Monday, December 13, 2010

Landahl Drift...

Kansas City was blessed with clear skies and 50+ degree temperatures on Thursday and Friday. In December that is just never a reality. I was so super F-ing psyched to get out and ride for hours and hours in the perfect weather on dusty trails. It never happened.
Saturday the temps dropped from 50+ down and down until well below stick-your-tongue-to-a-lamp-post temp. Snow was blowing with 40 m.p.h. wind gusts. Crazy! So much for taking advantage of that window of warm riding weather. Boo hoo, cry a freakin river.
Jesse, Travis, Garet, Kevin and I made plans to ride on Sunday. We knew it would be a challenge. We only had a dusting of snow, maybe a few inches at best, but with wind and a morning temp forecasted at 5 degrees, we planned for the worst and hoped for the best. Landahl was going to be the proving grounds and we were planning to tear it up until our toes froze.
Garet’s funny. He dawned his snowboarding helmet and camouflage balaclava to stay warm. Comedy is always a part of our rides…otherwise we’d all be 20 pounds lighter and be pulling a diamond out of our ass’ every other week; we don’t go there.
Landahl is one of Kansas City’s finest trails. The mix of ‘everything’ keep me coming back year after year. We started out on Rim Job, then Family Trail, on to Tasty Goodness and finished up on Swedish Erotica (I think this is what we did? I was the caboose so I just tried to keep up.) The tree roots and rocks (which are in abundance at Landahl) were all slick and would shift your bike suddenly from one side of the trail to another. I know I biffed hard at least twice, and the fellas had to of nailed snow covered dirt too…I was just in the back and never had the pleasure of the show. No one was hurt too bad and the ride was a success, even with Jesse’s mechanical issue; [He] lost two of his four chain ring bolts and almost a third. He rides a single speed, so there is some major power going down and with those bolts missing he bent his chain ring. Fortunately I carry this little bag of repair crap in my jersey pocket. I’ll post-up about the contents that later, but it will be some recommendations as to what is good to carry to be self sufficient on the trails. I happened to have a spare bolt and as far as the fourth…we rigged that crap back in order with a couple zip ties and he was good for the remainder of the ride. YES!
Our plan was to ride for an hour and a half, which we believed is all our exposed skin could take in the blistering cold. We ended up clocking-in just shy of three hours. It was a blast, My legs got blasted, bonked, cold. Good Times with the Original Ethos Posse, always good times.



1 comment:

jesse said...

That was a f'ing blast. Can't wait for more snow rides. Thanks for the total hook up on the chain ring bolts. I have added them to my emergency kit!