what do I do now?

So I've got something on my mind and rather than write about and show pretty pictures from trip to Savannah I decided to just go ahead and discuss my predicament and save the trip details for later. Katie won't mind she's still out in South Africa trying desperately to find a lion to look at.

So anyway if you follow my blog you know that I cracked the old Mamasita broke it down got a new one and put it up for sale. Now before you jump to conclusions I'm not selling the new Mama because I have lost faith in Salsa's ability to build quality frames, no I have had a new frame on order from a different manufacturer before I cracked the old Mama (same material) but lighter, faster and just plain cooler. I refuse to reveal the bike on order until I have it on my hands, yeah I'm afraid I might jinx it.

With the Bays Mountain race coming up this year and the addition of some actual singletrack to the course, FINALLY, I was hoping to do really well and maybe show the roadies who come out how a mountain bike race is really run. With the Karate Monkey being the only mtn bike in my stable right now that may not be the case for me this coming Monday now. Normally if the race were 100% singletrack say at a place like Warrior's Path I wouldn't worry a bit. The Monkey would be unstoppable, the only folks I would worry about would be the truly good mountain bikers not a bunch of roadies on gravel roads. While the Bays Mtn course does have some singletrack thrown in to keep me semi satisfied there are a few sections that are not singlespeed friendly at all. There are a couple of hills in particular that are long, tough and will probably have me off the bike doing a hike a bike. Not really a huge deal because I can almost walk as fast as some folks in their granny gear. What sucks is, I roll a 1x9 on my geared bike and I worked my way up to climbing those hills in the middle ring which would have made me faster up those hills. I can deal with this and probably make that time back up without too much of a loss but there is one stretch of gravel that will cause me great difficulty and that would be the long stretch of semi flat gravel road that takes us to the finish line. I will loose a ton of time there spinning wildly as everyone flies past me in their big chain ring. Even in a full roadie tuck I'll loose serious time and mutiple spots to anyone remotely close to me. The road is long enough that I will stand no chance of catching anyone before the end of the race. Singlespeed class? Hahahaha I wish, the organizers probably still think singlespeeds are a fad if they even know what a singlespeed is.
Earlier this month I had pondered on not registering for the Crazy 8's 8k run that is held 2 days prior in an effort to save my legs for the Bays race. Now that I'm lacking a bike with gears I might as well go ahead and waste some energy on the 8k run since I'll probably just get my a$$ stomped all over Bays Mountain on Monday afternoon.
There is one other option that I am entertaining, a certian 26" wheeled full suspension bike was offered to me as a loaner a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure if it's still available and I'm not sure if I want to take them up on the offer if it is. I haven't ridden something with such small wheels in a long time it will probably feel so awkward I'd be better off racing the Monkey. I've got a week to make my decision so be prepared to hear about it all week unless I think of something else to talk about.