Jackrabbit - Chain Buster Finale

I've been doing well in the Chain Buster series. As of this morning, I was in third (in Sport), I think, with precious few points between the top three of us. Conceivably, I could win the series. On the other hand, I could fail so miserably as to get kicked down off of the podium. The night before, you'd think I'd be nervous, but really, I was just excited to find out how it would go down.

The finale was at Jackrabbit, just over the border in North Carolina. I rode there a few months back. IMBA trails. Insanely fast and flowy. If nothing else, it would be fun.

At 5AM my alarm clock started screaming at me, but I wasn't having it. Finally, around 5:45 I gave in. All my stuff was packed last night. I basically just jumped in the truck and headed for the mountains.

The mountains:



It was foggy, and cold, or at least colder than it has been. 48 at my house - not so good. 58 in Helen - all right, that's better. Oh no, 43 again on the other side of Unicoi Gap. I expected that biting chill when I got out of my truck, but oddly though, it didn't feel that cold. I guess those mornings with the kids at the bus stop have been paying off.

I usually get to these things early so I can get a close parking spot and register quickly. But then sit around doing nothing until people I know start arriving like an hour and a half later. Today I had a plan to mitigate my loneliness. Jackrabbit runs around on a peninsula that sticks out into Lake Chatuge, the lake runs right up to the parking lot and the last time I was there I saw lots of weeds, branches and other cover in the water. As fate would have it, the fish forecast showed 8AM as almost "excellent". I would set up, register, catch a few lunkers, then race. How could it go wrong?

Well, here's one way...



Oh boy, no lake. I forget that if a lake is just a reservoir, sometimes they drain it. Scratch that plan.

On the upside, some of my friends were there early, including some folks I almost never see. Chris Brown!



I can't even remember the last time I saw him. I think it was ORAMM, some unknown number of years ago.

Addictive's Matt and Cody...



Tim Winters... (great photo eh?)



Michele Z and soon-to-be-first-time-father Brandon Woods...



Congratulations Brandon.

Bill and Josh from GSC showed up too. I've got lots of photos of them. Actually lots of other folks I know were there too. It's cool, if you do enough races, you meet a lot of people.

Kenny, the man that makes it all happen...



The race was dedicated to the memory of T.J. Patillo who rode in the series, but was recently killed in an accident while riding his road bike. They had a raffle (which for some reason, Tim won like 3 different items from) and a silent auction, and also just donated some of the proceeds to his family. There was also a moment of silence during the pre-ride meeting. It was sad, but very touching.

The race started up the road a ways from the trailhead. Go!

We tore down the road like lightning. Like I've never seen. I was spun out in seconds and went into the woods at the front of the second group of riders. Less than a mile in I was hurting and getting a stitch. I let a rider by, then another. It would be a long day.

Or would it? A mile later I was back on that rider, descending and starting to feel really good. I sat on the guy ahead of me, but not so much by choice. You can ride so unbelievably fast at Jackrabbit that it's just dangerous to try to pass. The trail is true singletrack, with very few wide spots, and they're gone in a split second. If you tried to pass and got it wrong, you'd both go down and take out the guy behind you, with trees flying by at unconscionable speeds. It wasn't worth even considering. Bottom line, if the rider ahead was even remotely fast, you couldn't get by him. Twice I asked for a pass and, realizing the futility, formally withdrew my request. The group ahead of us pulled away. There was no catching them on that lap. Who knew the holeshot would be so important in a 6 hour race. As it turned out, there was no hope of me catching them anyway. I had to pee super bad and eventually just had to pull off and do it. As the next 10 riders passed me, I took stock of them. Chris Brown, Josh Fix, Tim Winters, all faster than me, all in that group. I had been in an unsustainable position as it was. Before long I was back on the rider that I was behind before.

Lap two was less hectic, but eventually I got stuck behind a rider for the rest of the lap. On lap two I also realized why I'd had such a hard time off the start. You start climbing immediately, barely get a break for a mile and a half, and it's not shallow. I realized how punctuated the route was: long steep climb, an infinity of warp speed rollers, ridiculously steep climb, another infinity of warp speed rollers, pit.

