G-Town

I had an epic solo road ride planned for yesterday, but I received a better offer: Georgetown.

Doug Page called me Saturday night to tell me that an ABC ride was happening, and I pretty much drop everything for either an ABC or Georgetown ride. This is both, you say? Hell yes.

It rained Saturday night, so the trail conditions were damn near perfect except for a few mud holes. The traction was just awesome. The new WTB Velociraptor tire I just picked up worked great.

Well, these aren't your classic ABC rides anymore where you ride around for eight hours, take one of Greg's "I know a shortcut" trails, get hopelessly lost, and perhaps bushwhack down a cliff. These new guys rip. No waiting. No bullshit. The old guard—Doug, Greg Edwards and I—were typically bringing up the rear. There were eight of us, and three were on single speeds. One of them wasn't that fast, and he held me up on more than a few climbs. One was pretty strong, but the other one was a freaking animal. He climbed almost everything. Evidently, he took 15th overall at the Shasta Lemurian this year . . . on a single speed. I can't remember his name, but he builds frames for Ventana, so that's what all three single speeders were riding. They are only $400 and look pretty sweet to me.

Isaac Chilton was there too. He's riding a Ventana full suspension, so we enjoyed dicing it out on some downhills. After putting some more miles on the Dean since the last Georgetown ride, I was much faster. I don't think anyone else was as fast as me today. But when I wasn't flying downhill, I just hung hung out in back with Page and Og.

One time when we stopped, Page told everybody that I picked the sweetest lines on the downhills and everybody should try riding behind me. Cool. I guess that's something Steve and I were always good at. We could ride on each other's wheel with the utmost confidence that our partner would pick the right line. When I ride behind other people . . . they seem to just pick a side of the trail and stay there regardless of how shitty the line is. I think we have better "trail vision." If we see a cool line 10 feet away on the other side of the trail, we get over there and make up time. 

Isaac is pretty damn fast too. I saw him in the top three of the expert class all year in the results. He is threatening to get a single speed. My guess is he'll rip on it because he already pushes pretty big gears.

Anyway, about the ride itself. It was even harder than last time. Isaac was kind of leading the ride, and he opted out of the normal Bald Mountain route with all the fire road climbs. He took us on nothing but singletrack, and he included every steep climb he knew. I think he was mostly trying to torture the single speeders, but it was hurting all of us.

It was only 24 miles, but so tight and twisty and rough. It was a ride where you wrestled the bike the whole time, both up and down, and at a high pace. I was wasted afterwards from head to toe.

This morning I am pretty blown from riding four days in a row. I don't believe I have done that since summer vacation.

Later.