Well today was an absolutely beautiful day for a ride. I hit my regular spot...The Woodlot. I was on my Bullit and made my way up the hill pushing and pedaling all the way up. Once I reached the power-lines I heard someone calling my name. It was Cory pedaling up catching me as I paused on at the power-lines. We decided that we would ride together and the route would be Krazy Karpenter, Blood Donor and Giant Killer. As we were deciding on the route, a couple guys game down the road from Cabin Trail.....the road that people normally only go up. I look at Cory puzzled and said, "Where the heck are they going?". Cory then informed me that there is a very secret trail that next to nobody knows about that they likely were just riding. It is nothing special but he told me where it was. I knew there was a trail up there but I did not know that it was actually rideable in fact Cory and the other builders had done some work recently on it to make it a nice natural loamy rip. I plan on riding it some time soon.
Anyways we made our way to the Krazy Karpenter trail head and started down the trail. Lately Cory has been riding his relatively light Giant AC1 with clipless DH pedals. I still ride exclusively on flats and will continue to unless my riding style changes dramatically. I rode all the logs and other woodwork on the trail however Cory just ripped right on by on the dirt trail. Needless to say he was quite a ways in front of me on this trail. I did unfortunately find out that I have a totally pooched rear hub. The pawls in my rear hub were slipping and therefore I was unable the safely pedal up any incline without the risk of the hub skipping so I had to coast down the hill for most of the ride.
We both ripped down Blood Donor and Cory aired the gap nicely on Blood Donor. Without the ability to safely pedal I decided to skip the jumps that require pedaling. On Giant Killer it was fun playing cat and mouse and at the bottom of Giant Killer we decided to part ways. Cory continued down the hill and I made my way over to Snakes and Ladders to do a little trail work and finish my ride.
At Snakes and Ladders I went to work extending a berm after our new jump section. I framed it in and put about 20 buckets of nice gold dirt (half of what is needed). I had been on the hill several hours by this time and I needed to get home so I cleaned up the area I was working in (to be finished the next time I am up there) and pushed up the trail a ways to hit the new section. WOW, the extension to the berm is exactly what was needed and you simply rip the section even faster than before. I rode the rest of Snakes and Ladders with the usual reckless abandon I have had lately and made my way over to Shotgun. Shotgun on the Bullit is an absolute blast, it is like the bike was made specifically for this type of trail and I was just loving it today. At the parking area there were a huge number of vehicles as it was later in the morning and the sun was shining on this glorious Saturday.
