Roberta the Brave

After seeing the last customer out of the shop at 6:45pm Thursday, I packed up and headed East. H., friends, horses, and the pups were all waiting for me several hours away just outside Allardt, TN. A trail riding "weekend" was schemed up by the girls and, after many weekends of bike trails, I owed H. some horse time.  So off to Honey Creek Horse Camp I went, late into the wee hours of the night.

Heading out of Franklin around 7pm meant traffic wasn't too bad until Nashville, then once I got past Lebanon it thinned out nicely. Just past Cookeville you hop onto old State Route Highways and back country vistas. The nearly full moon was a friendly companion on the dark and lonely roads. I got into camp just as dinner was being served and relaxed around the campfire before turning in for the night. Friday morning came early and cold. A cold front passed through and brought us overnight temps in the low 40s. Perfect camping weather. 

After a few rounds of swapping saddles, we were finally all loaded up and ready to hit the trail. JD was super stoked to be out exploring. He even picked up a friend whom I called "Klouse" (later we found out his name was "Jake") who ran the entire 6 hour trip with us and was totally obsessed with JD.

Roberta the brave was my steed for the day.

The trails started out along some gravel roads, turned to forest service double track, then turned into rock infested gulleys. I was amazed at how graceful the horses were being on the slick rock ledges surrounded by babyhead rocks. After a few technical and sketchy descents, we paused for a breather underneath a rock overhang reminiscent of those found on the Mountain.

Double Arches.

H. and Ian in the river.

Soon we made our way down to the river. It was a long, steep descent, but the river was well worth the trip. After letting the horses drink and play in the water, we forged across and headed up the old railroad bed for a ways until stopping for a lunch break alongside the river.

Sure-Footed Bertie. You sure she's footed?

The old railroad bed soon crossed the river again, this time deeper, slicker, and faster moving than earlier. Klouse was the last one to cross and for a while there I thought I might have to carry him across. JD, fearing no water, swam across without hesitation. Twice.

After some nice trail that climbed gradually up along the river, we made a right turn and up onto the rest of the Panther Creek loop. As we started up the steep, rocky trail I hollered up to H. "add a few hundred more rocks and this would be Farlow Gap" - speaking of the notorious descent in Pisgah. A half mile later the trail made Farlow look like a paved greenway.

The trail got steeper and very narrow from years of rain water cutting the dirt away and exposing rocks inside a deep rut that was now the trail. As if the trail wasn't steep enough, there were several 3-4' and higher rock shelves the horses had to jump up. Imagine having to bunny hop barriers up a 20% grade, that's pretty much what the horses had to do. It was fun, scary, and treacherous in equal parts. At one point Roberta made a jump up a shelf and landed it off balance. As we teetered while she tried to keep her balance, all I could think was I was about to be crushed into the rocks by a falling 1500 lbs horse. I leaned as far forward in the saddle to help her and just as I leaned down she fired a full burst jump and drove the saddle horn right into my sternum. Oof!

While all that might sound impressive (or stupid), what was impressive was watching Ian's agile explosiveness over and through all the rocks and ledges on that sketchy ascent.  He was completely outside of his element and he took it all in stride without hesitation. It was definitely very cool to witness and I'm also very grateful of Bertie and her sure-footedness. Aside from the one close call, she never made an off step all day, and usually chose the best line option available on her own. She was a great trail partner.

Crockpot Campin'!

Having not ridden a horse for longer than an hour in years, the time in the saddle was getting the better of me. My hips aren't used to bearing weight without the aid of my sit bones (Bertie was rather girth-y) and my back is used to being bent forward for jostles and jolts, not vertical. So the miles and hours were adding up and I was over it. Luckily it wasn't too far back to camp where H. had a delicious crock pot meal waiting for us.

Our horsey home for the weekend. 

Some chill time around the campfire, a little s'more makin', then it was off to bed. I was tired after the long Thursday coupled with the longer than planned trail ride, but mostly because when I say "weekend" I mean "Friday" and I had a longer than normal commute in to work ahead of me in the morning.

 5am

5 came extra early (being future time) and I reluctantly crawled out of bed and made my way back to civilization.

6am

7am

By the time the sun was up, I was nearing Cookeville and planned to stop to get some breakfast at iHop, but I remembered Stanley usually hit Gordonsville early in the morning for breakfast and thought it would be cool to surprise him. So I pressed on. As I rounded the off-ramp I spied his Element in the parking lot and pulled in. As luck would have it, there the Godfather sat, still enjoying breakfast.

The Man From...

The man from 2 dog river. 