I pushed hard through the first 3 laps. On lap 3 I ran into a hunter, riding a rigid, but non-walmart bike, with a gun mounted on his handlebars. He was friendly. I'd heard of some hunters using bikes to access hunting sites, but never seen it until today. Lap 3 was weird though, except for that hunter, I saw only one other rider, at the very end.

The first three laps were fun.

Lap 4 and 5 ran together. I didn't kill it so hard for those laps. I still passed some folks though. I do remember, on lap 5, while granny gearing up the super steep climb, a black rat snake crossed the trail in front of me. I've seen a lot of those lately, like they've eaten all the other snakes or something. Going so slowly, I instinctively stopped to let it cross. A rider tried to come around me and I was all "wait.... snake" and he did. I guess we could have stepped over it. I think in the back of my mind I wanted a break and it was a good excuse. The rider did get by me, then a few minutes later slid out on a tricky, off camber, right hander. Actually, three different riders slid out there in front of me at various times during the race. It was a sketchy turn.

Those laps were about half-fun and half-work.

Lap 6, I made an effort to rest up, but I didn't let any solo sport riders pass me.

Vonnie showed up before my last lap for some moral support. He wasn't riding, but he and some of the GSC guys and gals were up in the mountains on vacation.

Lap 7, I pushed really hard up the initial climb, kept a competent pace up the super steep one and then pushed as hard as possible to the end. It hurt, but it felt good to be able to do it.

At some point, I'm not exactly sure when, something broke. Or at least I think something did. I heard a Pchowww! sound and felt the bike shudder, but then nothing else happened. I still haven't figured out what it was. Must not be that important, or maybe it was just a weird rock that I rode over. At some other point, something hit me in the arm so hard that it cut me. It felt like somebody threw a rock at me, but there was nobody there. Maybe a clump of acorns fell out of a tree. Maybe? It was weird.

I was hungry for the first few laps and had to eat more Clif Blocks than usual. I drank as much as I usually do, but with the unusually cool weather, I didn't sweat as much and had to stop and pee 4 times. 4 times!!!! I never let more than 1 rider by though, and always re-caught him, but still. Jeez.

I ended up in 2nd.



The 3rd place rider was only a minute back. After seeing his jersey, I think I passed him during my last lap. I never had any idea where I was or who was ahead of me. That's as close as it gets. The first place guy must have gotten out ahead of me from the start.

Bill Riddle pulled down first in Clydesdale.



Josh Fix got 2nd in Expert.



Tim Winters got 4th or something, but took 2nd overall for the series.



In my class, I won the series.



The top three of us were only separated by one point each. This race was operative.

I still can't believe it. I've done a hundred cross country races, team 12's, team 24's, dozens of marathon races, dozens of "epics", Firewaters, ORAMM's, Fool's Golds and a Trans North Georgia, but I have not, until today, gotten 3 top 3's or 5 top 5's in a series, nor have I gotten a top 3 overall in a series. As such, per USA Cycling rules at least, I've been perpetually relegated to Sport. Yeah, these races aren't sanctioned by USA Cycling rules, technically I can call myself whatever I want, but every Expert I know got that way by those rules, so I've gone by them too. Today, I officially cat myself up to Expert. And it only took 11 years.

I figure I'd better savor this for a while, I think it's going to be a long time before I stand on another podium. Also, somehow, I managed to win a series without winning a race in the series. That's got to be a rarity.

I celebrated in Helen, at North Georgia Barbecue. They had oppressive and condescending messages written all over the place but I figured it must be good if they claim to represent all of North Georgia.



It was. I will eat there again.

Jones Creek Ridge Trail

The girls and I got up early today for the CTHA work party up at Bull Mountain. We met a bunch of folks at the Jake lot at 9AM.



I hadn't planned on making this particular work party - today's my Dad's birthday, and we'd be out riding if he was in town. But he ended up back in Dallas this weekend, and that freed up today pretty well.

Last month I was the only mountain biker, but this month, Eddie was recruiting hard, and we had a good showing. Eddie, Dave Greenwell, Tim Winters, Ken Williams, a guy named Jack who's last name I didn't catch were there. Jason and Andrew from Mulberry Gap met us about an hour later. Ken brought his daugher Mari and I had my girls too.

Tim drove his awesome Bronco.



