every biker wants something new. new trail, new route, new trial, new jump, new time of day, new tires. the freshness makes any ride good, blowing into your ride vibe and post ride vibe a mental mint to go with the physical thrill. The cool charge is the only thing left of the ride to float to the top of my brain after a few days and a few more rides and the hum of the wheels and the seasickness in my legs if i’m not spinning.

i almost killed James last weekend, otherwise the ride kicked ass! My first southern double, Sunrise to Bell.   my strongest climb ever up Sunrise, dabbing only twice.   The backside has supposedly been sanitized but with the heat driving away the hikers it seemed more ragged then ever, with drops punctuating the dust on crust.   James started to fatigue, ending in heat exhaustion. Why? neither of us knew.   just a bad day, but a tidy 3.5 hours of climbing and committing to the long way home.

to start our ride we took Westworld up Taliesen, adding pieces to the route for:

The Fast and the Spurious

this little project has been coming together for a couple weeks.   the night before, Kila and i followed a line from Google Earth onto an unmaintained City of Scottsdale path, and dropped into the Gateway area. i’ve heretofore ridden exactly 1 way through here and that’s to Windgate…the rest has been some miserable grouping of dull-ass trails in the way of the real challenge. The only one i know is Levee – cause its an ugly straight scratch covered in rocks that is the most convenient and hapless waste of gravity leading right back to my new microminiMcMansion     i’ve gotten lost several times in this miserable grouping of dull-ass trails, since its all whitenoise and looks the same.   But tonight i committed it to memory.

Little good it did me a week later when i launched out to put together the top part of the F&S figure-8 loop.   I got the blue stretch on the bottom a few days earlier on the way home from work.   Even on the CX bike it was much easier than this segment,which looked at night nothing like it did on the map.   I went up, I went down, forward and back, tracked and consulted and studied,   i crossed and recrossed under Thompson Peak Parkway, getting only the top part of the top loop but memorizing every spur in the process.   Alana could have done my GPS track.

its not hard to get lost without really being lost, and sometimes being found is just one tiny point that re-establishes the pattern, 1 turn at the bottom of a downhill you flew by the first time. my last ride on National was hot and sloshy and sloppy, but on the ride home i boosted a rock over a wheel grabber that has nagged me since i first rode National 10 years ago – it points the wrong way about 2.5 feet from another one that points the wrong way, next to a sandy wash with a boulder on its other side, a bit below the Waterfall.   I first saw this jump done by my friend Landon 2 yrs ago, and thought about it every time since, until i finally just committed, and it washed away every other failure on the ride, and on the subsequent rides, and maybe the rides before it. Clicking in rhythm to the sound of my rear hub. It was The Get, the one to hang your hat on, the New that makes it all electric and alive and in love again.