and was slowly falling apart underneath me. First the rear brake pads disappeared leaving me straddling some kind of guided missile/jackhammer hybrid. Ever time i pulled the brake lever, the lever would go to the bars and all that would occur would be a strange ticking noise (presumably pad backing vs disc) however there was no slowing down to be had .
So i spent quite a bit of time relying on the front brake which was all good while we were up on the plateau, however when we hit the steep downhill stuff, prodigious front brake use and steep rock ledges proved extremely hairy. There was downhill slope where i locked the front wheel several times and then proceeded to soil myself only to find out I had gone the hard way and everyone else was waiting for me further up the trail.
About halfway through the ride ‘the pig’ developed chain suck and and resulted in several more stacks on steep pinches as you would commit to a line and start smashing to clear the rocks, only to have the driveline lock and loose all momentum and be forced to try unclipping in some of the worst possible places. I spent the whole ride in a single gear since I knew from past experience that changing gears too often would just result in horrible grinding crunching noises and the demise of another drive line. This probably staved off the chain suck as long as possible, but ‘the pig’ got me in the end.
I had several super kook moments today including stacking in the car-park at a rest-break. I have no idea what happened, I think i washed the front wheel on a wet root and before I knew it, I was lying on the ground in front of everyone…. KOOK!
While the SPD’s were more than happy to stay done up as I pitifully struggled to unclip on the ground in the car-park, I managed to pull my feet unclipped more times than I can count on the rocky terrain with a few brown trouser moments resulting.
B-rad was all grins as he rode his new redline full rigid 29er single speed like a man possessed. Can you blame him? There wasn’t much that could go wrong with it….
Towards the end, I had a dummy spit and threw the bike off the trail in disgust. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have a killer ride. It was an awesome day. It just means ‘the pigs’ days are numbered….
the unknown rider 