Me and Mark Baldwin covet that truck.

Some of the CTHA folks were going to ride the trail, replace missing Horse/Bike markers and add extra nails to the ones that were still intact. The girls couldn't stop looking at their horses.



The last time we rode horses was in Pine Mountain last year, and they haven't really had any close-up horse time since then. They were enthralled.

Debbie's dog, who's name I can't remember even though I said it five hundred times, was also enthralled, with my soccer ball.



She's a ball dog for sure and I think I made her day by letting her fetch it 10 or 15 times. Dogs bite soccer balls though, and I didn't need holes in mine, so I didn't want to do it too much.

We broke up into 2 groups, caravanned over to the old game check station lot, broke up into two more groups and continued on, up to the Jones Creek Trail, picking up where we left off last month.

Our crew leader was a different Jack, of the CTHA. He'd go up and mark where we needed to work, and we'd follow up, as he worked back toward us. We debermed, nicked and even made a few rolling dips.



Each structure got the soccer-ball treatment.

If it failed...



we worked on it until it didn't.



At least most of the time. If you could roll the ball 4 or 5 times and it would only go past the drain once, we considered that good enough, given that water doesn't bounce or get stuck on sticks or pine cones, there were more drains below and we were deberming and nicking the low spots.

It's funny, the ball knows all. Some of the most IMBA-proper, this-should-totally-work looking structures needed more work and some of the most yeah-that-took-about-30-seconds-to-build looking structures worked perfectly, every time.

Iz and Sophie played with Mari and just helped out by rolling the soccer ball for a while, which was really all I expected them to do, but eventually Iz realized she could do what we were doing, grabbed a fire rake and started raking. Of course, Sophie didn't want to miss out on the fun.



Before long they were making an actual, material contribution. We'd dig and loosen with the shovel, pulaski and mcleods and they'd rake or shovel it downhill while we rolled the soccer ball. Someone was always working.



Near the end, Mari was even raking and shoveling. They weren't as productive as the guys, but it freed us up to do other things, and sometimes just gave us a little rest.

Two sets of two riders on horseback came through while we were working, which fascinated the girls. They just never get to see anything like that, and they were pretty well amazed.



The horses were a little unsure at first, they're not used to a bunch of people just standing on either side of the trail like that. I could imagine the inner horse-monalogue: "What's going on here? We're just going to walk through them? Uh... ok. I guess. We'll see how this goes... I'm not so sure about that one with the axe-thing. What do you call it? Pulaski? Yeah, that looks like an axe."

We got a lot more work done today than last month, and every drain was tested.

Lookin' good.

Our crew leader had to bail at 1, so we headed back then. We really need to bail too. We blazed home, took 30 minutes to get cleaned up and re-dressed, and continued blazing down to ATL proper to hit the reception for a photography exhibit Kathryn had gotten into. Turned out she didn't just get into it, but won Best in Show, with a photo of Isabel.

Except for a few leftover cold symptoms, it's been a really good weekend.

Noontootla/Winding Stair/Tooni Mountain

Earlier this year, I got totally mountained-out. Between the TNGA, ORAMM and marking the Fool's Gold, I haven't even wanted to look at a long climb. I've done some hiking in the mountains, but no biking. They've been calling though, and finally, this weekend, I could hear them.

It was a good day for a long ride. The temps were delicious. A far cry from the 90+ we've been having.



Travis and Russell met me at ATL Bread and we carpooled up to the old Blue Ridge WMA game check station together. I'd actually invited some other folks, so we hung around just in case somebody else showed up. One guy did show up, and from his car, he looked a lot like Stephen Carhart, ans I was all "Heeeyyyy Stephen!" but it turned out that it was somebody else named Trey who was just up there for a ride on his own.

We headed out on FS28-1, past Camp Wahsega where a ton of girls were playing football or something, past Camp Merrill and a lone female Ranger who appeared to be headed back from doing some orienteering, up FS80 to Cooper Gap. There was a group of about 6 or 8 hikers there, headed to the Gooch Mountain shelter. One of the kids was hoping to find some spent rounds and wanted to know if the Rangers did operations out that far.

Russell was following a base mile training program and that meant keeping his heart rate down, so he was hanging back and we waited for him.



