Handerpants...

Oh how I look forward to Tuesday nights. Tuesday night = bike ride night, on rogue dirt, with friends. Last night all things pirate went down in full and true form. Our newest landlubber, CORE-bin, arrived early upgrade and further pimp-out his bike. In the last week [he] has raced and stood on the top of the podium in his first ever mountain bike XC race. He also had a sweet new SS wheel-set built and stepped-up from mechanical to hydrolic disc brakes. It's almost as if he is enjoying and really getting into this whole realm of riding bikes. I certainly enjoy his company and kid-like energy.

Our crew last night was for the most part the regulars, minus Pyro & Farmer, but consisting of; The Manimal, CORE-bin, G-Wiz, Billy & I. So instead of being in a hurry to roll right at 7, we lolly-gagged around and played on the backyard skills course for a good 30 minutes. It was like a yard sale gone wrong back there; bikes and dudes in tight pants flailing all over the woods. I know that each of us crashed at least once in our pursuit of stardom, challenging one another to do or die on random log bridges, rock skinnies and features that make your average cyclist get a case of the snail eye. Let's pause for a moment to recognize the man, Billy. He is so gung-ho on the P-rides that he ordered his very own pirate jersey, if for no other reason but to scare the trail into dusty submission. Yes, you get bonus points for that one.

We roll into the woods in a fairly normal fashion, avoiding our typical creek crossing due to a slight chill in the air. The Manimal likes to induce immediate suffering, so we made a feeble attempt at his favorite rogue and nearly impossible switchbacks as a warm-up. We then found ourselves riding some excellent bench cut trail through heavily wooded valleys that had a strong exposed feeling about them. One wrong peddle-stroke and you were in for certain carnage off the side of what at night appeared to be straight from the movie, The Abyss.

With darkness upon us we rendezvous with P-ride newb Griffin and continue on our quest for all things dirt. We give him a tour of the finest hidden gems of the area, including but not limited to; The Darkness, The Autobahn, Beer Climb #'s 2 and 3, The Circle of Death and so on. It was great to have a new face riding with the crew, especially one that could keep up and have a good time on his single speed. Looking back I realize that it was only G-Wiz who had more than one gear during our dust-fest of a good ride. What do we have to do to get that kid back to the dark side?

I guess I should also mention that I took a good dive during our adventure; a fly-bye rumble-tumble of a crash you might say. It must have looked like some kind of animal attack from the bug-eyed stares and laughter coming from my riding pals (thanks you f-ing jerkwads!). But as we entered The Autobahn, a giant and well known tree root the size of Ron Jeremy's third leg tossed me and my plastic bike into the earth like a rag doll. I had a slight scratch on my knee and a pain in my hand like I'd just high-five'd a Mack truck at 80mph. All was good though, since a P-ride just isn't as memorable without a good visual showing of acrobatic skills, which was shortly thereafter challenged by Billy's flail off the trail, a.k.a. instant karma (now who's laughing).

Thanks for coming out to rally fellas! Our three hours of dirt, blood, comedy, skills course action and man-cave beer drinking goes down once again as a fond memory, though my memory usually fails me 24hrs later. It couldn't have been much better a ride. See you fellas and the rest of you next Tuesday night for yet another episode of 'The Misadventures of Handerpants'.