Yammy Mammy

Weather was good on Monday afternoon, so I met Ckucke and JT up at St. Louis for some dirt time. I got stuck at work late because the alarm wouldn’t arm since Jeff had stacked his stuff against the wall, blocking an alarm sensor. By the time I got to the top, Ckucke and JT had dropped Upper Dumps and were riding up the road. I gave them a tow up to the parking lot. It was a little more difficult than catching a ride on Root’s Corolla, since the FJ80 was almost a foot wider. It was either run Ckucke off the left into the dirt, or run JT off the right into the roots. It was still early, so we were going to hit Upper Dumps again before Root arrived then go down a third time after he arrived. While I was gearing up, Ckucke regaled me with his tale of being at Nordstrom Rack and being visually oppressed by some mother sitting her toddler on the jeans table and lifting her giant tee-shirt to breastfeed the child, exposing her belly and breasts. 

We started down the trail. Ckucke was leading, but passed the trailhead. I figured he had some clever plan, so I accelerated after him, only to have to suddenly burn off speed on cold brakes and sharply turn into the trail. The surface was grippy and smooth, and all the little hits felt really good. The built-up log jump lofted me really high in the air. The big rock jump threw Ckucke a little of the trail, unfortunately into some dog poop. Around this time, we heard Root’s car coming into the park, so we decided top head over to the jumps to meet him. Some overdressed off-road pedestrians came down the trail. JT talked to them a little while they passed him, but by the time they passed me, they wouldn’t even respond verbally or make eye contact.

We dropped through the stunt garden then climbed out to the jumps. Root came down the trail and we hit the jumps for a while. When I was finishing a run, an older dude in matching tighties and jersey came up the trail. I greeted him. He said something back – I can’t remember exactly what – but his tone was definitely, “Yeah, whatever.” He rode past Ckucke and toward JT and Root who were near the middle jump. Mr. Curmudgeon made it a point to ride between them instead of around them and mutter something under his breath. We continued hitting the jumps, but after unfriendly old dude returned down the trail after turning around at the parking lot, we decided we had enough and headed down the trail. Coming over the taco jumps, I came up on Root stopped diagonally in the middle of the trail, blocking it. Ckucke had gone down just after the jump, and was getting up. I hit the brakes, but there was no way I was going to stop in time to avoid clocking Root, so I rode off into the ‘Ulei. Root said “Man down” as I rolled past him to come to a stop beside Ckucke. Nice warning.

After Ckucke got himself worked out and back on the bike, we continued down through the somewhat loose bermed turns, then turned down mainline and took the let fork to the hammock tree. We briefly tossed around the idea of continuing down to the bottom, riding to Ckucke’s house to ditch the bikes, and driving back up in JT’s car. Luckily JT remembered his keys were in Ckucke’s car back at the top before we went down the trail! While intermittently pushing and pedaling back up, a helmetless multi-sport-bibbed dude came riding down the trail. He was friendly and cordial and responded when we greeted him. This brief encounter managed to erase most of the bad taste from encountering all those dicks and assholes earlier in the ride. The climb out didn’t seem as evil as last week, probably because the heat was a little lower. After reaching the top and loading up, we headed to Ckucke’s and boarded the pachuco mobile bound for Hide-chan for dinner.

Pictures here

D = 5.17 km (3.21-miles), Vavr = 8.4 km/h (5.2-mph), Vmax = 35.1 km/h (21.8-mph), T = 37-minutes