We continued to Hightower, passing 8 or 9 riders on motorcycles. At Hightower there were like 10 cars, 2 folks coming back from a hike and a small group of hikers on the AT west of the gap. I guess today was THE day to be out in the woods.

We bombed down FS69, passed a bunch of campers and fishermen, rolled past the hatchery...



...past the church.



They did a controlled burn on the right side of the road a few years back, and a bunch of sumac and other brushy stuff had grown up since. I caught sight of a huge bunch of either big, fat wild grapes or possibly chokeberries, I couldn't tell which, all up in that. If I'd been out by myself, I'd have gone back and gorged myself on them, but as it was, we were really moving, and by the time I decided "well, maybe we should go back", we were all the way down the next hill.

Left on FS333, right on FS308, past even more campers and left at the old gated service road for the suspension bridge. There was a guy there collecting firewood. He had the entire back of his pickup filled with branches. It would burn for days.

We hit the BMT about 50 feet from the bridge and started walking.



I've been out to the bridge a couple of times by myself and once with my kids, but it sways a lot more with three dudes tromping on it. We all had to stop for a few seconds at the center to let it settle down.

The Toccoa.



On the other side, we took a hard right off of the bridge and rode up the old northern service road to the end of FS816. At that parking lot, there were like 10 more cars and a bunch of folks headed out for a hike. I gave a pair of them directions to the bridge.

We rode up 816 to Hwy 60, where, again, there were 10 more cars parked at the trailhead there. We hung a left, and another left on Doublehead Gap Road.

Tooni Mountain.



At FS58 we ran into a group of at least 12 riders on horseback. Ok. This was definitely the day to be out in the woods, for everybody. They were followed by a horse-drawn wagon.



A Horse. Drawn. Wagon. Bad-ass.

A bunch of the riders were wearing the same shirt, but I couldn't make out the words on it. They might have been Georgia Backcountry Horsemen. I kind-of think I recognized the logo, but maybe not.

Up Noontootla...



We ran into some of the motorcycle guys again, tons of campers, and an uncountable number of cars at the Three Forks trailhead. We waited for Russell again there.

Noontootla is my favorite climb, hands down. It's long, scenic, and you can make it as hard or easy as you want. Me and Travis were tempo climbing, but about 2 miles from the top I was suddenly hungry. Oh, no. I had accidentally gotten myself into my "bonk at the top of Noontootla weight loss program." I'd only brought 6 Clif Blocks, about half as many as I needed. Right on cue, two kicks from the top, Travis rode away from me like I wasn't even moving.

We waited for Russell at the top, and I just happened to notice this benchmark.



I'd been in almost that same spot a dozen times, but I'd never seen it before.

The descent down Winding Stair was it's usual level of fun, but a bit sketchier than usual. My fork has been toast for a while now. I've got a new one, but I've been trying to get the last bit of life out of this one. I think it's about done now. It just doesn't react to any high frequency bumps at all, like the kind that all bumps become when you're going fast enough. The bearings are so loose too that it chatters back and forth like a loose headset. Sketchy. Travis was riding a full suspension 29'er with 2.2 tires and, again, rode away from me like I wasn't even moving. Russell was right on my wheel and just didn't want to pass at that speed. I've been wanting to try 2.2's. Between those and the new fork, maybe I can get my groove back.

I'd also tried some organic rear brake pads today, in the rear, trying to get rid of the groan. It kind of worked. They didn't always groan. It's better, especially at high speed, but it's not quiet like the front brake. I'm going to try one organic and one metal next time. We'll see.

I also tried my helmet cam again, with almost no success. When I climb it's aimed correctly. On a descent, it's aimed at the sky. And it apparently really needs lithium batteries. With Duracells, it runs for a few minutes then turns itself off. If I turn it back on, it only stays on a few seconds. If I let the batteries recover for a few minutes, it only records for another few minutes after that. Well, good to know what doesn't work, I guess.

The ride was great, just what I was hoping for. The roads were super clean too. It looked like they'd all been regraded recently. Really nice.

Back at the old game-check lot, I realized there was an apple tree right there at the edge that I'd never seen before.



