i had this great idea for this post as a photo essay. it didn’t really start out that way. it started out as a ride up National, then i cracked my derailleur hanger, but managed to complete the final hour of the ride due to it all being road and downhill. and it was worth a picture – seeing my hanger cracked halfway through, and my deraileur dangling just barely to the outside of my spokes! It was quite something while i stood at Telegraph Pass at 4:30 and wondered if I could do the 7 or so miles up the road to Buena Vista, down Geronimo, and then the canals and Javalina back to the office. i did have a spare hanger, but the prospect of doing that job on the trail and then going back in near dark was not appealing. so i figured i’d shift carefully, and give it a go. then as the ride went on, several other pretty cool photos expressing this theme appeared before me. but i had no camera, which is ok, cause i had no actual carnage either.

an unlikely combination of circumstances led to my ride today. lately i’ve been wanting to push myself on technical rides. some skills have really been sharpening, and its getting easier and easier to handle harder and harder trails. so why not do more? i was alone today so could hammer, the question was: up National instead of Mormon, or really push myself and go out to Telegraph, which i’ve only done about half a dozen times, and adds roughly an hour of solitude and staircases. Secondly, with the office moving, I feel compelled to take advantage of these mild winter afternoons while i can still ride from work – its not like the mountain is going anywhere, but i shant be this lucky with a work location anytime again soon. the elegance of taking 3 hours off of my workday to ride is an amazing perk. Finally, all the ssl certs on our test hosts expired today!!! not my product, not my responsibility, and impossible to program when you don’t have a working run-time environment! Its like I was forced to take the afternoon off. To Telegraph it would be.

was rolling by 2:30, strong up Mormon and up National clearing the Upper Waterfall lift twice, and at BV by 3:50. The next stretch was fun, i dabbed on a couple things but they keep seeming easier, and i feel like every time i ride this stretch i get more confident in it. I cleared pretty much everything, and then there was one hard turn and rockface up on the Catwalk, easier than much of what i’d hit already, but exposed and near the end of the stretch where in the back of my mind i was saying “you are due to fall.” and thusly i did.

the pads protected me, but i could immediately tell the derailleur was wrong. since i just did this same thing a few months ago, i was able to pretty easily spot the problem, but the bike was ridable. so i up-shifted and just gave up on my 2 or 3 lowest gears, hit the slot, and dropped the last few hundred yards down to the road. Now on flat ground, the more detailed analysis could begin, and immediately the chain shifted off the cassette. in the process, it must have finished what the crash started, because in getting out the chain suck i could see a crack right through the hanger. NICE! and thus i present my photo essay, of non-photos.