21 and Loving It

Two of us broke the rule yesterday and lived to talk about it, so I expect we'll be breaking the rule again in the near future.  You know, the rule to never EVER fiddle with your bike the day before a race or big ride?

Let's start with the ride.  It was the 5th Annual Fair Hill Mountain Bike Jamboree.  A few hundred local mountain bikers turned out in spectacular fall weather for guided rides, food, beer, bike schwag, games, and to enjoy the generally awesome mountain bike mojo.  Weather was crisp 40° with brilliant sunshine when the "B" rides started at 9:00am.  Shorts weather!

We hit a few new trails and some of the old favorites.  It was impressive to see our group of 25 winding through woods (I can only imagine how awesome it would have been at night) and an opportunity to size myself up with the "B" riders (there were "A", "B", "C", and beginner groups).  In the end I think I would have done better bringing up the rear in one of the "A" groups, but we saw plenty of awesome singletrack and some fast flowing downhills that had us grinning ear to ear.  Unfortunately we lost our sweeper 10 minutes into the ride and our guide bonked about an hour later, so the 2nd half of the ride slowed down until we finally bid farewell to our guide and finished the ride ourselves.

Post ride festivities started with a bowl of hot home-made mac & cheese and a nice greasy bubba-burger.  We washed it down with a Dogfish Head and hung around hoping for the games to start (in particular the Huffy Toss) but by 1:00pm the siren call of the shower, couch, and Eagles game was too much so we threw in the towel.

The ride home was spectacular with that Dogfish seeping into deeply fatigued legs, a 12" turkey hoagie to keep the burger and pasta company in my belly, music playing in the warm car, and the spectacular horse country rolling by outside.  Frankly I would have happily driven all day long, but there was that couch thing...

Sign me up for next year.

"Hitch your bicycle to a star. Or a roof rack on a car"
     - unknown

P.S.  Oh yeah, the rule breakers:

• Doble moving spacers on his rear wheel, wound up with ball bearings rolling around on his garage floor. Somehow he slapped his rear hub back together and it seemed to work perfectly fine today.
• I had better luck, installing 21T cog on my SS.  It's amazing what a difference a 5% reduction in gear inches makes to a pair of 50 year old knees.  21 and loving it!!