Instigator

Monday, 28 June 2010

While leaving the pub on Sunday, JT kept throwing around a Monday post-work St. Louis DH session. After hemming and hawing a little, I realized it was a good idea, and relented. On Monday morning, the emails flew back and forth, and we were all set to meet at Ckucke’s and shuttle up. Midday, I received a text from JT, the instigator himself, saying that he had a job to do and couldn’t make the ride! WTF?! Oh well, we were set to go. On the way to Ckucke’s, I got a call from JT.

“So, is the ride still on?”

He had finished his job early and was rushing home to grab his bike and gear. When I got to Ckucke’s, he was fixing a flat on his bike, so the timing worked out just right. JT and Root arrived about the same time, and we loaded up and rocketed off to meet Kevyn at Kanewai park. Kevin’s truck of the month had a campershell, so it would have been a chore trying to get all the bikes and bodies inside, so we kept everything in Ckucke’s ride and loaded Kevyn. The five heavy bikes and three guys in the bed easily exceeded the 500-pound recommended maximum weight for the lowered suspension on the truck by a good margin, so every bump sent lightning bolts of jolting pain up everyone’s spines.

After rolling through a remodeled Upper Dumps with the giant tree-over, we climbed up to the jump garden and sessioned briefly while two older French-speaking ladies in street clothes came down the trail, then came back up, and some giggling, shouting teen girls frolicked in the trees somewhere uphill of us. The heat was rather oppressive, but at least near the edge of the ridge, there was a little wind. We dropped the taco jump line then turned down mainline and took the left fork to the old World Cup drop-in. Gone was the loose dirt groove of the past. In its place was a rock waterfall. We played on this section a while, trying several lines, then continued down the fenceline to the concrete road. The upper part of the fenceline was a lot wider and better groomed than it was the last time I went down it years ago. Somewhere along the cobbled stair drops, JT got a pinchflat, so we took a break in the diminishing twilight as he switched the tube out.

Back at Kanewai, Kevyn gave Ckucke a ride back up to the top to retrieve his truck while the rest of us waited at the bottom. Ckucke picked us up and we went back to his place to dump our gear. I sat in the bed with JT, and at every instance, he kept shouting, “punch it,” to which I had to immediately retort, “don’t punch it,” after the first instance of punching the throttle folded my spine backwards at the base of my ribcage over the top edge of the tailgate. We went down to Yamagen for dinner, but it was a little late, so Chris had already left McBike. We did see Mitch over at Long’s, and he came by to chat a little. On the way back to the truck, we all stopped in to buy strawberries on sale at Long’s for $5 for two trays. I ate nearly half a tray on the drive back to Ckucke’s!

Pictures here

D = 4.91 km (3.05-miles), Vavr = 11.0 km/h (6.8-mph), Vmax = 38.5 km/h (23.9-mph), T =27-minutes (actual trail time around one hour)