The Return of “Ass-Poppa”

Chris was free for a ride on Saturday afternoon, so we planned to ride if the weather wasn’t terrible. Jeff checked the radar in the morning, and it had been rainy all night on the Eastern half of Oahu, so Ditch was out. We met up at Wailuna at 14:30 and rode up the heinous hill of death. If there was one thing I learned biking in Whistler, it was not to fight the hill in mid-ring and to conserve energy in granny. It was sunny and breezy, and I reached the top of the road fairly fresh. The legs were reasonably OK, but the lungs and heart were feeling it a little, and the ass was feeling it a lot.

Up the water tank road and onto the dirt, the ground was initially dry, but after the eucalyptus corner, we began to see signs of moisture. The further we climbed, the wetter it got. The exposed clay was slick, and the parts of the trail that were either grassy or covered by fallen leaves were soupy. Many of the steep but otherwise rideable climbs weren’t, and the normal push-ups were slick mud.

The top was soggy and the bypass trails was a slurry of mud and rotten guavas. The descent was sketchy with slick roots and muddy patches. I outriggered the groove drop, but decided that some of the rooty drops and the slick clay roll-in were out of the question considering the conditions. Out onto the doubletrack, we dropped onto lower paperbark and followed the singletrack down to the grassy field, crossing the road several times. At the dirt kicker jump, Root, Chris, & I dropped into a chute into the ironwoods and found a rickety stunt built from pallets. Following the line down, we ended up below the moonscape. It took a few false turns, but we eventually found our way out through the airsoft field to the gate. In the end, I completely drained a measured 2-liters in my hydration pack, and the however-many-mililiters of Cytomax in my frame bottle.