This weekend was place to domestic torture schemes. Locally known as Camp Lynda, people traveled from far away places, like Northern U T A H, to suffer through three days of pedaling in Southern U T A H. If you happen to be friends with any of these masochists, you probably have already been bombarded with photos of the event and are fully aware that, even if water boarding isn’t considered torture, what they did should be.
The Alliance is all about people coming south to ride and we wished them all luck and then did our own thing. Our own thing was pretty hard core. We started our Camp Knuckler on Saturday night with the opening ceremonies. The Mooseknuckler Cycling Alliance Social Lounge was opened for the event. Seeing that we are not prejudice, we even let some Lynda Campers join us for the celebration.
Physics Brian told us all about how he had cheated. I couldn’t figure out how pedaling was cheating but apparently you were supposed to follow a certain route and he prefers singletrack.
Sunday came without warning. As in there was no memory of the transition from Saturday to Sunday and the morning was particularly brutal. I bid adieu from bed to the Lynda Campers as they headed out for some more “fun.” I slowly began preparing for what would be the highlight of mountain biking in Southern Utah for the month of February, the 3rd Mooseknuckler No Dabs Contest.
I had planned on being good and warmed up for the climb up to Zen, so had made plans to ride the Barrel Ride before hand. As morning switched to noon, I was having doubts if I could even turn a pedal (I have confidence issues). Shelby offered to drive which was a good thing. My head reattached itself about half way up the race course.
Seeing as we were simply “warming up” for the main event, we spent a lot of time watching other people riding back down the trail and saying, “Is that a cross bike?” Which the way I just framed it doesn’t seem like a valid question. However, in the light of following cross bike tracks up the trail we were sure Mitch was rocking around somewhere ahead of us. Plus it gave us a good reason to stop and wheeze for a bit before continuing.
Our “warm up” didn’t take as long as planned and so we cooled down waiting for the rest of the folks to show up. Mitch rolled up looking like he wanted to “warm up” as well but instead stood around with us waiting. We finally rolled out about 3:30 which happens to be the exact time that we had planned to start.
We decided to break the event down into two separate sections, Upper Zen and Lower Zen. Shelby showed us all up on Upper Zen with but one dab on ‘im. The rest of use were two or more and held our heads in shame. After watching Shelby run an almost perfect run on Upper Zen, I was convinced that we would be having another installment of the No Dabs Contest on Zen because I would like to be witness of a perfect ride. Lower Zen was a tie between Prattipus and myself with Shelby coming in second with one dab. He did get cocky so we were glad he came crashing back down.
And Fixie, before you ask, Yes I rode the singlespeed.
Judge Dame was also in the singlespeed category. He rode with us and as always we enjoyed his company. When we were all done and telling our big stories about riding over rocks and then turning left, Judge Dame asked what the Mooseknuckler was. I did my best to be coherent and attempted to tie in all of your answers. I think I did a pretty good job because I ended with, “The ironic thing is that none of us wear lycra.”
Good times were had by all. Those who weren’t there were missed. And those who were there, were not missed.
P. L. and R.