Smashing Success Stories

<===It holds three bikes, gear, and all with room to spare!

Well, this summer has been a pretty successful one so far. The riding has been coming along, and as my good friend MG was telling me, I have made some big steps up recently. I have surprised myself, actually, and I am pleased with certain shows of better fitness and riding skill that pops out now and again.


However; that has also come at the expense of my body. I can't remember when I had so many bang up wrecks. Maybe back in my XC racing days of '95 and '96 when I was breaking bike parts and bikes like twigs, but never really banging myself up like this year.



<===Still tweaking the set up here.....

I first had that nasty cable run in, then out in Nebraska, I went over on my side and tweaked out my back and neck. Then about three weeks ago I smacked dirt again out at Cedar Bend with my saddle karate chopping the back of my right leg and knee. I still have deep purple bruise marks from that one!

Well, courtesy of a poor initial suspension set up, I wango-tangoed my right forearm just below the wrist today. You see, I was catapulted by some extreme rebound off course and stopped dead by my arm as it smashed against a ten inch diameter sapling. The result was a bruise and some torn skin that feels like I burned myself on an oven. Nice! Another purple bruise on my Caspar the Ghost colored body. Great!



<===The "hard tail with privileges" felt super fast out there today.

I am pretty sure I had more bang ups that I am forgetting. Like the splits I did at Murphy Hanrahan that resulted in some knee road rash. I think I bunged up my shoulder in there somewhere too. Crazy stuff!

But like they used to say, if you are not crashing, you are not pushing the limits of fitness and skill.

I figure I am pushing back at those limits pretty hard this year, by the looks of things in the mirror!


<====Project HiFi declared a success!

Well, anyway, I am hoping to maintain my recent gains and to that end I rode pretty hard today. Three hours and I felt pretty good with the exception of that one biff, which came within the first ten minutes of my riding, of course!

The Camp is a place of Jekyl and Hyde type riding conditions these days. The North side is still being logged and of course, is weedy beyond belief. More trees have blown over as well. Lots of work will need to be done at some point to get things back rideable in many places there.

The South side is quite the opposite though. It has been preened for this weekends race, of course, so it is unbelievably fast and wide open. I have never ridden so fast there and it was almost as if the place was a different trail with the speeds you could carry. The corners have an abundance of this super fine sand in them in many places making the turns really sketchy. I am betting that the lower classes will make this into a fine, flour like pile that will make certain corners treacherous at high speeds. I was drifting and breaking loose in spots today and it was still hard packed!

At any rate, my plan is to be there, not to race, but to help out Captain Bob, who has a dire need of volunteers for this gig on Sunday. He had the race directorship dumped on him due to an illness at the last second, and will be really scrambling to get things done. If you are in the area, consider volunteering to help out. Just hit me with an e-mail and I'll put you in touch with him.