sick day

Wow what a week, a good week it was. A week full of riding and every destination was different. While most of them were in my hillbilly neighborhood, half of them were new to me rides and that's what matters.

I'll skip all the stuff that's local and get right to the good stuff. Probably not new to most who read this blog but the land of Pisgah singletrack is something I've not really ever ventured into. I've ridden Pisgah in some form or another a few times over the years but not the cool back country stuff I've been reading about.

I'd gotten an email from a buddy of mine who conned a couple of other to burn a sick day in favor of riding but no destination had been determined. I suggested hitting Pisgah and over the next couple of days a plan came together.

We all piled into a friend of mines Honda Element stacked way too much gear and bikes in along with us and tried to hang on while he practiced at driving like a NASCAR driver who has nothing to lose.

Of course we got lost, rode trails we weren't supposed to to find our way back, crashed a couple of times, got wet and looked at the map waaay too many times. It had rained the day before and as we we climbing some slick rooty singletrack I began to wonder if we had made the right decision in riding here. That thought didn't last too long as the sun fianlly peaked out and everything dried up nicely. The climbing yesterday was awful mostly because my legs felt like they had bricks strapped to them and I suffered all day but the downhills were well worth it. I had so much fun I'm already trying to figure out when I can go back again. There is so much to explore it's going to drive me crazy.

The only thing that sucked about the whole day is that I forgot my wallet. I hate being a bum but I had no other choice. My breakfast, lunch and beer were all paid for thanks to my friends. Wait a minute, that didn't suck.

I did take along the GoPro and shot some video but after viewing some of it today I found that a portion of it was ruined thanks to a Camelbak strap flapping in front of the lens on one of the nastiest descents we did yesterday. Don't worry there is still plenty of footage to make a short video but it's still disappointing none the less. That makes three rides worth of footage I have saved on my hard drive waiting to be edited into a video, I'm really slacking.

Since I did alot of taking this week and really all summer I decided to take the day off today and give a little back. The dogs were in serious need of some exercise so I killed two birds with one stone and took them along with me for a little bench cutting on the Chestnut trail at Bays Mountain. It felt good to get out and do some trail work, I wanted to stay all day and start working on the new section but I had some chores to do at home. It was an excellent day to be out in the woods working on the trail, not too hot and there were no bugs buzzing my face.