31 July 2009 - 3:35Thursday Night EPIC Rides

Thankfully, the rain has taken a break for now.

Thursday night is our standard shop ride, which has been thwarted over the last several weeks with torrential downpours, that always seem to start around 4pm. This time, it rained from 4 pm Wednesday until 7 am Thursday, and it rained hard, so we knew the trails were going to be mucky.

Well, I had this all figured out, and instead of doing the typical “Perry Hill” group ride, we’d do something a little different. I thought that this time, since I am on the rehab train, and also training for a couple of big rides in September, that we’d maybe open the bag of tricks a bit. I chose Honey Hollow as our ride. It is an evil stepped and very steep in spots climb, followed with some crashing though the underbrush and muddy singletrack, followed by a wicked fast double track descent.

Did I also happen to mention that the Honey Hollow road is a 7.5 mile ride from the shop? And that we’d be riding there?

Once DA found out that we were not playing local, he charged off to set the breakneck pace we’d try to keep for the rest of the ride. He had hockey at 8:30, and we had gotten a late start at 6:20. This was going to be tough. We were a fivesome, and Davey was way out in front. It took me a while, but I managed to reel him in after an extended sprint in 44-11. The Jet was flying tonight!

We reached the road pretty quickly, and I decided that I would check out and climb slowly.

There are some spectacular views in this state, and you have to know where to find them, and I would say that this is one of the good ones.

Looking north across the backbone of Vermont that is the Green Mountains.

When we finally got off the road, there was some adventure! One of our group (a customer and new guy to the Thursday scene) had an unfortunate incident involving his rear derailleur which pretty much rendered it useless. Right at the top. Bad timing. He managed to single speed it up, and limped back down to the main road, having worked so hard, only to be denied the “rewards” on the other side of the climb. I told him I’d pick him up on the other side, as it would be a terrible, long bike ride all the way back to the shop.

I say “rewards” with the slightest hint of sarcasm. There was a lot of pushing the bike through an overgrown meadow, some orienteering but a lot of chuckling between Aaron and myself. This was old school riding at its very best.

About halfway down, DA decided to get a flat, which was a good time to polish those trailside maintenance skills. Davey was getting anxious, as we were drawing close to hockey time. We ended up having to tube his rear wheel, and finished the descent back to the main road without further incident.

Then, the return to Waterbury, which was at a blistering pace. I think I was in the big ring almost the whole time. we had to get DA to hockey, and the wounded back to his car. We reached the shop at 8:15, I hopped in the car and met our new friend (who M2 hung with as we raced back) out on the road. Everyone got home safely, and no animals were harmed during the ride.

I’m not sure, but I think I heard Aaron accusing me of tearing his legs off on the flats on the way back in…

There is some other really cool stuff that happened today, that I can’t talk about for a little bit. Something arrived. It is not the same stuff that is arriving tomorrow, which I will be able to talk about, but believe me, you will definitely want to know about this stuff too.

And how!