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). I made my way over to the free rideish like trail with the banked turns and the jumps. I was happy with myself for riding up onto one of the large rocks with the wooden ramp leading up to it, but I ended up not pressing my already bad luck and didn't attempt to roll down the back side. This trail dropped me off close to the car on the trail I rode in on, but there was still daylight left so I decided to back in on the trail I started on and do some more exploring. The trail I wanted to check out ended up being crappy DT that we had hit before on our first ride there. It dumped me out onto Stone rd. I took a right onto it and headed up to the entrance to Devils Kitchen. I was successful in finding the trail I tried to lead us to, which cut off of the blue trail just before the washed out DH section that we played on in the last ride. It led exactly to where I thought it would, to an even longer, more washed out DH that crossed some DT with some rampy bridge things. This is the same section that Jeff and I found at an earlier ride when we came the other direction. I elected to skip the first section, but went down the second one, which ended up seeming steeper than it looked. The rest of this trail isn't well traveled and is somewhat swampy, but it was kinda fun. It led up to a section of DT right near the road. It was getting dark so I decided to just head a short distance up the road to my car.
BTW - Sorry for such a long TR, I don't know what came over me. It's so long that even I don't want to reread it to check for errors, so if you find any then TS.
Jesus. Did you dictate this thing into a voice recorder during your ride or something? Kidding. Great report. I read it all.
Maybe y'all could use some body armor for these rides...
Alright, so the full report.... Let me set the tone for my day by prefacing the TR with the fact that I got a $300 speeding ticket on the way to work in the morning.
I pulled into Stone rd. around 5:00pm and started getting ready. Upon taking my bike (which I hadn't touched since the last ride on Sunday) off the car I notice one of the rear spokes is bent and loose. After further inspection I determine that the wheel is still as true as it ever is, I decide to just leave it and take my chances. I then go to pump up my rear tire (which has a really slow leak I've been too lazy to fix) and realize my floor pump is still in my garage at home, good thing I have my little pump in my pack. After getting everything ready I head out, a few minutes after 5. I start off the same way we usually start from Stone. Almost instantly I start having the all too familiar chain suck problems again, I figure that my very unlubed chain probably has something to do with it this time. The effects aren't quite as bad with the bashguard since there's less for the chain to get caught on, but it's still making it impossible to ride in the middle ring. I contemplated turning back to throw some lube on the chain, but decided I didn't have enough daylight to be effing around with that. I pressed on, making neither of the first two climbs.
When I got to the blue/red trail I went straight across instead of turning left as we usually do, I followed the resulting DT to the right a bit before finding the ST that I was looking for on the left. I thought this was going to be something new, but it turns out to be a trail we had traveled the other direction on during our first visit to Stone back in July. I followed that and came to a familiar intersection where to the right/straightish is the tree crossing that's built up with many loose rocks, that we've sessioned in the past. I took the trail to the left (which we had came back on during our initial visit) This trail is one that had been cleared recently, it was a fun ride and I was finally starting to get into a groove. After a bit I came to an intersection with a large rock that Greg and I had sessioned climbing up on our last ride. I was coming at it from a different direction so I decided to try and climb up the short steep side and then ride back down the other side (the opposite way that we were going at it last time). I amazed myself by making it up in one try. 8) Since I was then already heading that way I decided to continue on the trail from the last ride in the reverse direction. I was really getting into a groove and having a fun time. Shortly after the trail hooked around and started heading back Westish things started getting a bit wet, as I remembered it being the last time I rode there when it wasn't raining.
I was moving along pretty decently at this point, clearing most things and feeling pretty good about my riding. I came up to a short, not overly steep downhill section, on the upper part of it I could see a small patch of soft mud with tire tracks through it. I figured that was my line, and it may have been if I hadn't underestimated how soft and deep the little patch of mud was. My tire hit the mud and instantly sunk down so that the front part of the tire struck a root in the far edge of the mud, stopping the tire dead. Unfortunately the rest of the bike, and my body by default, had other ideas and continued on, sending me OTB. It all happened in slow motion for me, yet I still couldn't resist the urge to stick my right arm out to break my fall, despite being told not to do that in the interest of lessening the injuries. I went down, super man style, into the small rocks and mud pretty hard, my right side taking the brunt of it.
I sat there dazed for a few seconds, my right leg and lower right rib cage hurting. I jumped up and upon further examination of the damage noticed a large patch of blood on my shorts. After determining that it didn't come from my leg I started checking for other sources, it didn't take long to realize that the entire underside of my right forearm was completely covered in blood (well there was a bunch of mud, now stained red, too). Next came the fun of trying to find the source of the blood. For lack of a better method I used my shirt to wipe away the blood and mud. I finally found a nice hole a few inches above my elbow that looked just slightly smaller than what you'd expect a hole from a #2 pencil to look like. Luckily that seemed to be the extent of my injuries. So I went about cleaning it as best I could, using by hydration bladder to irrigate the wound and some gauze from the first aid kit to clean off the surrounding area and to apply pressure to try and stop the bleeding. This seemed to pay off as after a few minutes the bleeding was practically stopped. I eventually decided to see if I could get away without bandaging it up since I couldn't seem to find a suitable solution that would stay on during the ride out.
I continued on, now being a bit less aggressive in my riding. The rock assisted tree crossing took on a whole new challenge from this direction. I think it maybe possible, but tricky, I was not up to the task at this point though. When I got back to the intersection where I could either head back the way I came back to the car... or man up and head East, to continue on my intended ride. I've been waiting all week for this ride, check the blood situation; just a small stream on my arm, good to go. I now head NE on the trail back up to the blue/red trail, this is also the opposite direction as normal and it rode just as well. From there I found the freshly cleared section that we had found last ride and took that. It consists of a couple small, fun loops. No more additional problems through this section, as a matter of fact I even discovered that my middle ring was now cooperating for the most part. This section of trail ends by turning left onto a more heavily traveled DT with a fun rocky climb heading south back to the blue/red. I knew that there was another trail somewhere to the right from seeing other GPS tracks so I was on the lookout for it and found it without trouble.
What I didn't know was that there was a freshly cleared trail off of this trail that headed NWish before looping back to where the other trail intersected with the rocky climb DT. This section was really fun and it was nice to be experiencing the fresh hard work that others had put into it. The only problem was that my fork started making a loud clanging noise that had me a bit worried, but there wasn't anything I could do about it at that point. It seemed to be a bit looser than usual too. The fork ended up hanging in there, but it made me a bit nervous for the rest of the ride. I went back up the rocky climb again, but this time cleared it without any problem. I could have taken the right again and stayed on that trail instead of turning off onto the new stuff, but I didn't and continued onto the blue/red instead. I then went straight across to something I don't think we've been on before, and for good reason, it was pretty boring DT.
I doubt anyone is still reading at this point, so in the interest of those that may still be I'll make the rest short (maybe
Once done I noticed that my injury had bled a bit leaving several crusty tracks up red along my arm, but it wasn't too bad. My entire arm was somewhat sore though. I cleaned up my arm a bit and applied a bandage so that I wouldn't bleed all over my car and headed home.
My objective was to do some exploring and get a better feel for the Stone rd area and I did just that so I guess it was a success.
BTW - Sorry for such a long TR, I don't know what came over me. It's so long that even I don't want to reread it to check for errors, so if you find any then TS.
