Byron had to cancel last night on our AM ride. He is incontrovertibly weak and has his priorities wrong, but its crucial to our ongoing jockeying for bragging rights to determine if he flaked or if he simply bailed.

The Facts:

1. he waffled all week, but committed to the ride Thursday night
2. he took an ugly spill on National on Thursday, PRIOR to committing.
3. he sent me 2 emails asking for directions and clarification to the parking area on Friday
4. his cancellation occurred just outside of the 8 hr window for a decent night sleep.
5. he has a longstanding reputation for being wussy about getting up early
6. he is a better technical rider than me, so had at least one huge advantage in his pocket for in-ride heckling.

The Analysis:

1. In for a penny, in for a pound. Once you commit, the door to second-guessing has been opened.

Verdict – flaked

2. He said the fall was no big deal.
   • Point: a spill on The King can have lingering physical, equipmental, and psychological effects only discovered later much like a concussion. One must be respectful of this power.
   • Counter-Point: Byron said the wipeout (which I did not see, but only heard and shit it sounded bad) was a long extended save and really resulting in nothing but broken rhythm.
   • Point: Byron lies to show how tough he is.
   • Counter-Point: Byron is tough

Verdict – push

3. The emails indicated a clear pattern of commitment.
   • Point:One might say they were necessary to the information gathering required for a competent ride decision to be made.
   • Counter-Point:While he might not have known the exact trail head, he darn well knew mostly where he was going and could not claim it was soooo much further than he originally thought.

Verdict – flaked

4. 8 hours is 8 hours.

Verdict – bailed

5. Byron’s prior sleepy-headedness can not be held against him, since he did give fair notice. But we know he is a soft little meatsack about crack’o’dawn. hmm…stupid fair notice trumps all, grrr, stupid fair notice.

Verdict – bailed

6. Cancelling a ride where you can whoop-up on your buddy’s skills is poor strategically, but actually to my benefit. Byron would never miss a chance to acknowledge how he got something that I did not :-).

Verdict – bailed

The Conclusion:

As much as I hate to acknowledge this and not be able to lord it over Byron on subsequent rides and \or siteeations, this was a clean bail.

I was supposed to ride Pass Mtn. today, but some mtbr hookups fell through and then Byron bailed at the last minute.   Karma for this ride was bad so I would do my roadie.   No overhead, to make up for all the planning for naught.

Got up at like 4:15 and puttered around, got rolling at 5:15 and it was just getting light. I hit 39 going down the hill on Power, and then ran into the sweetest blast of cold air coming off the river. for almost 10 minutes until the short climb out of the riverbed it was like winter! the sun framed perfectly behind 4 Peaks, it looked like the AZ license plate. Some point into this 10 minutes of bliss something darted across the road about 100 yards in front of me…hard to say what it was, but it moved like a bobcat. Before I could reflect further on what the critter was, I got smacked in the face by 5 minutes of near-blindness. It was only a question of when i’d be riding into the sun, but the actual event was so much more tangibly unpleasant than the idea of it, it was like a physical blow. it hit me like…like…like staring straight into the sun…orange wave of squint and burn everywhere at once. Eventually the angle improved and I could see again, and noticed a dead skunk in the road that was hit but not run-over…hoped it would stay that way until I returned.

Worked my way up to the B-line, down to Butcher Jones Beach, and then down down back to the river all still in shade! An hour and a half of great weather so far…and the skunk was still intact! Had a good climb up Usery managed to stay above 11 most of the way, and a workmanlike finish to the ride in 2.5 hrs for 44 miles.