Ich kann mit kein Handgriffstab mein Rad fahren

Today was an awesome day. One heck of a lot of fun. Michael Ritter, Ben (sorry don't know your last name, bmapple on ntmba forums), my dad and my mom went out to Pisgah to do an epic ride. I had never been to this part of pisgah, so I was excited about riding some new trails. We left the house around 7am. That is way to freaking early, but its all good I guess since we were going to ride some new trails. I hopped in the car with Michael and off we went. About 30 minutes after we left it started to drizzle. Now I really don't mind it raining while I ride, but I hate it when it rains while you are getting dressed. That is just demoralizing, not to mention really cold! By the time we got to Asheville, the rain was gone, but it was still really overcast.



Better, but I was hoping for sun!

As we pulled into the parking lot, the sun kind of started to pop out. Yes! I was pretty happy about that.


The bike is happy too. Plus she likes to be ridden.

We all got suited up and got ready to ride. Ben seemed to be carrying a small child in his camelback, but assured us that if any near-fatal injuries were to happen, we would not find ourselves lacking supplies. I believed him haha...

We started up the singletrack, and of course I immediately had to shed my jacket. I know the saying is to be a little chilly in the parking lot, but I have a really hard time doing that. I like being comfortable. I guess its better than starting to ride and finding out that you need more clothes but don't have them. We went up a long singletrack climb with some evil little bridges on them, and then popped out on some fire road. It was then fire road up up up for a while.



I like fire roads. Notice the mud beneath my eye. The trails were a little muddy and slick. Also notice that my dad seems to be dropped. He was talking a lot of smack. Owned. He isn't happy about it either (see bottom pic). In the picture on the top you can catch a glimpse of Ben's huge camelback.

We turned onto another fire road, and headed towards what Michael assured me was a sweet downhill. We get to the top, where the trail turned off to the left.



His majesty the ride leader.

We turned down some super sweet downhill singletrack that popped us out on another road. There was this frozen waterfall that was beautiful. I took a picture of it. But then closed my phone without saving it, so I don't have it. Take my word for it, it was awesome. Our whole ride was full of cool ice formations. 6 foot long icycles, massive ice slabs, ice covering the trail in 50 degree weather.

We went up this super nasty fire road that was really steep, really long, and apparently was full of quicksand. When you climb 1200 feet in 3 miles of fire road, the last thing you want is to feel like you have a flat tire the whole time. We got to the top and I crammed a peanut butter and honey sandwich down my gob and threw a jacket on before we started to head down the mountain. Haha.. what a joke! Down the mountain, oh I crack myself up. It was supposedly downhill, but it ended up being about 2 miles of false flat with more quicksand-type dirt. Its ok, there was some cool fire road we got to come down. It reminded me of the never-ending road on the ORAMM. It was still cool. We came out on a fire road that we had been on earlier and then took some singletrack down to the fish hatchery. There was some really fun technical singletrack at the bottom where you could get a ton of speed up and hop off of these 1ft ledges one after another. The hikers were staring at us funny as we hooped and hollered.

We took the last fire road up, and started to come down the singletrack we went up at first. We were all getting really tired and making silly mistakes. I galaxed going into a creek/bridge crossing. (first person to find out what galaxing is gets a prize). We got about 100 yards from the car, and I reached back and realized my phone wasn't in my pocket. OH CRAP!!!! Everyone else went to the cars, as I started to head back up the trail, hoping to see it. I remembered galaxing, so I knew that had to have been where I had dropped the phone. I started up the trail, came to one creek crossing and thought "dang it I thought this was the right one". I had already come that far, so I figured I'd keep going till I found it. It was a lot further up the trail than I remembered it being. At this point I had already done 5 hours of riding, so I was super tired and bonking. I spent 28 minutes climbing back up and found the phone right were I had fallen. Great! I was glad I had found it, but I was tired! I rushed back down the trail, jumping everything in my path, logs, rocks, and small children included. I got back down to the car, did a couple awesome berms near the car, and pulled into the parking lot with 5 hours 38 minutes of ride time, 42 miles. HUGE day! I was happy, but tired. I needed a BOOST!



I got one.. but it's backwards!!

You know, I now declare this national BOOST! eve. BOOST! eve was quite an exciting day... I'm pretty durn tired. I can't wait to sleep as late as I want yesterday. I have all my hours in for this week, so I just have to do a recovery ride tomorrow. Gonna calibrate my iBike.

Have a good BOOST! day tomorrow!
Wes

Daily log - 5:38, 42 miles