Cochran Mill

This actually happened just this past week.

I haven't ridden with John since we were both in Texas, I think for Thanksgiving. Our schedules just didn't line up. We'd try even, and they still didn't line up. Like last weekend we were going to ride, but a guy from work called at 12:30AM the night before, and I ended up on call the whole next day, and that turned into a 10+ hour network troubleshooting marathon. The stars aligned last Wednesday though, I think, and we met up at Cochran Mill after work.

It is worth mentioning that, despite being eager to ride with him, I was reticent to ride with him at Cochran Mill, as the last two times we'd ridden there together, I crashed horribly. The first time I broke a rib, and the second shredded my right arm.

Flukes!

That's what I kept telling myself, but it was still hard to shake the aprehension. In fact, I hadn't been back to Cochran Mill since that arm shredding incident, and that was pre-TNGA 2019. I was still on the Lightspeed. The more I thought about it, the more intriguing it got. I was on a totally different bike that I'm finally really accustomed to, and it had been so long since I'd been there, that it wouldn't be super familiar to me.

Awesome!

John had actually gotten there before me and spun some partial lap while I was driving over, but we met at the lot just as I was getting dressed, and got to it pretty quickly.

We hit the Green Trail first. He actually let me lead, maybe because I'd crashed following him, or maybe because he figured I'd be slower and he'd already been riding for a while, or maybe it was arbitrary. At any rate, I felt pretty good. I forgot that the wheelie-bump at the bottom of the Green Trail is actually two wheelie-bumps until I was mid-manual through the first one, and came out of it really awkwardly. But after that, I rode pretty smoothly.

We hit Red next, and went counter-clockwise on 5-turn hill.

We stopped at the falls for a second so John could mess with something.

I forget what now.

The creek was really high.

You can usually ride across it.

We took the gravel road back to the lot, to check out Cochran Mill Falls proper. You can cross the bridge now, so I got a photo of it with a bridge rail in the foreground.

Ha! Bridge rail.

We hit Yellow next, and had a good time of it. No trouble. No crashing.

This bike is apparently, effortlessly fast. I didn't feel like I was crushing it, but I ended up setting 6 PRs, and we were just riding like normal, even talking most of the time.

Awesome.

We talked about grabbing some dinner, but John said that right as we turned onto the last bit of singletrack, his stomach started hurting. By the time we were ready to leave it was a lot worse, so he figured he'd let it chill for a bit rather than eat anything. This turned out to be the right move. He'd apparently gotten food poisoning at lunch, and it was no good for the rest of that day and the next.

Eyahh!

Feel better bro.