Man, it took until after nine at night to get everything cleaned up after this Sunday’s ride. The weather looked fine for a ride earlier in the day, but as ride time approached, a wall of grey clouds came rolling over the Windward side, drawn by the weak trades. Stronger trades would have moved the rain-dumping clouds through faster, leaving the trails slightly dampened at most, but the slowly passing clouds were given the chance to fully saturate the ground. When I arrived, Waikupanaha at the trailhead was dry, but within seconds, the downpouring that I had gone through along Kalani’ana’ole caught up.
JT and I had talked to Ted Lincoln at the reception for his art show at Chinatown Boardroom on Wednesday evening and discovered he was a mountain biker too. He rented a pretty nice dually Specialized Enduro from Bike Shop and did The Bus shuttle runs at St. Louis on Saturday and joined us out at the Ditch for some cross-country trail riding. JT was busy finishing up some artwork and Jeff got sick, so it was just Root, Ted, and I.
Government Road was wet, but not packy. The running rainwater had carved a trough in the bed of leaves. We hit the side loop first. Even though it was wet, there wasn’t a whole lot of mud to cause problems. The Ditch was another story. Mud was slinging and flinging everywhere. On the way out, the mud was more fluid, so there wasn’t a whole lot of buildup. When we reached the turnaround and went up the parallel trail, conditions were drying out and the mud began to pack. We explored a couple of recently cut lines, and although these were interesting, the mud made things generally miserable. We bypassed the upper plateau and made the run back along the Ditch before the gumbo-mud factor made the trail unmanageable. Keeping to the wetter parts of the trail helped reduce the buildup, but the return leg still felt like riding with the brakes dragging.
Back at the cars, we did what we could to clean the bikes and our bodies. Ted had to get back home to cook dinner, so Root and I headed over to El Mariachi for food. After I got home, a couple of hours hitting the bike and gear with the hose in the dark still awaited me.
Pictures here
D = 10.77 km (6.69-miles), Vavr = 11.7 km/h (7.3-mph), Vmax = 32.5 km/h (20.2-mph), T = 55-minutes (actual trail time about an hour and a half)
Holy clay clods, that mud was tenacious! I was at it until night cleaning all the gear too, and running soft goods through multiple rinse cycles! I added my pics too.
The mud came off my bike, including tires, with just the trigger nozzle on the hose. I did have to take the tawashi to the Ruffians though. The clothes and pack got the same treatment – lay out on the driveway and blast with full pressure. One wash seemed to do the trick after that.