The day starts out great, but just 30 minutes into the ride Zane has a flat, luckily Chuck had an extra tube and the flat was fixed in no time and we started back on our way.
We were flying through the single track without incident, until…. Going down a long decent where there were some rocks and roots we were dropping off of, I suddenly feel my front shock bottom out, then I feel my tire getting squirrelly. I yelled to chuck who was ahead of me, “I think I have a problem with my tire”, just as I said it, we hit a tight switchback, still descending at a fast pace and my bike goes left while my body flies over the handlebars to the right. Good thing Patrick was right behind me, camera ready.
So since my tires are tubeless we tried to figure out how I broke the seal on the rim. Chuck said it was from having crappy thin walled tires, but I think it was a series of fast hard drops. We tried putting air in the tire and spinning it to get it to seal, but the Stans just kept bubbling out, good thing for me I had a tube and with a little help from the guys, it was fixed quickly, so quick that I still hadn’t realized how hard I hit the ground, but once back on the bike I could feel the affects of the crash. Of course that didn’t matter, I planned to ride no matter what hurt.
Off we went and soon we were back to the big hill that gets us out of the woods and back onto Hamburg trail. We made it up the hill and Mike and Zane had to get home, so they headed back to the mound, while Chuck, Patrick, and I headed for Klondike. On the way to Klondike we found some pretty interesting stuff. First we found a beer mug on the side of the trail. Chuck stuffed the beer mug in his pack and said “This trail mug will be great for after ride carbohydrate recovery beverages”. The ultimate in recycling.
Just past the beer mug we came upon a pair of boxer shorts, we are thinking there was a party of sorts out here the previous night. We always like to leave the trails cleaner than we found them, but this was asking too much. No one was going to touch these.
When we made it to Klondike we stopped just before the massive hill going into the park, there we all pulled out our Honey Stinger Rocket Chocolate bars and ate them, then we headed up the hill. When we hit the road we saw one of the French cars, you know, like the one in the cars movie who owned the tire shop. I think I could have beat that car in a race, it certainly didn’t look fast.
We hopped on the Hogsback loop and rode the tough technical single track, over the roots and along the rock ledge, then down to the tight hairpin turns, where there was a sign warning us to proceed with caution.
The sign was on the uphill side of the tough single track, it would have been nice if they would have warned us from the other side. No worries though, Patrick, who always crashes made it through without a scratch. We made it out of the single track and back onto the Katy trail. We rode the miles of slight uphill to Hamburg trail where the uphill becomes steep and long. Of course we couldn’t take it easy because Chuck saw someone in front of us, and couldn’t stop himself from trying to catch the guy.
So Patrick brought his adventure cam and took most of these great shots, so that we could record this day in history. It was of course, the first time my Top Fuel had been wrecked or had a flat tire. By the way, I’m going to put different tires on my ride before we attempt an 8 hour Berryman Epic in a couple weeks.
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