Had a fun time reprising my roll as "The Man From Snowy River" yesterday. Amazing how recharging two nights in the mountains can be, even when 5 hours in the saddle depletes you. After a very early morning and a 3 hour commute, I'm back at work and all the hustle-n-bustle big city life entails. Full story later. Thanks for planning the adventure H.

Grating Gits

My so called friends are out in Vegas burning the few bridges I have to industry connections, dropping my name faster than quarters into the slots. Here are a few of the myriad text messages I've received the past few hours, lucky me:

Am I about to be spoiled? They say they hope I ride it better than you do.
- Graham

Staying in a hotel with the Moots crew. I have a MOOTS CR50 road bike reserved tomorrow for the road ride to Lake Mead. Me, Mathew, and Daniel all riding MOOTS road bikes tomorrow. The dirt demo today was amazing riding any bike we want from 9 to 5.
- Cooper

CrossVegas!!!! Dicky and Portal in love....

Well kids, have fun out in Vegas. Bring me back a showgirl and a lock of Bruce Dickman's chin beard. 

Coming 'round

Wagons, HO!  -photo by Marsha Williams

It turns out 33x19 actually wasn't that bad. It felt great for all 3 laps. In fact I could have gone on for more, which means I probably should have pushed it a little bit harder. Meh, Live and learn. I finally felt good racing and felt good racing on the hybrid. I guess you could say we connected. Less braking, better turning, roots still feel like roots, and rocks still feel like rocks, but all in all, it felt good. 33x19 puts the wheel precisely where it twitches up the handling like my 26. #feelslikehome #allyouzealotswereliars

I just need to learn to let more air out of the tires. #stupidtomyself

Strapped and Cogged

The Monkey Bell race is this weekend and I'm considering taking the fitness hybrid out for 3 laps of over-geared self torture. Since I still use the fitness hybrid mainly for commuting and gravel, I haven't messed with stans-ing up the wheels. Too big of a hassle when swapping tires over, so I wanted to make sure I could tote 2 big 29'er spare tubes comfortably on the hybrid.

Since it and it's other wagon wheeled brethren don't have the slick under the wishbone awesome strap spot and anything on the seatpost or saddle rubs my thighs, I had to get creative. The stem is an easy choice, but the new curved downtube on the MX RSL seems designed to perfectly hold a spare. Tucked up tight and out of the way. Another innovative upgrade brought to you unknowingly by the fine folks at MOOTS.

Sunday should be fun. I've decided to run 33x19 for 27 miles of Monkey Bell. It's going to hurt but better to hurt during the race than have to break the chain, add a link, suffer through longer wheelbase handling in the twisties (the 19t stuffs the wheel in as far as possible), only to re-break the chain to get the daily 15t cog to fit again. Yeah, I'm going to take the easy way and pay for it later. Word.

Just Another Homegrown Hump Day

Another amazing piece by Andy of Homegrown.

Rain. Cold. Clouds. Return of stout beers. Must be getting close to cyclocross season. Due to work's hours and a bit of a commute I missed out on the cross practice event the bike lounge put on last night. Though I did manage to get over in time to catch a few friends packing up and have a couple CalfKiller Grassroots Ale and conversation at a local neighborhood pub. I enjoyed wearing wool in the cold, misty night air of the outdoor beer garden. Welcome back fall, if even for a short teaser preview this time around.

Speaking of cross, check out this Homegrown Andy built for a local customer. The gore ride-on brake housing combined with the through the seat tube brake cable routing has these Avid Shorty Ultimates feeling better than most hydraulic brakes. Very smooth. Take notice Moots PsychloX.

After work, I took advantage of the cool temps and remaining daylight (thanks to a liberal pet policy) and rode with JD out on the paved trail along the little Harpeth river next to the office. There's tons of grassy fields to ride/run through and not a lot of pedestrian traffic in the cool, rainy weather. It was a perfect night to ride. Leaves have already fallen were coating the path, officially closing the door on summer. Soon, very soon, caramel season will begin.

Pup loves to run with the bikes. 

Another Perfect Day

I couldn't have picked a better out-dated magazine to take with me on this weekend's adventure if I'd known the contents beforehand. Saturday heading to work I got a call that our friends weren't going to be able to join us for the weekend, leaving our site alone until we were back up early Sunday morning. I was worried about the campground rules, turns out I should have been more worried about campground thieves.

The article above is from Mountain Bike Action, a magazine I don't typically get but while shopping for dinner and breakfast items I took a pass at the magazine isle for some light reading for camp. It was the only mountain bike (or any bicycle) content they had so I grabbed it and moved on. Fast forward to Sunday morning. H. got off her night shift and headed to bring the horses in while I packed up the car. JD, having seen my bike get loaded without him all week, wasn't about to get the snub again and sat vigilant in the back of the car during the cargo loading process.

