a singlespeed ass kicking

With spring like temps in the forecast this weekend there was only one thing I could do, plan a road trip to the mountains of NC for some serious mountain biking. A few of us decided to head over to Wilkesboro NC to ride some new trails built by the BMCC and scope out the race course for the 6 Hours of Warriors Creek. I didn't sleep very well Friday night, I was like a kid waiting for Santa to leave leave his booty. I think I woke up every hour on the hour looking at my alarm clock to see if it was time to get up and hit the road.
When 6:30 did finally roll around I hit the ground running and still managed to show up at the rendezvous point 15 mins. late. We rolled into the nature center parking lot about 10:30ish near the Kerr Scott Dam with plans to ride the Over Mtn Victory trail all the way to Warriors Creek campground. Looking at the map the OVT trail looked as if it should link everything up but they failed to mention that you had to ride several miles down Hwy. 268 in order to connect it. After riding 8 miles to another campground (Bandits Roost) we realized that we could not connect the two and rather than ride the 6+ miles of pavement on knobbies we opted to head back and hit the Dark Mtn trails. All was not lost we did get to ride a new section that branched off the OVT trail called Shiner's Run which was pretty sweet.

Normally the OVT trail is a blazing fast singletrack with berms and roller coaster dips and turns but with the recent snowfall this past week there were several sections that had yet to fully dry out which led to a lot of Dukes of Hazard style of riding. Sliding sideways around corners and plenty of yeehaws to go around.
I decided this weekend was a good time to unleash the Karate Monkey and get back into singlespeed riding condition. Although Dark Mtn is a rather smooth set of trails all the mud and high mileage took it's toll on this honky. I was pretty sore near the end of the ride and I ended up resorting to the Mamasita for a little derailleur relief. By then the damage was done, even climbing in granny gear hurt but I don't think I was alone, everyone seemed to be feeling a little weary. It's amazing how much energy a little mud can zap out of you.
Alan and I had the dueling Hero cams rolling but as usual something screwed up and I somehow accidentally changed the settings on my camera to snap a picture instead of shooting video during part of the day. Not all was lost I still have way more footage than I can ever share but I was playing around with some cool mounting positions and the reverse fork mount didn't pan out. The front fork mount did and proved to be some of the best footage I got Saturday, I don't understand how the little camera cam stay so steady mounted to a steel fork but it did, just inches from a spinning wheel full of deadly spokes just waiting to chop my little Hero into tiny pieces.

OVT trail, fork view from Greg Carr on Vimeo.

My video via the front fork.

North Wilkesboro NC 2-7-09 from Alan Sparks on Vimeo.

Alan's video via the seat stay.