Wash it away

There have got to be a lot of blog posts like this one out there:
Crap week washed away by time on the bike.

After throwing un-godly sums of money at car and tooth repair this week, having pop-up problem after problem pop-up, including bike trouble, to be topped off with an altercation w/ the Volvo-Nazi, when I got home from work on Friday, the only words I could utter were "I'm going riding".

I love riding on muggy drizzly days (really), and especially love riding on Fridays. For some reason, perhaps others would rather be somewhere else on a Friday afternoon than riding their bikes (fools), the trails are usually empty.

As damp as the ride to the ride was, under the canopy of the trees, the trails were bone dry. Fast and fun, except for the famous res. mud pits due to poor trail design, and irresponsible users. I'll step down from my high horse for a second here, honestly the worst parts are the fireroads, and some of the wet spots are wet because of the primary function of the reservoir, it's a reservoir. It's designed to collect water. When you build a trail across a slope that leads to a reservoir it's bound to stay wet. The endless braids and trail widening does piss me off, but other than clearing deadfall, I'm not doing anything active to prevent it, so I guess I'm part of the problem.

Where was I, oh yeah, the cleansing...every pedal revolution....silent pedal revolution, my soul was scrubbed and scoured of all the drudgery of daily life, all the pitfalls and responsibilities that everyone must deal with disappeared. At least for the moment, all that mattered was the next pedal stroke, and what was in front of me.

Monday will be here soon enough, and all the crap that goes with it, but for now I still have two days of "bathing" in preparation for it.


On a pleasant side note, the carbon road cranks worked great. For clearance reasons I have to run a wide chainline, but they are silent, and I love the spinniness of the 170 mm length. I was sold on the added leverage of 175's (after riding 170's forever), but after last night, I'm re-thinking that.