All the decent looking fruit was way up in the tree though. The apples on the ground were pretty nasty looking, and I was in no mood to climb up there.

We did find good food though, at the Piazza in Dawsonville, which is the same as the Piazza in Dahlonega, which is great because it's only like 15 minutes from my house instead of 45. Yes.

When I got home I watched LSU "win" against Tennessee, in the ugliest win of all time, ever, in the world.

TNGA Fallout

"It's wearing on my mind! I'm speaking all my doubts aloud!"

By all accounts the TNGA was awesome. Well, not all accounts. My USFS contact forwarded me this email a few days back...

(names and contact info have been suppressed)

Dear [usfs rep]: I append a copy of the report regarding the TNGA marathon bike race from [forestwatch rep], one of Georgia ForestWatch's dedicated volunteers in Rabun County. It sure looks like these mountain bikers did not follow their own self-declared rules to walk thir bikes down from Wilson Gap to Ramey Fields.

As this one of the reasons the district cited in deciding not. to require a Forest Service permit for this race, I wonder if it might not be advisable to contact the race organizer and formally note the district's reaction to this breach of the group's own rules.

To my knowledge the national forestland track in question is a steep user-created trail that crosses over Ramey Creek at a location where the district and its partner organization, the Rabun Chapter of Trout Unlimited, had spent no small effort trying to improve the fishery in that area.

I look forward to hearing back from you. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Regards.
[forestwatch rep]

CC: [usfs, forestwatch and trout unlimited members]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: [forestwatch rep]
Date: Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 10:30 AM
Subject: Trans North Georgia Mountain Bike Adventure
To: [usfs rep]
Cc: [forestwatch members]


Dear [usfs rep],

I was out hiking the trail from Darnell Creek/Ramey Fields to Wilson Gap on this past Saturday (September 4th, 2010), which was also the local portion of the TNGA mountain bike adventure. This was the one trail on the event's route that was "hike only/no bikes." Following are my notes (and some photos) from this outing. I hope that you will find these useful.

Best,
[forestwatch rep]
cc: [forestwatch members]

I arrived in time to see all riders come down the trail - the first guy was already on the roadbed between Ramey fields and the road gate, so he wasn't really on the no bike portion of the trail. Once across the creek and heading up the first hill, I was almost run over by four guys riding fast and skidding to slow down as I stepped off the trail.

Then a pair of guys - the first one saw me and quickly jumped off his bike, the guy behind him heard us so jumped off before he saw us.

The next group was fairly close to the top of the trail, near Wilson gap and riders were taking a break. I waited till these pushed on, then turned back with the final rider - a young woman from Pennsylvania, who "loves sleeping out in the woods." She seemed to be on her own. She told me that about 20 people had shown up at the starting line, and they were all likely to finish in 4 days or so, though allotted 9. Also that she was camping, but many would go into towns and stay in hotels. That one person was from Ohio and many from close by.

I am fairly certain that the only person who pushed her bike most of the way was this one young woman. I saw several riders on the trail, and walking back down the length of the trail, it was obvious that they had ridden the trail, and there only appeared to be footprints of one person in the sandy areas.

All in all, this was a very low impact event (in the stretch that I saw), mainly because there were only 20 riders, as opposed to the 70 rider limit for the event. This is a no-fee, self-governing race/event, and riders are supposed to enforce the rules for themselves.

It was pretty obvious that every rider knew this was a hike only trail (and, as you know, it's clearly posted at the trail head).

From the TNGA rules (taken from their website, http://www.firstworks.com/tnga/ ):

* There is one manditory hike section, the Ramey Field Trail from FS155 to the intersection with the Ramey Creek Trail. Participants must dismount and walk or carry their bikes through this sections. This section may be monitored by officials.
* Riders are strongly encouraged to portage (carry your bike over, rather than ride through) any stream crossing that is not crossing a road, even if the road is closed. The USFS, Georgia ForestWatch, and I are concerned about the impact of up to 70 riders riding through a stream, that hasn't been armored for vehicle traffic, in a short period of time. To mitigate this impact, riders are again, strongly encouraged to portage applicable stream crossings.


All riders were friendly and polite, and seemed a bit self-conscious, as if they felt they were expecting me to be either an official or a ForestWatcher, perhaps - or maybe just because they all knew they were breaking the rules.

