mechanicals

We celebrated Peter's birthday today with a ride in the woods.
He started the day right by dumping 3/4 of a full water bottle on himself in the car (mechanical #1). There was some left in the bottle so the rest went on his head. it was the right thing to do. we rocked out to quality 80's metal all the way to greenwood furnace.

Some of my favorite riding peeps showed up including Todd, Josh, Erik L and Allen aka George! good times!! The group proceeded up a wet and slippery sassafrass, to upper sassafrass. It was a good thing I didn't bungie myself to todd on this climb as his pedal detached from the crank before we even made it up the trail head (mechanical #2). in awe i fell over just to outshine him. Sweet. Upper sass rocks a gnarly steep descent - washed out in places and damn steep. I made friends with a few friendly bearded amish gentlemen on the way down.

"it's a rocky ride, huh?" they yelled.
"oh yea"!

I was behind on upper sassafrass (what else is new?) but alas, some mechanicals slowed the pack. At the base, friends looked at me and smiled wondering what i thought of that crazy trail:

"Mother f@#r!" I belted out. I meant it. Warning: Steep descents activate spontaneous slurred torretes. laughter ensued.

Allen showed us a new piece of single track that looped around to lewistown. we climbed up to beautiful and on this rocky ridge trail encountered yet more flats and mechanicals. I road through the carnage. We made our way down to the base of no name. I like this trail. not sure why. it's a rocky bench cut that's a bit steep at times and simultaneously washed out in places. It's good for the mojo as I can actually ride large portions of it - slowly.

I road through more carnage on no name. more flats. we were held up for a while at the base of the trail. We regrouped and made our way back up the road splitting at Indian. I was tired from saturday's rocky trail ride so I made my way back on the road to meet up with the group later.

A proper birthday ride should end on a high note so we finished up seeger and dropped telephone to seal the deal. We complete the day with a cold beer (guiness, yum! at Erik's petting furry dogs and checking out their amazing gardens and bee colonies! So cool.

Perfect day for a birthday celebration. Sure we had 10,000 mechanicals but it was still a fun, eventful ride with a lotta cool peeps. Thanks guys for draggin me around! A few picts are below:

left: peter took KOM on seeger. Right: then came allen! nice climb boys.

Erik and Josh!! Josh, you are at the top! no really this is the top. this is NOT HALF WAY.

Reynolds at the top of telephone. He likes it here. he can rest.

This is what chaya thinks about all this climbing / rock nonsense.