A little over an hour later we were back at our campsite. Everything looked normal with the exception of the missing ENO hammock. We'd set it up and used it Friday in a perfectly shady and breezy spot overlooking the lake next to out tent. Perhaps the rangers came by and took it down due to the "everything must be on the gravel" rule. It wasn't until I rounded the front of the tent and saw my mallet, jersey, and tent bag outside the tent and the door open that I realized we'd been looted. Sleeping pads, bags, and our ratty camp towels all taken. Along with the hammock. Naturally the neighbors "saw nothing." Even our blue dog tie out was swiped. Seriously?

We talked to the ranger and campground manager but really there wasn't anything to be done. They offered some rental stuff from the store, we thanked them, but opted to make do. We weren't sure we were going to stay anyway, being pretty pissed. A few minutes later while discussing what to do, we decided to not let it ruin the weekend and make the best of it. We set up camp with what we had - two dog beds and a small blanket - and went about unpacking the car. H. and Dish took a nap while JD and I took advantage of the cool, yet sprinkling weather and headed for 15 miles of sweet, sweet singletrack. The tree canopy was protecting the overly dry and dusty trail all too well which at least was some good news. I almost turned around after the first few miles, still fuming about our luck. By the time the rollers started, I was just enjoying being in the woods riding with JD. We stopped and cooled off in the lake before turning around, head cleared and attitudes adjusted.

When we returned, we found H. up and making lunch - southwestern corn soup - and getting ready to play in the water with Dish. Unfortunately, Dish hasn't been doing well and is living on borrowed time. We were a little worried about how he'd do this weekend, but wanted to try to have one last good weekend with the old man. He loves to swim like JD, which is why I made sure we got a site close enough to water that we could carry him down if need be. The cooler weather and the change of scenery must have been good for him because he was getting around well and didn't puke a single time in the tent. He wasn't able to go on the trail rides or the hikes, but he was having a good time playing guard dog again and, I'm happy to report, nothing was stolen while he was on duty.

Later H., JD, and I took a walk around camp. We ambled our way to the little store and I gave H. some money to pick us out an icecream treat. We sat on the picnic table and ate while JD sat forlorn, wishing he'd gotten a treat too.

"Look what I can do"

Later we burned a ream of paper and half a roll of shop towels until we finally were able to make fire (Ivan you were missed) and chilled out around camp. Around 8pm we could hear the jams coming across the lake from the band hired to entertain the campers for the night. Perfect music to relax too and drift off to sleep in the breezy, cool night. (Excluding the bursts of "who's your daddy!" being yelled from the drunkards in the next camp site waking us up every few hours late late into the night)

"Pancakes are just a vessel to get syrup into your mouth" - H.

Up early with the dogs, though it was me waking them up for once. The temps had dropped to the upper 50's overnight and the wind had kicked up. Neither of them really wanting to step outside in the cold. Eventually they came around and we took a short walk along the beach. I love overcast, windy, and cool days on a beach. Mostly because I love wearing fleece jackets in cold weather with wet feet, but also because it reminds me of vacations in Minnesota as a kid.

After our walk we began preparations for breakfast. Planned menu called for pancakes with blackberries, bananas, and maple pecan granola. Only I forgot to get out the granola and the first few pancakes (due to the wind and double burners going) were more pan-wads than pan-cakes. Eventually it all came together (thanks to H.'s coaching) and breakfast was served. It was also enjoyable to be up early making just enough noise to enact a little revenge on the late night howlers. Payback is a bitch and best served up with camp coffee and pancakes.

Waterdog.

So why was the article so fitting? Well, first off it was from April 2011 and still on the newstand as if it were the most recent copy (purchased Saturday 9-3-11), secondly the Mac Attack article describes a day gone awry from the moment he woke up until the moment he got on the trail. Nothing was going right yet he still pressed on despite setback after setback until taking a pb&j break high above the treeline he realized it was really just another perfect day.

That pretty much sums up our weekend perfectly. It was a long Holiday weekend interrupted by work, our friends weren't able to join in the fun, my magazine was 6 months out of date, our campsite was looted, the weather switched from a sunny forecast to a mostly rainy one, and we all had to huddle underneath a small blanket to keep warm overnight, but despite it all, it was an amazing time spent with my family. I wouldn't have changed a thing.

Tuckered out: A Thad's best friend on the drive home.

Hey Kagy: Fall came almost overnight.