I’m full of ideas. Most of ’em are bad like when I planned a ride to do the Turkey Farm Loop on Thanksgiving or trying to ride my bike to Chile with no more planning than “I’ll just head south.” But on occasion, I have one that is gold. It’s best for me if I hand the little nugget off to someone else to polish and let me just be the guy in the background doing nothing more than smiling because one of my ideas, well, one of ’em was a good one.
This past Saturday the gods and the stars and luck all shined upon the Alliance. We were able to add an idea to the short list of the good column.
The Green Valley Loop was the ride to do in SG in the 90s. There were a few others that people did, but the GVL was pretty much the main stay. You couldn’t even call yourself a mtber without having ridden it multiple times. It was pretty much the way you defined yourself as a participant in the emerging sport of “mountain biking.” And while most of us should hang our heads in shame and pretend like we didn’t, we rode lines we shouldn’t have. We dropped off the fingers where there weren’t any fingers. And we thought that we were riding the most extreme terrain possible.
Some of us even shuttled it…
The ride consists of pavement, some dirt road and, of course, the Claw.
For the Green Valley Classic, we started at the bottom which meant that we got to end by shredding all the way down the BCP. We headed out on Navajo Drive and pounded pavement until we hit Canyon View Drive where the pavement started to hit back as the grade got considerably steeper.
Once on top, where most of us used to start this ride, we all regrouped. There ain’t no reason to be droppin’ people off the back. After all this is an Alliance ride. We’re slow. We know it and we don’t care.
The paved climb was followed by a dirt hill we used to refer to as Mile Hill. Once at the step-over, we regrouped and got ready to get our shred on.
And while the Claw is not my favorite trail now, it certainly is fun to shred. Moreover, it seems important (probably just to me) to remember how things were and to celebrate that which has passed on. For most of us that started riding in the 90s, this was it. This was our trail and it taught us the vital skills we would need to move onto bigger and better things. It taught us how to drop. How to roll down the steeps. How to climb the steeps and most importantly that riding is fun.
Seeing that I was sporting a gearless bike, I put my self toward the back of the pack. There was no reason for everyone to be waiting for me while I was completely spun out on the fun stuff. As the group fanned out in front of me, the dust kicked up and we shredded the Claw so hard there wasn’t any more Claw left to shred.
And then we ate pancakes.
And when the pancake batter was almost gone, the coffee had been drunk and we all started to remember that we had lives outside of shredding, it was proclaimed that the Green Valley Classic was a good idea and we would all be back next year to do it again.
Ride more.
