It’s Sunday night when I should be feeling rested and readying myself for the work week or at least I would be if I was a responsible upstanding member of society. Instead, I’m slowly nursing the end of my flask that I filled the night before, my neck and shoulders are sunburned, my legs are tight from pedaling and there’s a weird knot in my back that was most likely caused by me trying to sleep in the back of a truck in a place that if caught, I would no longer be sleeping in.
If there’s one thing I think we can all agree on is that this life is too short. We spend too much time doing things we would probably rather not and not enough time doing the things that make us collapse into bed at the end of the night exhausted with a grin that barely fits between our ears.
There’s essentially two ways to remedy this ratio. You can go the full crust route, abandon all the possessions you can’t fit on your back and walk away into a sunset to wander through this world without any cares, money or possibly friends as not too many people will sit next to you as you beg for change on the corner, but those who will should be counted as your true friends. Or you can hit the weekends with a 27″ long aluminum bat, none of that plastic wiffle type bull shit, we’re talking a real bat, and see what happens to fall out. Most likely it will leave you bruised, bleeding, broken and begging to do it all over again the next weekend.
A Piñata Weekend is essentially taking those precious days or even hours of time that you have for you. Those minutes when there’s no question about whether you need to be responsible or whether taking the long road home is acceptable and jamming everything that you can possibly fit into them. Or in other words beating them with a bat to see what falls out.
If you are lucky and living your life in an upstanding and respectable fashion, you might have the pleasure of having Rod entertain you all night and include a limerick just for you. That’s getting a head of ourselves a little bit so let’s back up the train which is super fitting as the weekend was a train wreck just waiting to be backed into.
Rod, guy above reciting the best known limerick about Moose, has a cabin in Heber. It’s a mighty fine cabin with a killer deck and an awesome porch. And when a guy named Rod who recites limericks invites you to his cabin for relief from the heat, but more importantly, for a weekend of binging on bikes and booze, you accept. Trust me. You accept. Even if that means you will be driving up after work on Friday and jamming in as much of a weekend you can before leaving a day or two later.
The riding started at 11 on Saturday. The Coyote Loop probably isn’t that bad of a ride. It definitely has some climbing including one or two or three sections that might be steeper than one would hope for, but when you are breathing through a straw half filled with liquid, it can feel like a whole lot worse than I imagine it is. I base this on the observation that while I was ready to kill over, most of the group was chipper and looking as if they hadn’t even pedaled yet as they waited for me to get to the top.
Jeff even chose to ride the fattest bike he could find and to top it off, he strapped just about everything possible to it. This included one large pannier that was filled with PBRs for the many beer breaks that this group was sure to have, a bag on top of the rack (contents unknown as I didn’t go rifling through his stuff) and a beautifully polished, stainless steel growler which was also filled with beer of the nutbrown variety (I won’t bore you with the jokes, I’m sure you can use your imagination).
I’m sure you can imagine what happens when you open a stainless steel growler filled with nut brown ale that has been bouncing around on a fat bike, but if you can’t I may have captured some video. And seeing that I am usually late to the party and a couple dollars short of the entry, this one was the second opening of the growler. The first one was only committed to our memory, but included beer being sprayed all over Jamon despite proper attention to the direction of the top of said growler.
After what seemed like the longest ride ever, we were done and the only thing left on the itinerary was getting some snacks and heading to the cabin to relax.
Despite Mrs. Moose’s best efforts, the itinerary for the next day was not what you would call neatly planned. At best it was a definite maybe that we would probably go riding at some point, but most likely not as far as she would like, but maybe, whatever. Beer!
The next morning was a surprisingly different story. When the Mooses rolled out of bed, most everyone else was awake and enjoying coffee on the porch. Breakfast was whipped up by Rod who was accompanied by a few of the others. After eating, the cabin was stripped bare and cleaned. Physics Brian wore the vacuum out as he made sure that every surface was touched at least 18 times to ensure it was clean. We were all just happy he wasn’t doing it naked.
Bikes were locked and loaded and we made our way over to the PCMR for a jaunt up Armstrong to Mid Mountain and down Spiro which was kind of a compromise of getting close to riding as far as Mrs. Moose wanted, but not quite that far. The uphill was brutal, at least it was for me. I got passed by a trail runner and never saw him again. Two guys waited for me to pass them and then I had to let them go because good god I couldn’t breathe.
Then there was the downhill, that was fun.
Lunch and goodbyes were said, hugs were given with promises to ride together again soon. I then yanked my bag out of the back of the truck leaving almost everything I actually needed and bringing everything that I didn’t. While the piñata was on the ground almost void of any candy, I still had one more day and there was the promise of a scavenger hunt and possibly a punk show, but that night is a story all in itself.
P. L. and R.
