The Coffee Ride

Morning weigh-in: 179#, 14% BF

Last night I hooked up with the crew from the South Mountain Cyclery and Coffee Shop in Emmaus, for their weekly MTB ride up on, um, South Mountain. The ride starts at 6:00, which is kind of tough for me to get to; I was running late but they were too, so I got there "on time." The owner of the shop is Mark B, a guy I raced with back in 1997: he and I were both walk-ons for Scott H & Doug V's "Team Freakin A-" at the 24 Hours of Canaan. I'm not sure if he remembers that, probably does remember me from the more rancorous of the Valley Mountain Biker days. Anyway, he was there, as well as Dave Prior and three younger guys. (Heath & Hans would be starting at 6:30 from another location, and hopefully meeting us in the woods.)

Anyway, the ride started by going up the mountain on a paved road, maybe a mile of climbing to the trailhead; then came a downhill section of trail that didn't look like it got much use, very hard to even see the trail, and finally we were on some sweet, technical singletrack. We stopped for a bit, and saw lights on another trail so we waited, and it turned out to be Heath & Hans. Ride on some more -- fast bunch of guys, but I think I held my own except for the bigger logs (say 12" diameter and bigger, and there were a lot of them), where I really choked. It was funny, these guys were floating over the big logs, but a lot of the things that slowed them down or gave them trouble (rocks, rough surfaces) I didn't think were all that hard. It was probably the Turner that got me through, but I preferred to think of it as "Don is relatively stronger in the rocks."

At one point we stopped again, and again saw other lights in the woods, this time much further away. It looked like three riders, and somehow these guys surmised that it was Jon Gabor with a few friends, so we waited. And waited, and waited... eventually they were within shouting distance, but we never hooked up.

We rode a little more, over into the parts of South Mtn that I recognize (by the power lines), and finally back through town to end at the shop. Excellent ride! I'm going again next week.

Tonight is the gym, then "Hipster Night" at Which Brew, where Dave Cahill is playing. I'll probably run into Heath & Hans there...

Funny insight: I saw T the other day, and we got to talking. I told her I got another new bike, she told me she got another cat. I guess it's really over...