It was a beautiful autumnal morning. And I started it in the best possible way, by setting up tubeless on four wheels. If you can remember all the way back to the last time I wrote about Suicidal Tendencies, KB had almost died, but more importantly she had finally ridden a bike that she liked and that wasn’t her Trance. She got sold on the 29er idea and decided to try out my XTC. Seeing that it had been hanging in the shed for the past few weeks, meant that it was in need of some work and the only time to do that was right before going on our big ride.
Big ride you ask? Yup, as a devout member of the Church of the Holy Alliance of Mooseknucklers, my recent studies had shown that we needed a lesson in suffering. The Church had spent too many fun weekends on the Mesas recently causing some of our members to lose their way and they needed a reminder that riding isn’t always about fun. Sometimes it has to be about suffering. And that sometime was this past Sunday’s lesson.
I was ready for some big hurt and prepared in the most obvious of ways. I stopped drinking. Not completely, but for the entirety of the working week I abstained from the holy water. This is a good thing, yes. But when that Johnnie hit my lips Saturday night, it tasted like heaven in a bottle. And if a little bit of heaven is good, then a lot of heaven is awesome. Until the next morning.
Yup, I was good and fuzzy and ready to suffer for it. In fact, I was fuzzy enough to let KB convince me to go to breakfast at Jazzy’s full knowing the work that had to be done before we could even ride.
For those of you keeping track, today’s lesson is on Making Cycling Difficult. It’s a three part process. 1. Drink heavily the night before. 2. Drink a bunch of coffee that morning and very little anything else. 3. You only get two water bottles for the ride, yup, only two.
KB knew I didn’t have enough water and told me so more than once. Newby and I also were super prepared in that we had one tube, one multi-tool and no inflation device. Yea, we should be just fine. I mean we’ll see someone if we get a flat.
Anyway, this lesson started in the Navajo Road trailhead at 10:37 on Sunday. KB and I readied our rigs as Newby pulled into the parking lot. I had in fact not worried about bringing an inflation device because I was sure Newby would be completely prepared. Unfortunately, he had assumed the same thing. And now you see where trust can get you. We considered our options and headed out.
The plan was to ride up Stucki follow the dirt road over to the Santa Clara River Reserve where we would devour its trail offerings like Pacman eating single track. KB was going to peel off at the top of Stucki and finish out her own lap while trying out my trusty steed. She was carrying plenty of water and a pump.
We flowed up the Micro Loop and enjoyed the climb up to the road. As planned, KB turned off and we continued. If we hadn’t had a big lesson planned one of us would have surely thought about trading KB a water bottle for her pack, but we did have a lot of trail ahead of us and we pressed on.
The road was dusty, moon dusty making my chain start to squeak. Everything was feeling pretty good and as we made our way to the Rim Jobs. It never occurred to me before, but they are the rim jobs cause you always have to go around them a couple of times. Just sayin’
Everything was going well at this point. I had only thrown my chain a couple of times, stupid wheels, and my legs weren’t feeling fatigued at all. I still had more than half of my first water bottle. Then we headed toward Sidewinder. Newby took the lead, duh, and I followed. I started to notice that my head was getting really hot. After fighting it for too long, I started to down my water. When we stopped before dropping into Suicidal, I finished my first bottle and opened the second. The hot head let up as we dropped into the saddle but came back as soon as we began to climb again. I had made the common mistake of waiting too long to hydrate.
We pushed on, only stopping for a few moments to pray at the Tombstone before continuing. By the time we reached the top, my water was pretty much gone and my legs felt like they were spent. It was painfully obvious that finishing everything in the reserve was out of the question. Newby was more prepared than I, having started the ride with three bottles. When I mentioned that I wasn’t going to be able to finish off the Barrel Roll due to lack of water, he gladly removed some weight from his and filled mine up.
I might have been losing heart, but being at the top of Suicidal it’s hard to not be excited for the downhill. Newby and I even stopped and eyeball fucked a rock that with a little work would make a pretty stellar roller on the switch backs just after the Tombstone. It was a bit more than either of us were ready to attempt at this point in the ride and we headed down into the saddle. And then back out of the saddle, by the time we got to the rock drop I didn’t even have the legs to attempt the climb out.
And then we were on top again and heading down Sidewinder. Newby dropped me like the ton of potatoes that I was. His new Epic was performing up to par. Then down and up and down into the moon dust and we made our way back to the Micro Loop there was only one thing on our minds at this point and that was the cold beer sitting in Brad’s truck. We hit the parking lot and made like real mountain bikers, opening the beer with my pedals. Only to realize the Surly Tugnut on the back of my bike had a pretty stellar bottle opener designed into it.
That was one of the best beers I’ve ever had. And the lesson that was to be learned, is that you can drink too much the night before and still have way too much fun mountain biking.
P. L. and R.
