Invasive Species

Last monday thoughts turned to riding St. Louis. After the recent rains followed by clear weather, figured conditions would be prime. Ckucky and JT having time on their hands had already done two Dumps runs by the time I got to the park. I’d passed one guy on a cross country rig on the road up, just a precursor of things to come. By the time I geared up and the guys were roused from their lounging on a park bench, this guy had rolled through the parking and continued up into the park.

We rolled up along side the start of the Main line highway trail, I went down the trail a bit to set up for some snapshots. The lighting was nice. I was still fiddling with camera, facing downhill, and I heard someone bombing down the trail. Oh nuts, I quickly brought the camera around to get of a round. Waitaminnit, who the heck was that? It wasn’t Ckucky or JT. This was the first shot to tip JT’s mood, this dude was getting all alpha male by getting into standup sprint mode and actually swerving toward where Ckucky and JT were as he rode past. What really got to JT was he didn’t say a word.

After he passed, the boys came through and we dropped into upper Dumps. Looks like there was some more small cleanup done and indeed the weather conditions helped pack the trail and made it very fast. Good stuff. Instead of riding up to the mainline and the jumps, we decided to continue on Dumps out to Agave. I bobbled taking a short incline without enough momentum and ended up bailing off the side into a depression in the elephant grass. The depression seemed to match a person perfectly, I don’t think I was the first person to end up there. We stayed low and continued on out toward the water tank. This part of the trail was dry and getting pretty loose. Before we knew it, we were out at the tank. The sun was begining to dip low, there was a nice breeze, skies were clear, it was a nice day to be out riding. We rode the short section along side the road, it was getting pretty hairy with all the loose rocks and dust. We took the customary break at the road. And while we were chillin and taking in the view, a crew of jersey clad tighty shorts carbon bikey boys came through. That did it. After they left JT went off, branding them as offroad trigeeks. A while later a dude and his wife/girlfriend came out of the trail. They were much more low key and pleasant. Still, this was more traffic than we were used to on a monday evening ride.

After the trail cleared, we hit the last section out. I managed to go feet of the pegs and scrape my calf on the pedal, I wasn’t on it today, but it was still fun. Popped out on the road, bumped into Byron, jaw jacked for a bit, then pedaled up to Ckucky’s new place and jumped into the Scat Sled for a ride back up to the park to collect the vehicles. Trigeeks aside, it was a good evening to be out, and we capped it with a simple meal at Saigon’s in Kaimuki.

More pics here.