It's Just Too Much Trouble

I pulled my dirt bike out of the shop for the first time in a year last weekend. I'd been putting this off for a while but the time had finally come. I cleaned it up, put some air in the tires, checked the air filter, and gave the kick start a good whack. Much to my surprise after about 7 kicks the thing fired up. This was going to be harder than I thought. It settled into a steady idle, looking all clean. I felt a twinge of regret. Maybe I should just keep it, you know, just in case I get the urge to ride. But that hadn't happened in over a year, which is still hard for me to accept.

Well just load it up right now and take it up to the track I told myself, go ahead, it's running great. Maybe you don't really want to take the pictures, write the add, and put it for sale on Craigslist. Then I thought about loading the gear, the gas can, the pop up, and pushing it into the back of the truck like I've done thousands of times in the past, and I just sighed. It seemed like too much trouble. Is this how things end? After 41 years of moto will I just go out with "it's too much trouble"? Come on man, you knew this was coming! My moto friends and I had talked about this day years before. We wondered if we would be forced off the bike by injuries or just get too feeble to ride. One of them suggested we'd just stop wanting to go. I always said they'd have to pry my cold dead hands off the handle bars, looks like I was wrong. I shut the bike off, pushed it in front of the garage door, and took the pictures for the add.

It's amazing all the stuff I've collected over the years while pursuing my moto hobby. Until I started listing it for sale I never realized I had so much junk. I'd kept records of every race, how I finished, and anything that happened that was worth remembering. As I read them I could picture the day, who was there, whether it was hot or cold, and even how I felt. Most of these events no longer exist. Public land for riding has disappeared and the places that are left are no fun to ride on. I have pictures on the wall of my shop from the 80's and trophies from races located on land where you can't even ride a motorized vehicle today. 4 wheelers and just too damn many people moving into the state eventually killed the best places to ride. So I typed the add, uploaded the pictures, and pushed the post button. When will your last ride be? Will you enjoy the last day you swing your leg over a saddle? Will you go out with a bang or will it just be "too much trouble"?

Enough of that melancholy crap! B and I borrowed a couple of single speeds last Friday just to see what all the excitement is all about. Now I get it! It was fun, different from the geared bikes, and so now we want one. Only problem is we couldn't just get one, we'd need two of them. So we're shopping around.

In my beautiful little town of Havana there's a restaurant T and I enjoy called Oscars. It's no big deal, just a little Italian food and a nice courtyard. We rode the bikes up there the past two weekends and after a couple of Becks I had a great idea. I should get a group of local cyclists together for a Friday evening tour of Havana. We could start at someones house for drinks, go to another house for more drinks and maybe some snacks. Then on to a restaurant for well, more drinks, and maybe something to eat. Sounds like fun huh? Would be great except I can't think of more than 8 people in town who ride and of those 8 only 4 of them could ride more than a few blocks. Anyhoo it was a good idea while it lasted. Maybe I could recruit some folks from out of town. Interested?

Not Talking About It

No, I'm not going to mention my horrific crash. There will be no gruesome injury pictures (even though I could provide some). I will not recount my childish display of temper as I rolled around on the ground in almost inhuman pain. I know I called up the bad mojo by mentioning earlier that day that I just didn't push hard enough to crash. Anyhoo I'm not talking about it so on to other things.

After last Tuesday's "incident" I felt compelled to take it easy for a couple of days. So when Sunday rolled around I still hadn't set up an afternoon ride. I had been wanting to go back to the Lines Tract Trails on the Gadsden Co. side of Lake Talquin for some time but for some reason most of my regular crew is afraid to leave Leon County to ride. It was such a perfect day I just had to get out, so after church I loaded up by myself, grabbed my music, and headed toward Quincy.

I wasn't surprised that there was nobody else at the trail head. I do question the logic of putting this system way out here, don't get me wrong, I appreciate the DOF building and maintaining the trail, but it appears to be very underused. The covered picnic tables, the grill, and the chemical toilet (I didn't really look at the toilet I just assumed) all looked like they hadn't been used in a while.

Yes the trail is there somewhere

The beginning of the trail is across a sandy hill that reminds me of the old Munson. I saw little evidence of bike tracks and in places the vegetation had grown across the path. After it dropped off the hill into the pines it was a little easier to follow until it started down into the hardwood hammock along the lake. I could see the blue blazes every now and then so I never really got lost but I admit I had to stop every once in a while to make sure I hadn't started bushwhacking by mistake. The views of the lake and the huge hardwoods made this my favorite section. If the trail had been beaten in it could have been a fun ride as well as scenic.

I was (am) still a little skittish from the "incident that I'm not talking about" plus being by myself made me ride even more conservative. But that was alright. I had good tunes, the sky was blue, and the woods were free of other people. After 9 miles I was back at the truck. It had taken me a little over an hour and I was wishing there was more to ride. After I downloaded the route onto Goggle Earth I could see plenty of room to expand the trail, the mileage could easily be double what it currently is. But why put in more of what nobody rides. It's a shame. There is so much underutilized state land on that side of the lake, if it were all tied together it could make epic trail system. But I don't know, maybe it's better this way.

West Point

It didn't feel as good as I imagined it would. I got more of a rush getting third place at the Tom Brown race in last year's Florida Series than I did getting a first this past weekend in Georgia.

