It was good day to ride as the Temps were cool.  Unfortunately there was a chance of rain for the day, but I wasn't concerned as I had been wet before...  So  Dave and I meet Ron at his place as we had planned to carpool over to Stove Prairie. 

We arrive there to find some folks already there.  These are some guyz that had done the ride last time and remembered the pace and decided to get there a bit early and get a head start on the group.  Funny how pain and suffering stick in the mind... 

We make ready our steeds and wait for the others to arrive.  Soon,  Gale, Scott, Todd, Mike, Bob, Doug, Carl are all there.  I think there were 10 of us + 3 and I don't think I got all the names, so if anyone cares they can send me the names so that all can be counted for. Dave  posted some pics somewhere and when I find the link again I will post it.

Todd has unveiled his spank new 29'r carbon fiber HT bike.  He graciously let me take a spin on it and  Man o Man is that thing sweet.  Wish I had more $$ and more room in my stable cause a 29'r something or other is high on my wish list. 

Finally we are ready to roll and off we go after a few photos.   I am pleased that the pace is civil and that the whole group is actually riding together for the warm-up phase.  I am feeling pretty good despite a few hard rides last week and my goals are simply to have fun and to clean all of the climbs. With that in mind, my choice of bike was the 575 which pretty much insures a good time.   This of course meant no HR monitor so as not to have me focus on any of the training stuff.

Life is good and the group does start to get a bit separated with Scott, Todd, Ron and Bob I think up ahead a few yards.  The rest of us are taking it easy, well as easy as possible when climbing.   It's been a good year for the group as many have had successes with there events.  This always helps make the ride more pleasant as no one has anything to prove.  Not saying that folks didn't get frisky at times and I am not saying I don't like that sort of thing on occasion.... but I digress  

Somewhere on the way out Carl got a flat and Mike stayed with him. The group waited at the top of the Big climb and we all regrouped.   Yes I did manage to clean all of the hills to this point and I was already having fun, so my goals for the ride have been meet.   Now it was time to enjoy some descents, but I was still a bit tentative.   My tire pressures were a bit higher that usually and  I could feel the bike sliding around underneath me.  This was probably a good thing, since I can still feel that crack rib and I would rather not do anything foolish and injure my self again....  .

We make it Pingree park and its time to decide what to do.  I suggested White Pine and surprisingly the group decided that they would have a go at it.   I had forgotten how long the climb was just to get to white pine and I decided to take it really easy and hang back with Doug.   Doug hadn't been riding as much, but he had done a couple of 100 mile Offload events in past years.  I was happy to take it easier since, the Big climb was coming!

My bike started making some weird noises when coasting and descending fast somewhere on this ride.  It became really pronounces on that road to the ranger station.  Turns out as Dave suggested that my freehub needed to be lubed.    This was why my chain kept coming off!  This also meant I   could not shred the descents, since besides the hideous noise, I didn't want the chain to get wrapped around in some weird way and toss me to the ground.  Bummer, cause all that hard work could not be fully enjoyed. .
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When I arrive at the ranger station the group was looking at the weather and trying to decide if they want to hurry back due to the look of the sky.     The sky didn't look that bad to me but others read things differently.   Gale decided that she didn't want to risk getting wet, and by the tone of her statement, I could tell there was no way she was going to change her mind.    At that point the group split with only Dave, Ron, Mike and myself going up White pine.    Dave was up the trail anyway and so we needed to go after him anyway so our path was already 
chosen. 

The climb was brutal was usual but I was feeling OK.  Ron was climbing really well and Mike and I were holding our own.   Ron made it the furthest with out making a dab, and I was next a distant next.    I did a lot more pushing on this one than I had in the past, but that was to be expected since last time I did this one I was in Leadville shape.

Time to make the descent and the single trak is sweet.  This is by far my favorite part of the ride and well worth any suffering that had been endured so far.   I was still a bit tentative on stuff but I was able to ride 98% of it.  Ron descending really well here too.  Ron still has the Moab 24 hour race, so he needs to stay sharp and ride hard, but also be safe, and given what he was riding, seems to have an increased comfort level for some of this techy stuff.

