Seven

Seven days in the week.

Seven continents on the earth.

Seven deadly sins.

And per Bikediet, seven hours on my bike this weekend.

Whatever. I got this. 'Cross bike and dirt road love, here I come!

This is What Every Saturday Should Be

The Ol' Lady and I slept in, for us, all the way to 8am. After only brief thought, we decided to hit Canopy Road Cafe for breakfast. I'd driven by this joint for several years, and only remembered to give it a try about 6 months ago. It's small and it's local, and the food is good. What more do you need? The word on the street is that their pancakes are their specialty. My personal favorite, the sweet potato pancakes. They're outstanding. They come drizzled with some sort of butter/syrup/cinnamon hybrid that is a gateway to a happy sugar coma.

Afterwards, we chilled on the couch and watched a movie that was due back tonight. Movie wasn't so good, but the company was.

Wrecking Ball showed up around 1pm, so I could catch up on my January W.B. bike maintenance. He's not called the Human Wrecking Ball for nothing.

Big Jim Slade rode from his house to meet us. Then he and I rolled out to pick up Flash, on our way to the trails. It was damn cold getting started, but a beautiful day, none the less. On the way, we came across Bushy in his yard, stopped to say hello, and continued on. I regaled poor Slade with a laundry list of the all the cycling clan who live, or had lived, in those surrounding neighborhoods. It's just such a cool, old school, Tallahassee neighborhood.

The temperature was turning out to be perfect for mountain bikes. The trees kept you safe from the wind. The lack of leaves allowed the sun to reach the trail bed, and it felt good to be back on home turf. B.J.S., W.B., and I hadn't ridden local terrain on the weekend in three weeks. The Road is fun, but Home is good.

By the time I was home, my roll time was just shy of 3 hours. For Slade, he had to be pushing 3.5 when he climbed out of the saddle. Perfect.

A little stretching, a shower, and pasta with homemade spaghetti sauce. I'm clean, I'm full, and my legs are tired. WB's bike worked. Slade learned a new skill. Flash got to ride when he promised not to. My wife is due home soon. What more do I need?

Scenes from Felasco Eve

Macon Ken-venture (Without Ken)

This little trip of ours did not quite turn out as expected. Aside from the general destinations, everything else was rearranged. The original plan was to hit Thomaston on Saturday, stay in Macon that night, ride Dauset on Sunday, and then hit JL's BBQ in Macon, on the way home.

Mother nature had other plans. The rain predictions for the weekend swung wildly the entire week leading up to our departure. By Friday night, the predictions were for rain to start midday, early afternoon on Saturday, with 70% chance on Sunday. It wasn't looking good. We revamped and decided to leave early and hit Dauset on Saturday. That trail system gets closed after heavy rain, and we didn't want to miss it. The fog was so thick you could cut off slabs and eat it on your sandwich. You could hear water dripping from the leaves while we got dressed. It actually started to sprinkle as we rolled out from the parking lot.

Dauset's trails are super fast and well groomed. Half the fun is just being able to rail corners at mach 9. Not when she's this wet though. The wet clay surface would turn your tire loose with little to no turning pressure. The game of the day became more about who could ride the nastiest, wettest, rootiest, rockiest sections without dabbing. Before long, everyone was laughing and carrying on as if we were not coated in a 1/2" thick layer of trail grime. 2.5 hours and we only averaged about 7.5 mph. Everyone was pretty well toasted when we decided to call it quits, and head for a pressure washer and a hotel.

We conned Ray, the hotel maintenance guy, into hooking up a hose for cleaning the bikes. This was great, but the hotel has industrial pressure wash pressure at the hose, and Ray keeps insisting that he help by blasting all known lubrication from every bearing surface on the bikes. It will be interesting to see if any of us has to replace a bottom bracket this week.

The next morning we wake to find everything soaked outside. A big time thunderstorm had pushed through, and we knew we were in for another swamp fest. Amazingly enough, the rain we expected to be with us all day, disappeared as we drove to Thomaston! By the way if you own a Garmin navigation system for your car, hit it with a hammer, drive over it with your car. The whole time it will be screaming to turn left or right, to avoid its own immanent demise. Then buy a map, and read it yourself. For whatever reason, Big Jim Slade's Garmin took us up through Birmingham to get to Thomaston. We just kept saying that the longer we drove, the drier the trails would be. It all worked out... eventually.

Thomaston was to be a true Ken-venture, without Ken. I was the only one who had ever really ridden here, and it had been at least 5 years. Apparently no one is really riding this truly tough, and damn well worth the drive trail system. Why the locals don't ride here every weekend, I'll never understand. This trail has 3 main climbs, all granny gear style for yours truly. The 1st is a mile long switchback beast, with plenty of loose rock and roots thrown in for good measure. To top it off, you start this damned climb .9 mile into the trail. Forget a warm up, it's straight to incinerate, for your poor legs and lungs. We wandered this system for some time. Some of it I recognized right away, others not so much. If you see the GPS track of our route, you see lots of fingers off the loop, where we had to backtrack as I realized yet another error. We always found our way back, though. Unfortunately, we added in a couple of hella tough climbs in the process!

About an hour and a half in, you could see chinks in people's armor. Folks were cracking, both physically and mentally. Derwood, Little Ball, and I started taking turns, moving down a piece of trail, to see if it was correct, to save others the effort of having to climb back up another dead end downhill. Everyone was more than ready to see the trailhead. Wrecking Ball kept me sane, telling me over and over again, that adventures are almost never as much fun when they are actually happening.

