Now that I'm
racing in the expert class and have signed up for the Wilderness
101, I'm motived to do longer rides. For Memorial Day
weekend, we put together two epic rides. For Saturday we decided to
ride the Michaux
Maximus Monster course in the Michaux State Forest. Ben and Mark
did the race a month ago in April, so we figured it would be easy
enough to trace the thirty-five mile course by ourselves. The
plan was for Ben, Chris, Jamie and myself to do the Michaux ride,
camp Saturday night and do the SSWC course in State College, PA on
Sunday. Mark and Craig came along just for the ride on Saturday.
Here we are getting ready for the ride on Saturday. Ben, Jamie,
Craig and myself rode our singlespeeds, while Mark and Chris road
their full-suspension
geared
bikes.
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This was the first little
break we took. We had covered Grave Ridge and were headed up to
climb Dead Woman
Hollow
Road.
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Here we are at the top of
Dead Woman Hollow Road resting and waiting for Ben. It was a killer
climb. Not the steepest or longest I've done,
but it was grassy
and in full sun most
of the way.
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After Dead Woman Hollow road it was smooth
sailing down a fireroad. Here's Craig and Chris enjoying the
change of
pace.
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Mark, Ben and Jamie pushing the front of the
group. After this point things got a little hairy. We were looking
for a quick turn-off into the
woods off the fire-road, but were
probably going to fast to see it. We had started a "No-Pedal" race
where we coast and draft each other to
see who's willing to go
the fastest without using their brakes. In one of the turns I went
too fast, didn't brake enogh (or didn't brake correctly
enough)
and highsided myself into the ditch. The guys said I looked like a
crash test dummy flipping and rolling through the
ditch. Luckily I
got up ok. Walked around a bit to catch my
breath and continued down the road.
Unfortunately we totally
missed the turn. We tried three or four other trails, but couldn't
find our way. We decided to head completely down to
the bottom
of the fire-road which took us out of the state forest and onto the
roads. It was total Pennsyltucky - cars on blocks,
appliances on
front porches and naked boys being hosed
down in the back yard kind of Pennsyltucky. It was hot.
We were running out of water, food and
patience. Finally we
found another forest road taking us back into the forest. It was the
exact road we needed to
be
on.
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Forty-two miles
later we were back at the cars recovering with peanut butter
sandwiches and beer. In the end we only missed two sections
of
the race
course.
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Jamie said he was beat and
bailed on us for Sunday. Ben, Chris and I got to State College
around 10:30 Sat. night. We were camping at the
fire-tower on Tussey Mt., but so were a bunch of local kids.
They were soooooo drunk - did you get the sarcasm? I could do a
whole entry on
them alone, but I won't get into it here. This
was breakfast for us Sunday morning. We set up camp next to the old
fire observers
cabin.
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Sunday Martin and Jeff came up to ride
with us. They're also doing the Wilderness 101 and wanted some good
hard fire-road climbing. They
both road singlespeeds. Wes
Schempf (or Wes the Conquerer as he's more affectionately known)
came out to ride with us as well. His
parents live in the area,
so he knows all the cool stuff to ride in them there
mountains.
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A few miles into the
ride we came across the Tussesy Mt. ridge trail which caught fire
about a month ago. When Chris, Mark and I rode this
a month ago,
it was still smoking. That's Wes out front
leading
the way.
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This is the typical view
people get of Wes. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't his blazing
speed that sparked the fire in the
first
place.
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Ben's fifteen seconds of
fame.
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Chris rolling his thirty-five
pound Gemini at the back.
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