Scat was still in recovery, and Root went home to break his FX, so Ckucke and I went up to do a ronery St. Louis descent. We got to the top a little late because there was something up with the front hub of Ckucke’s new white Azonic wheelset. The axle end caps were dragging against the cartridge bearing covers at the labyrinth seals, galling the unanodized aluminum – shades of my Cane Creek headset! I tried cleaning it up and filing one cap down, but tightening the axle to the correct preload bound the hub. We quickly swapped out to his old front wheel in order to make it up the hill at a reasonable time. We scored the choice parking spot, and we geared up and headed into the park. There was a tall woman getting her white Santa Cruz ready to ride, and some dude in a white pickup who was shadowing us as we rode through the trees off the park entrance, then turned around and went back out of the park.
While Ckucke was putting on his shinguards, the woman rode up and asked us about the trails. We gave her a brief rundown of the upper mainline and the inner loop back to the park entrance, but basically told her that as long as she didn’t go right, she would remain on the plateau on top nad not drop down to Dole. We took off down the hill, expecting to see her some time when we were sessioning the jumps. The roots went smoothly – I’m starting to get the line back down. Around halfway down, there was some older man in the bushes giggling and encouraging us to speed. That threw me off a little, so when I hit the first right kicker, I landed a bit off near the rock and went sliding left into the bushes. I mostly landed on my left side and ass, so nothing was hurt. I could hear the branches of the little strawberry guavas snapping as my bulk smashed a landing patch in the undergrowth. It’s okay – those are an invasive species anyway! I quickly got back up and hit the hip kicker and dropped down to the main jump garden.
After that first run, I paused to take pictures of Ckucke hitting the jumps. The Santa Cruz woman came down the trail and introduced herself as Joanna. After she went off down the mainline, I went up to get another run. As I completed my run, I saw Kevyn coming up the trail with his Specialized Demo 6 and his two doggies. The sun was already descending behind Roundtop, so Ckucke and I bid a hasty retreat to the mountain, dropping the Taco jumps, rejoining mainline and running all the way down to the end of the finger and dropping to the concrete road via the somewhat steep rock waterfall run. The lower trail went quickly. I fell way behind at the waterbar, but caught back up before the right turn to the last pitch to the street.
Scat was having a major fit of cabin fever, so he met us at Ckucke’s and we went down to Tenkaippin for dinner. Afterwards, we headed out to Root’s to harass him as he worked on his car.
One day later, my left foot hurts from the crash.
There are a few pictures here. Hey – I was too busy riding to take a lot pf pictures!
D = 6.87 km (4.27-miles); Vavr = 15.3 km/h (9.5 mph); Vmax = 43.3 km/h (26.9 mph), 40.4 km/h (25.1 mph) on trail; T = 27-minutes
0 Responses to “Quick Drop”