The trail at West Point (which is just outside of La Grange Ga.) couldn't have been more perfect for me. And I'm not just saying that because I did well in the race, in fact I commented Saturday afternoon after our practice lap how much I enjoyed the ride. It has a hard clay surface with quite a bit of elevation change. There was a brand new section about a mile in length that looked like it still had rake marks on it. No it didn't really flow that well, it was like Red Bug without all the roots. The thing that made me the most relaxed was the fact I didn't need to get off my bike any where during the lap. I know you're surprised that a rider of my caliber needs to push once in a while but it's true.

Truth be told any little bit of scary looking technical stuff sends me to my feet so I was confident and happy after Rupe and I finished our lap on Saturday evening.

Aesthetically it would be hard to find a prettier place for a bike trail. It's situated on the edge of West Point lake, they had just done a control burn so there was no underbrush on the edges of the trail, and it had just enough roll to it to make the climbs a challenge. I took the whole fam up with me since most of the crew had elected to drive up Sunday morning. We got a room at a very expensive Hampton Inn in La Grange (I have a fear of bed bugs from lesser establishments) and after getting cleaned up we found a Long Horn Steak House and proceeded to consume mass quantities of red meat. The big meal combined with a couple of beers meant I didn't watch much of the movie back in the room before I was sound asleep.

Sunday was cloudy at first and a very pleasant 58 when we left the hotel after eating breakfast with all the folks at the Hampton. The Hampton Inns do seem to attract an older (yea than me) clientele that really do like their breakfast bar, they get a little aggressive if you get between them and the bacon. Scary.

The white wave (us slower riders) were scheduled to go off at 11:30 so we watched the more talented Rick, Tim, Danny, and Paige ride in the 9:30 race before we started warming up for our start. This would be Rupe's first race in the Junior 15-19 class and the first time he would line up right behind me, or so he thought. Somebody in our class hollered "let the juniors go first" so Dave took a vote, nobody seemed to mind so he moved them in front of us. I just knew I'd be able to catch him even with a 2 minute lead. Or so I thought.

"15 seconds" my mind goes blank. "Go" and then I spend 5 cranks of the pedals trying to get my other foot clipped in while everyone else gets in front of me. Fortunately it was a quarter mile dirt road before we hit the first single track. I was surprised as I moved to the front that nobody challenged me. I hit the first turn with only 1 other rider close on my wheel. My plan had been to go at almost my maximum pace for the first couple of miles then back off a little in the new tight section. My "plan" didn't take into account my thighs getting a good burn going so at the second road crossing I let the guy behind me go by.

Okay, seconds not so bad I thought, BJS and SteveA said I should be able to win easily but what do they know? I couldn't see anyone behind me as I started to catch the Clydesdale's, then the Juniors, then all of the sudden I was on first place's wheel. How did this happen (he told me later he just went out too hard and popped)? He let me by right before the new section.

Every now and then I could see Rupe through the trees way ahead of me and every time I started to catch a black and white jersey I thought it was him; but I never caught him. On the last big climb from the lake the locals call suicide hill I got a little queasy at the top of the power line. I knew it was only about a mile of tight single track to the finish so even if second place managed to catch me I planned to just ride wide until we hit the paved road to the finish but he never got that close.

So I won. Rupe beat my time by 30 seconds, which is the first time that's ever happened. He finished 6 out of 11, just one place away from a medal. That's the first time I've ever finished first so I don't know why I'm not more pumped about it. Anyhoo, I enjoyed the ride and we're both looking forward to the next round in Winder.

Barbarians!

As I chased after a couple of faster (although younger) riders the other night at Munson I had an epiphany. Racing through the woods along trails is something that's rooted in our distant past.

First on foot as we chased after food. Then on horses chasing game. The fastest got the kill and therefore the first or largest piece of the meal. So we all want to be the fastest. I can just imagine tearing through the primal woods whooping and hollering. Dodging back and forth along the trails. Then celebrating at the end of the hunt with a meal and some kind of manly (or womanly) drink. Sound familiar? What do you think? Don't you get some kind of deep seated pleasure at the end of a particularly hard ride? How about the urge to grab something hearty to eat? I've heard the celebratory hiss of an adult beverage being opened at the end of a long day as we toast our successful "hunt". So we really can't help riding in the woods. It's a part of us.

Ok let's take it a step farther. Look how we separate into tribes when we ride. This was one of the first differences I noticed when I left moto and started cycling. We all get along but we seem to settle into groups and tend to ride with that group most of the time. Kinda like tribes see? We even wear "colors" (well some of us do) sometimes to identify which tribe we're most closely associated with.

I don't ride road bikes so I wonder if they get the same thrill as those of us who only ride in the woods. From the outside it all looks so clean, civilized, and orderly. Do their tribes get along or do they just try to kill each other? Do they have the urge to howl at the moon while they ride? Do they even drink post ride beers?

Both Rupe and I have hit the ground pretty hard this week. Me getting over a large (to me) root on Cadillac and him clipping an unseen stump with his pedal also on Cadillac. It was scary to watch him launch into the air, perform a 180, then hit the ground with a thud. He got up and walked it off but it took the edge off of him for the rest of the evening. I'm almost embarrassed to tell about my little ordeal. See, I have this one root that has terrified me since we started riding. Almost everybody else clears it without even thinking about it but not me. So I decided I was going to do it. The first time I sailed right over it. Ha! Nothing to it. So I turned around to make another run, pulled up on the bars too early and plowed right into it. My ankle found the chair ring about the same time my shoulder met the tree and I ended up in a pile. Being both stubborn and untalented I made two more runs at it and even though I didn't fall again I never made it all the way over clean. Maybe I'll take up road riding.