Since it had been raining all weekend, I was not confident that we would be getting a Monday night F/R in. The weather was windy and partly overcast all morning, but toward the afternoon, the clouds retreated back up the mountaintops, leaving blue skies accented with swirling sumi-e brushstrokes of high altitude cirrus clouds. My throat was feeling “not right” all morning, so I was considering bailing, but the change in the weather made me change my mind.
Ckucke, Root and JT met up with me at the McBike parking lot and we shuttled up to the top in the tired old FJ80. After lunch at the office, Ckucke and I were thinking that if we stayed on the upper trails there would be a better chance of finding drier conditions. We dropped down mainline, bypassing cliff trail, the inner loop and dumps, and the taco jump trail to avoid the potential moisture. We turned at the powerline pole and continued down mainline, passing the first and second drop-ins, and passing the old World Cup course. 
When we reached the fork between the last valley drop in and the ridge trail, we noticed that we had lost JT and Root. A lot of yelling and light flashing brought the group back together. Apparently they had gone down World Cup a ways.
We hadn’t ridden down the ridge trail in ages, so we decided to give it a shot. The brushfire cleared out all the grass and a lot of the haole koa, so the route was very visible. Someone had marked off the line with ribbons and flags, and the trail was well ridden. Oddly, there seemed to be flags placed randomly throughout the fire-cleared hillside. When we arrived at the first rock drops and the giant boulder-groove roll-in, we all thought simultaneously, “we used to ride this?” Either the passing of years had made us suck, erosion had made the course steeper, or the brushfire had taken away comforting visual barriers, or maybe a combination of all of these, but it took a great level of commitment (sphincter tightening), body English, and careful bike control to get down what basically amounted to a rock waterfall whilst still onboard the bikes. I hesitated on the rock roll-in because the surrounding grass was entirely gone, giving me a clear view of the 3-meter drop to the outside. In the past, the overgrown grass and haole koa gave the impression that everything was solid and filled in. Beyond that, I dabbed only once. The right-shoulder-grabbing kiawe bush was still there, but it didn’t get me. Everyone got down unscathed and rubber-side-down.
After a long break at the concrete road, we blazed down the exit trail at speed. I was trying to keep right on Ckucke so I didn’t have to breathe any poopy dust. There was a flow going on last night that has been absent for a while. Food was at St. Louis drive-in, where everyone had the “KCCN bento” with the special spicy chicken wings.
D = 3.79-miles, Vavr = 9.8 mph, Vmax = 21.6 mph on trail, T = 23-minutes
Heck, I’d go to St. Louis Drive-inn just for those spicy fried chicken wings! So wonderfully crispy, nicely spicy, and salty. Perfect beer pupu. I remember the first time I ate there, I forget what I had and wasn’t impressed. The last two times though was good, and that chicken is the winna!