This'll be fairly short, I promise...
Work was so boring yesterday afternoon I went downstairs to watch paint dry for some excitement,
when my phone rang with a ride invitation. Yeah! Its cool, sunny, begging for some action, baby!
Somebody try 'n stop me!
Run home, throw all the [censored] into the truck, caress the Gray Lady, ignoring the red wonder-child
once again.
Arrive at Adam's place and he's busy installing new Avids on his SS. Guess it's Hanz & Franz out
again tonight. You multigeared weenies can stop reading now. Carla, pay close attention...😉
We do a couple road miles to the trailhead, and hit the dirt, feeling frisky. Trade bikes for a bit.
That was wierd. Then up Uncle Stan's, about a mile and half of large, steep ledges replete with new
ruts carved by recent rains. Rather than turn left like we always do, we book it right, requiring a
cute little maneuver with the butt over the tire, up on the nose, whip the rear around to carve the
switchback, and then down this rockin little goat track into the Military Reserve area.
We cross the dirt road, and where we usually would drop down this bank and cross the creek, we see 3
large peacocks on high-tech bikes. Whaat?? It's my old riding buddy from the A-Team, and the
infamous "NP Squared" from the B-Team, which stands for his motto, "no pain - no pain," and some
other doof. We find out that they found some new trail and cut cross-country to get out. We
chastised them for being trail-cutting Barneys but they thought we were joking.
So then, we agree to ride together for a while, but as soon as we get out of the creek canyon, they
cut right onto a posted "no bikes" trail! Adam and I are yelling at them, kindly offer to arrest
them, get the bailiff to whack their peepees, etc., but off they go, the doofster Barney fools.
[Before you newbie free-rider types think I'm being overly legalistic and self-righteous, it's
idiots like these friends of mine that get trails closed to mtnbikes.]
Our only lawful option was UP, and it was a gutbuster, a mile or so of unrelenting, standing,
reefing up on the bars and down on the cranks. I take the lead and start by singing loudly, "This
old Man, he played one..." for cadence, but soon lose breath. We finally make it to the top, and ole
Adam says, "the only thing that kept me going was seeing you make it. And if you could make it, I
*knew* I could." I was too winded to slap him, so off we went.
To wrap this tale up earlier than usual, we continued through the area and had 2 more gnarly
climbs, some rocky descents, and lots of fun, surprising ourselves at what we could do when you
*just *don't *quit.
Paladin