First, how to be the bozo in just a few easy steps, as demonstrated by me on Saturday. First, do the 10am ride without having ridden on actual pavement with more than 3 other people since Lost River. Have no awareness of rhythms or anything. Occasionally ride off front for no apparent reason (related to next). Have no awareness of how many hammers are joining onto the ride, which is directly related to everyone keeping their power more than dry while I pedaled blissfully unaware up front. See Nick go. Go Nick Go! Go with Nick. Think, "if it's just Nick, he'll either mellow out or leave everyone in his dust and this will be over soon." See Nate and Tim pull through and think "hmm, where did those guys come from? so much for the afterglow, this one's going to suck the whole way in." Be going some few thousand miles an hour into the bottom of the roller before Travilah, and COMPLETELY chatch a front shift (50x11 to 34x11 is ill advised in extremis), throw chain, pedal chain back on to 50x11, lose momentum, watch group blow past, chase like a bastage, make pretty well near no headway towards getting back on, do the ride of shame the whole way back in.
Sunday was time for the secret stash mountain bike ride. It was fun.
Today's plan had been to do some work clearing some downed trees on the secret stash, which necessitated an early morning trip to the hardware store for a hatchet. Also on the docket was spoke inventory management, which meant The Container Store. Since the hardware store, which is below The Container Store, opens earlier, that was the first stop. Lesson #1 of the day: when you walk into The Container Store at 9:01 with a hatchet in your hand, you get some funny looks. Lesson #2, when your needs for cardboard tubes vastly (and I mean VASTLY) exceeds the inventory at The Container Store, you've probably got a halfway legit wheelbuilding operating underway.
In any case, while wielding axes in retail establishments, I got a text to join a Fountainhead ride. Short time later, at Fountainhead. HOLY CRAP have they hooked that place up. Before, it was good. Now, it is some orders of magnitude better. The initial drop-in off the parking lot is all big, bermed, swoopy turns where even the world's biggest sally (that'd be me) can leave the brakes at home and just RAIL it. Holy manoli. It seriously should not even be legal to have that much fun. I've done a lot of not necessarily legal stuff in the pursuit of fun, none of which was anywhere near as fun as this. The CRAZY.
Turns out, MORE (www.more-mtb.org) and Fairfax County parks have been saving their pennies for a while on this thing and IMBA did a design which some trailbuilding contractor is implementing. Talk about a fun project to manage. Good LAWD. Yeah, so, I'll be spending like every possible minute there.
Vis a vis the re-explosion of mountain biking, I'm a bit like the timekeeper who says "it'll be 12 o'clock before too long." Wait around long enough, everything that's happened will happen again and most things that haven't happened are going to happen too. But based on three conversations I've had with people, if they sold stock in mountain biking, I'd be long right now. And in a weird small way they do, and I'm long.
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