By the time we reached the trucks, legs and patience were toast! We cleaned up, loaded up, and headed for the highway. Unfortunately, being in Thomaston, it was just too far to back track to Macon for JL's BBQ. There had been enough back tracking for one weekend. We headed south in search of food, but apparently everyone on Hwy 19 is a farmer who grows his own food and never eats out! We got skunked all the way to Albany. By then everyone just wanted to be home, so drive through fare it was , eaten by exhausted, cranky folks, with sore legs.

Despite his claims otherwise, Big Jim Slade was running out of gas, and his patience was being tested. I was glad to see him smile and relax on the journey home. I don't want to be the one who runs him off, for another 9 years.

Felasco Vocabulary Terms - "Preparation"

This seems like a pretty straight up term, but my experience indicates otherwise.

To some, Felasco prep is taken on with purpose. Juancho, for example, has been logging hour after hour on his bike. I'm not sure how many miles he's doing in those hours, but his taint should be properly seasoned by now.

Micro, however, has taken a completely different approach. His prep so far has consisted mostly of looking for his bike. If you've seen it, drop a line here, to Bigworm's lost and found. Unless he's developed some new hobbies I'm unaware of, Micro's taint is in for a rude awakening.

Micro's brother, Beefcake, is always a mystery. He was a long time mountain bike legend. Well at least his grouchiness was legendary, but he has really has always been strong on the bike. Last year he rode in the caboose with the Spanish Mackerel, coining humorous phrases regarding blows from the feet to one's genitalia. Oh well, if his legs give out, I'm sure his Arnold-like pythons will welcome the chance to tear the pedals from the cranks.

There are also those who don't need preparation. Marcus, aka Bikediet, will not ride at all, yet somehow be able to go as fast as anybody on the whole damned trail. No really, I'm not bitter about that fact. (Well, actually, I'm quite bitter about that fact.)

Spanish Mackerel is the anomaly of the "no prep needed" crew. He claims to be getting ready, yet always misses the rides. He swears he'll be there, but instead is spotted at some sporting goods store, with the tell tale pillow wrinkles still on his face. Somehow it doesn't matter for him. Apparently just thinking about training, gives him the mental toughness to finish, year after year. By all rights he should be shriveled up beside the trail with Sasquatch kicking sand in his face. But it won't happen. He may not be the first to finish, but he'll come out of the woods again, with that goofy look on his face, like a puppy who's been lost for hours, and just found his way home.

Red Dragon has been training his lungs with a vengeance. If you don't believe me, just ask him. I'm sure you'll get some kind of long winded story, excuse, or anecdote, that will more than prove my point. He'll bluster and blow. He'll wail and howl, and all that hot air will send him sailing to the finish.

Lil' Ronnie, the Angry Haitian, pretty much runs on pure hate. I figure he'll ride his bike until his legs fall off, just so he can look down at them and tell them he hates them. Then he'll slither off his bike, and tell it he hates it, too. Next he'll call me to tell me he hates me for making him do this damned ride. Somewhere in there, he'll tell me I'm hard to be friends with, and that he hates me for that. You want to see something funny? Be there when we pull up to the parking lot Friday night. Lil' Ronnie will be so stoked to see us, he'll cry like a little girl, and then he'll hate us for that. And with that, his preparation will be complete.

Wrecking Ball will ride like there is no tomorrow, in fear that Red Dragon may blow by. The only problem is, he'll ride his bike into oblivion, and all of its parts will fall off the week before Felasco. At which point, he'll go into manic breakdown and I'll have to nurse him back to health. He's not called the Wrecking Ball for nothing.

Bab McCarty's prep will be highly specialized. Actually, F#*k Bab! Who cares what that prodigy assed rock star does?!! I'll tell you what he doesn't do! He doesn't ever update that lame ass blog of his. His last post was due to my heckling. Check it out. What the hell are you waiting for Santana??

Alright, this may be getting out of hand, so let me wrap this up. For me the prep just isn't going to matter. No matter how much I stress about it, no matter how much I ride, it just doesn't matter. After all the trash I just talked, I just sealed my fate. Hopefully I can just keep up with the caboose. Through all of the cramp induced pain, and vision blurring bonk, that Fate is sure to dish out, I just want to have enough left in the tank to remember the stories.

Common Ground

"I sat outside on the green slab next to the oil drip, and the window. 4 riders approached from west on University, but they were unlike any riders I’ve generalized about before. The leader sported a flat-brim white Yankee’s hat, sagging pants, White belt, white puffy gansta jacket and big shoes. The rest that followed him, looked same same but different. Rolling bright deep dish rims on white frames, the only thing separating them from typical, was that the were all rolling fixed. Hip-Hop-Deep-Dish-Fixed… It was a sight for sore eyes. Hoods on bikes. Indeed things are changing."

That was a quote I took from Gnome's write up over at Drunkcyclist, about this year's Flight of the Pigs ride. It was my favorite paragraph in the whole ride report.

While I'm not one of the activist types that thinks bikes will solve the petroleum challenges of America, solve world hunger, or end global warming, I do think they can change an individual's outlook. Bikes bring many things to many people. They bring freedom to a 7 year old kid, who can now easily explore the whole neighborhood. They bring transportation to those who have no other way. They bring stress relief to those of us who can let our blood pressure alarms ring too easily and too often. To some, they bring something as simple as a new fashion accessory.

The big thing is, they bring a commonality. They bring one more facet that can bind vastly different people. I've said it a thousand times, my friends walk the gamut of life. Age, gender, economic and social status, religious background; cycling has bridged a lot of barriers to tie crews together all over the world.

Again, I don't believe that cycling alone will bring to bear a bright shining light of perfection on the world. She's more like a well cut diamond, when the light hits her just right, she sure does sparkle.

I thought Boyz 2 Men broke up?