I love that post name! I wish I came up with it. All I did was pimp Ray’s big ride and suck in 2 (ex)friends. It was, yeah i think, the worst.ride.evah. John’s writeup is closure, cause my memories are a shattered blur. Check out his post its awesome.
At least i got one pic of John, I don’t know how he found the bandwidth to photo so much. I blew everything moving forward, quivering in my Pain Cave, holding off a meltdown.
This began as an awesome idea! My house up 98th St. Wash through Pinnacle Peak -> Brown’s Ranch -> Pima&Dynamite->Tonto NF->7 Springs Rec Area->Spur Cross->Maricopa Trail->Cave Creek Rec Area->Reach 11->Home. Big NoPho loop. 78miles.
It was going great at 4 hrs. From here, I turn the story over to John. I lost linearity 2 hours into the sufferfest. I thought i could handle 2 more hours without flinching, i knew way too soon this was turning into a Death March, and the Doomsday Clock in my head started ticking. Then I twisted my knee rolling it the wrong sideways on a softball. Some new tear or scar tissue abraided, and inside my knee i felt arthritis weeping.
We rode .4 mile loose and disappearing downhill to a cattle tank, and while Gordon changed his flat I thanked myself for topping off sealant the night before. I took the time to exercise a theory, howl at our siteeation, and smoke a lot of pot: letting your in-betweens breathe while you stretched would invigorate both hygienically and psychologically. And it did, til Gordon took so long fixing his bike I got sunburn on my junk. Has this ever happened on an mtb ride? Denial, exemplified. Here is where i got scared in earnest.
Some stuff happened, i was in my Pain Cave, see John’s Post. There was another ~hour of HAB, rolling down the wash was intoxicating, we gave up on the trail. Every catclaw we neared became 3x its size. Gordon and John both kinda thought we could get down the 20 foot cliff, and in that moment i spotted their mushy-minds and marched us back up the wash, up a stoopid cactus-riddled pitch, through more catclaw. I almost lost it and tumbled back down the slope. I found us the trail. I hid back in my Pain Cave for another 2 hrs while someone else took a pull in front.
nonetheless, this guy was very cool!
There were many times i wanted to freak out. I am so glad the other guys kept their shit together too, and nothing else went wrong, we 3 all being relatively seasoned enough to have food, and water, and gear. And pot and vicodin, i gulped it when we reached a long-overdue trail marker stating just 2 more hrs of this bullshit to go. 12.5 moving time is a new PR. This hurt everything, chain ring punctures and pedal bites on my legs, gauges and bruises and needles that took 2 days to fully discover where they have no business being on a bike ride, *soreness*.