Monday came and went without a ride. Ckucke had a last-minute emergency, Root was burnt-out from Sunday, and I thought the weather was going to be inclement, so I didn’t bring my kit. JT was still itching for a ride when Tuesday came around, so after a few frantic phone calls, the ride was set. Not suspecting there would be a Tuesday ride, I didn’t have my kit, but I did have my helmet at work. Close enough. I drove up to St. Louis and hit the trail in my work clothes. I forgot that I had a pair of beat up TRD mechanic’s gloves at work also, but they were full of holes and were duct-taped together. After briefly talking to Chris Clark in the parking lot, I blew down the mainline to catch up to the guys at the jumps. I hit the jumps a few times with JT who was getting reacquainted with his Turner Burner. I didn’t want to stack without gloves, long sleeves, or shinguards, so I stopped before anything bad happened. We continued down the normal way to the bottom of the rock waterfall, then backtracked up to the second sortie.
JT and Ckucke eyed out the big rock drop. After a little grooming, JT went back up the trail a little and took a run at it. He put it in the back seat and thrust forward off the rock, but still landed a little nose down. He said a little more speed would have been fixed that. Ckucke took a couple of runs at it, but couldn’t bring himself to commit to the drop and roll over the edge. The actual vertical drop at the edge was a little over a meter, but if one took into account the throw, there actually was little difference between this rock and the upper rock drop. The psychological hurdle of a visually sheer drop was the hard part to get over. I wasn’t abot to do it in street clothes without armor, even knowing it wasn’t higher than something I had just dropped not minutes before. It just looked scary. We continued down along the back of the tank to the above bypass and down to the concrete road.
While recovering there, Ckucke’s back tire went suddenly flat. Probably a pinchflat along the rocky chute we had just come down. His bike had a bolted rear axle, so it took a little more time and trouble to remove – enough time for a rain squall to roll in and dump on us. The rain continued for almost exactly the same time it took for Ckucke to change out his innertube, making this process much more miserable than it usually is. The ride down the exit trail was more sketchy than usual with tires slipping on glisteningly slick rocks and shoes slipping on wet pedals. Through the last pitch to the street, I alternatively lost one pedal or the other, and had alternating pedals catch on the rocks. It was quite ungraceful, but I didn’t stack. After shuttling back up to the top in the Jesus truck, we went our separate ways, and I managed to get into McBike at a reasonably early hour.
Pictures here
D = 3.43 km (2.13-miles), Vavr = 14.5 km/h 9.0-mph), Vmax = 39.9 km (24.8-mph), T = 14-minutes
0 Responses to “Pau Hana Panic”