How Was Your Mid-Weekend?

In the spirit of 'Christmas in July' I often decide to take my weekend on Wednesday and Thursday, a mid-weekend, if you will. Avoid weekend traffic, beat the mobs at the beach, and find out who your friends really are when you ask around for people to call in ailing for some sick riding. I decided to head for Moncton to spend a day in the Fitworks shop with Get Rheal. I had left my Red Metals with him to tend to some cracked spoke nipples (hehe, I said spoke) that i had managed to crumble in nothingness. He had ordered the spokes (8 of which retail for a day's wage), but was missing a crucial tool, I had to complete the job. The tool consists of a magnet and the tiniest screw I have ever seen. It is only by divine oversight that I still have this bit, because it is smaller than a grain of rice. The idea is to thread the screw into an aluminum nipple (hehe, aluminum) and then slide it around the completely sealed rim with the magnet to where it's needed, a little jiggle (pfffft, little) and voila, right? Wrong! 2 hours and four spokes later... Get Rheal eventually figured it out. It's a good thing these wheels are as tough as the day is long. It is literally the first time I touch them in...jeeez... 2500 kms, a very full season of riding and racing. After that fiasco, it was on to one of my favorite games, 'Find the Creak'. If it wasn't painfully evident that I am a shit wrench before, it is now. I lubed with tears of frustration and never made it to the beach.

What I most likely missed: Surly Beach Beetches

Saturday/Wednesday evening ride was the shits. Some fine trails in the K-not I used to hit on reg were all but unridable due to recent deluged and continued use. On the east coast, especially when you're down low near the ocean level, entire trails will turn into slop after any more than 20mm of rain. No matter how well they are designed to drain or how much exposure to the sun they have, they need quite a bit of time to dry out. This particular trail is very central and easy to access so it gets lots of traffic, evident by the uncountable soon-to-be bone shaking wheel ruts. Maybe, a formula is in order for those who just don't get trail sustainability.

amount of rain (x*r) + amount of use (x*u) = wt/f

Where x = tons, wt/f= Stay off the trails, you dick! For all the fun you'll have pushing your bike through the slop, so you can add years to your drivetrain and gum your cable up really good with bog filth, you may have an instant of real thrill when you almost slam your thick head into a tree on some treacherous, snot-slick descent. All this fun and the only cost is leaving the trail destroyed for anybody patiently waiting to ride lovely, flowing ribbons of happiness through the woods. Suck it up and ride the local double track à la early 90's. You can't hurt that stuff.

There's always hitting the high ground, too. Hillsborough was bone dry and we hit it hard on Saturday/Thursday. SteveC, Peanut, Bud and I ran into the SEMBC boys and set the bar for slaying radtarded dirt dragons (ie rode our bikes). I swear we were having so much fun there was a rainbow jet stream shooting out my butt. I got to try SteveC's Karate Monkey and it was dialed (later on I took his 1X9 Crosscheck for a dance!) We got some guitar wizardry (Was that an arpeggio?!) to wash down our beer from my man Danny Roy and The Dirty Rigs.

I had my camera the whole time and never snapped a single picture. You'll have to look at some of your own pictures of cool trips while your manservant reads this to you. Or, you could close your eyes and imagine bobbing for laughing fits in a bucket of kick ass. I had awesome smeared all over my face. Imagine myself looking a lot like Horny, here.

Horny is to fishing what I am to biking.

Thanks to all who made it happen.

But, now my mid-weekend is over and it's back to the old grind. I got a bad case of the Mon... jumpin' Jehoshaphat, it's the weekend. Woooohooo! I'm so excited I could pants a stranger.