Unfortunately, the fact remains that human beings will most often break the rules as long as no one is watching. When there are so few participants, it's not such a problem, but if this had been 70 riders, there would have been a lot more impact.

If this report is accurate, it's pretty discouraging.

And it's not like I don't have reason to doubt its validity. I debated one of the Georgia ForestWatch board members at the Mountaintown meetings and he made so many deceptive claims and generalizations that I was able to write a veritable book in response. Their first comment regarding Mountaintown included even more; lots of us that were at the meeting had ridden the trail... well, my dad and I did get injured -- a sprained thumb and shoulder, very minor injuries, kind of an important detail... I suggested that a collision between a biker and hiker would injure both people... and so on. They stepped it up after the EA showed bike traffic had no detectable effect on the environment. Their comment on the EA begins by quoting Mike Vandeman, demands a new EA, then goes on an Appeal to fear/FUD campaign, making lots of bad-sounding, but irrelevant statements and claims, cherry picking inflammatory and divisive quotes from the web, and pretending not to understand satire. Their web site states: "We support biking and count many bikers as members and friends. In fact, we have never opposed any of the dozens of legal mountain bike trails established across Georgia’s national forests." But, their documents attack the credibility of mountain biking as a whole, and the board member I debated has stated openly, twice, that "mountain bikes are inappropriate in the National Forest" and, referring to bikers on Bear Creek, that "...they're out of control, they're a menace, they should be banned from the National Forest..." There was more of the same at an Equestrian Access Assessment meeting. It's very hard to tell what they're after. Clearly, on some level, they care about the environment, but it comes off as a mask, hiding some deeper, indiscernible intention. Man, this paragraph is longer than I meant it to be. I guess I'm trying to establish why for me, personally, it has become hard to trust anything coming from their organization.

But, while "I'm speaking all my doubts aloud..." maybe my impression of them just stems from the fact that most of the face time I've had has been with one individual. Their documents do carry his attitude forward though, so it's easy to assume it's pervasive. On the other hand, I did speak with their ecologist on two occasions, and he seemed as cool and reasonable as they come. But, as much as I want to like him, I am left wondering if it's really just part of some kind of good-cop/bad-cop play.

What I'm really getting to here is that when I first started reading this report, I was all dismissive; "yeah, yeah, those guys again, woohoo" and in the preface, there is a bit of that berative tone I'm used to just tolerating from them. However, the report itself was actually refreshing to read. It's clean and objective, even kind in places and doesn't carry much of their classic, heavy-handed rhetoric at all.

There are a few inconsistencies in it...

I doubt that they were just "out hiking." It's more likely that they were out there with the specific intent of monitoring the event, which, actually, would be totally fine. I imagine the advantage of omitting their intentions could be to make it come across like encountering mountain bikers was unexpected and thus even more of an intrusion. But, they didn't try to play it that way, and they easily could have, so I'm not going to read that into it.

The trail is not clearly marked closed to bikes. When I was up there last there were horse-yes, hike-yes, atv-no stickers there, but no bike sticker at all. An inconsistency, but ultimately moot, the riders knew not to ride that trail.

The trail is not a user-created trail, it's an inventoried trail that follows an old road bed. According to USFS GIS data, it's part of the Darnell Creek Horse Trail. I didn't know that name for it when I first made the maps and cue sheets. An inconsistency, but again, moot.

It doesn't sound like the four riders that "almost ran over" the writer were on the hike-only section. The hike-only section goes from the forest road down to the tree with the purple paint on it. The first hill after the creek (heading opposite the direction of the route) is after that section, not on a horse trail, and was not designated hike-only. Perhaps the writer assumed that section was hike-only, but per the route cue sheets, it was not, (update: well... see 4th comment) and no issue was raised with it being rideable prior to the event as long as riders carried over the creek. Also, the report doesn't establish exactly where the next two riders were, maybe they were also on that rideable section as well.