The rocky stuff was tons of fun for me, mostly due to the 575's  geometry that takes away that "Over the Bar" feeling that my Trek YSL's geometry produced.    There's just enough challenge here to get the excitement of technical riding without the fear of serious injury.  Hmm or maybe I just have a false sense of security about this. In any case the trail opens up in to some cool double trak descents, which I couldn't enjoy due to my freehub issues.

At last we are back on Old Flowers road and we are not too far from the cars and there is no rain in sight.  Once again on the faster sections I was relegated to the back due to the freehub problems.  My chain kept coming off due to this also and really had been all day and this was getting annoying.    Hmm Wonder if I had tools to fix this on the trail?  Guess I will find out when I get around to fixing this. 

Anyway I spend most of my time lagging the group until we made it back to the cars.   A good time was had by all, too bad the whole posse didn't come with us.

Another Saturday night and I wasn't sure what I was going to do on Sunday.  I was thinking about doing a RR when I checked my email 10:00 PM and saw that Kent was doing a MTB ride with some friends and invited me along.  Well this was just the ticked, cause I was a bit tired and the thought of getting punished on the group ride wasn't all that exciting..

So, hmm,  oh yeah I need to rebuild the rear hub of the bike before I go out since last ride it was making all kinds of noises.   I Google for the instructions and find a nice video which detailed the whole thing!  Nice and in 1/2 hour or so I was good to go for the morning jaunt.

I arrive a bit early at Soderburg and rode a bit of the trail with this guy I met on a 29'r and a T-shirt.  He was really fast so I only did 1/4 mike with him before I turned around to go back to the parkling lot.  There I met Rory who was also waiting for Kent and Dave to arrive.

Soon we are off and running and heading up the  fire road!  Dave was flying and Kent was ahead of me and I didn't have the legs or the motivation to ride that hard that early. Rory was behind me so I knew I could ride my own pace and not feel like the group was waiting for me too much.    We went up and turned onto the Stout Trail.  This was good clean fun.   I haven't done this trail before of at least I didn't remember it.   It was pretty sweet with lots of  technical stuff.  

Kent and Dave were cleaning a lot of the stuff and made so much of it look easy.  Rory and I were able to clean some of it but I wasn't a comfortable on some of the sections.

Some where on the way up Dave snapped his chain and we spent some time fixing that.   We road some more and stopped a few times to do some do-overs.  I like this kind of riding because it gives me a chance to practice some stuff instead of going on, cause "I or the group is training" which most time doesn't fit with the plan

Finally we make it to the  Whathum (sp?) trail and this is a lot of fun to try and climb.  Lots of technical stuff that the 4:50 boys do in the dark with no problem but I needed a bunch of do-overs for some of it and didn't clean a couple of things after much trying.   

I wasn't long until Dave snapped his chain again.  This time it was the SRAM master link again but we coudln't find the whole thing or maybe Dave just chose to use the chain break tool and be done with it.   I don't know what the deal is with these links.   This was the same problem I had at Leadville a while ago when one of them came apart on me too.

We are riding again and life is good until Rory snaps a spoke on the rear of his bike.  He's got one of those paired spoke wheels and it was seriously compromised!  Oh well Game over and . we  decide to head back to the cars. Dave and Rory went one direction and Kent and I went the other.  The plan was to get the Cars and go fetch Rory.  

On the way down we come to the fire road but the single trak is just too tempting so we decide to do that one which will take a bit more time.  

When we get back to the cars,  Rory and Dave are waiting there for us.  Turns out that it wasn't too bad to ride the bike down and they made some good time. 

Time to call it a day for Kent, Dave and Rory, but I wanted to go over to the Pump track and do some playing.  After about a 1/4 mile of riding I see I have a leak in the tire so I decide to call it a day also and head back to the truck. 

Not sure how many miles we did but it was fun!