On the hike back, they reported only seeing one set of footprints in the sandy areas, and from this it was determined that only one rider likely walked. The prints of the writer's party should also have been visible. They may have been, and that detail was omitted, or the writer's party may have intentionally avoided the sand so they could later tell how many riders walked through it, and that detail was omitted. Or, the writer's party may have walked through the sand but not been able to discern their own prints, in which case, riders may also have walked through it, indiscernibly. Another possibility is that the writers party may have just naturally walked to the side of the sand, in which case, so might the riders have. In fact, when pushing, riders tend to naturally walk to the far left of the trail, or even a little off trail, while pushing their bikes on the right. They almost always walk on the left to avoid hitting their rear derailleur and to avoid getting chainring tats. The report doesn't provide enough footprint evidence to determine that only one rider walked.

The photo of the tire track in the mud also raises a little doubt. It's not clear whether it was taken on the hike-only section or not, but either way, it doesn't look like 17 bikes worth of tire tracks. Maybe only one rider rode through that exact spot, or maybe he/she pushed his/her bike through it, loaded down with gear and left a track. Hard to say.

Also, they say they saw all riders, but didn't account for all of them in the report.


Blah, blah, blah... Minor details.

These inconsistencies cast a shadow of doubt, at worst revealing a misunderstanding, but there is no clear attempt at deception. It reads like an honest report, written in good faith.


My USFS contact was really cool about the whole thing, agreed with them that since there were so few riders, the environmental impact was not a concern, and basically just reiterated that next year I should bring them (the USFS) into the loop early. Maybe it'll be OK. Maybe I'll be required to post marshals there next year. Maybe I'll be required to somehow route around it. Worst case, I'll have to get a permit for the ride, which will cost money, could be denied, and if so and riders still line up, they (and I) could be cited.

But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it...

Back to the point.

Did this actually happen? Did all but one rider ignore the hike-only rule?

At the outset of this event, I was condemned for, among other things, presuming not to trust people to walk a mandatory hike section without being monitored. In fact, that lack of faith was one of the reasons given for a boycott of the event by several riders. Imagine my internal struggle over that one. I knew that the USFS and ForestWatch were both watching this event. By not actually going out there and standing at the trailhead, I knew I was taking a risk. I thought about doing it, and decided not to. Me and the girls went and hiked Rabun Bald instead.

Was that the wrong decision?

I can read this report, I can engage in a frustrating internal debate, wrestling with my own prejudice, judgement and tolerance while I'm at it, but I've had my share of those little struggles already this year with this event, and now I'm just tired. So here's my challenge. If you rode the TNGA, comment below, or hell, email me, or just tell me when you see me again if you don't want it displayed publicly. Did you walk that section? So far, ForestWatch has the only word on the subject. The USFS assumes you rode it. If you did, saying so won't make any difference with them. If you didn't, even better. At this point, you can't be DQ'ed from the event and it won't have any effect on your time or anything else, event-related. If you rode it, there is no worst case. Best case, maybe it's wearing on your mind too, and the truth will set you free.

PS. You get 5 extra points if you can name the song quoted at various points in this post, from memory, don't just Google it. It's been stuck in my head for like 2 months.

West Bank Park

Sophie's party was awesome.



Afterward we still had time to hit the lake. The fish apparently knew it was her birthday, she caught 5 or 6 of them, including 2 small channel cats.



Iz caught one.



I caught none.

Big Creek

Today we're having a birthday party for Sophie. She and Iz both have real birthdays in the summer, but kids lose track of each other in the summer, so we always have parties for them during the school year. There is still much to be done, but I was able to get a ride in this morning as long as I'd be back by noon.

It turns out my dad is still in town, so we met up at Big Creek around 9.



My knee was still bugging me a bit from Dauset so I was nursing it a little, but it wasn't too bad.

We spun two big laps and rolled through the freeride area a couple of times. They've done a lot of work out there since the last time we were there.



We rode the trails for about 2 hours, did a quick loop on the greenway and bailed out.

Birthday party time!

Weekly Beatdown

I had a dentist appointment this morning, so no commute today, but I still managed to hit the Reality ride. It wasn't bad. Last official ride of the year. Not so many folks on the ride today, and everybody there rode smooth and easy. I'm tired though. Not that regular tired. Not even that deep tired. Maybe tired of going deep. I'm looking forward to long easy rides. Noontootla. Cooper Creek. Warwoman. My brother's D-ville loops. Yes. Let's have some of those.