Like Summer...

What a great weekend! Warm temps, sunshine and a TON of fun stuff to do outside. I started off the weekend with a family bike ride, picnic and playground fun.

Then I was motivated to ride some rogue trail after being sent this... a little video clip that CORE-bin made during some post Pirate cXc Championship race recon. This is the Ladder Bridge that he and The Manimal built specifically for the race . If you were there, you know all the details.

And here is what the stunt looked like on Saturday during my own personal post-race recon adventure...There's a crap load of water making the course impassible. It's amazing how fast this place was consumed and flooded.

It would appear that after the plethora of rain that we've had the last few weeks, the low parts of the course have transformed into a frog breeding ground. The section incoming from the high field, just after the many dirt humps and down the bench-cut hillside was once a nice bit of single track surrounded by tall grass. Suffering a simular death it has become a creek as seen below.

The Deep was a fun race to see go down in the history books. I know the Pirate cXc courses are designed specifically for race night, and not meant to be ridden again, but I 've been craving a lap. Most of the course was still good and enjoyable. It was just the two spots seen above that were better traveled by canoe. Even in the daylight it was a super fun lap.

At some point in my ride I spun a quick lap on the SMP Mountain Bike Trails. Things were prime if not a bit too dusty. I quickly learned the importance of setting your EBB high in it's rotation to gain optimal bottom-bracket ground clearance. I had mine set too low and was peddle-striking the holy-hell out of SMP. Lesson Learned and remedied.

Next I headed over to do a lap of The Darkness Course. My plan was to ride all three of the Pirate cXc race courses in one 'Endurance Style Lap', though at a casual off-the-couch pace. [They] can all be linked together if you know the area, and I was thinking it would make for a fun night-ride or endurance-festival in the not-so-distant future. 

I make it to The Darkness Course and I'm climbing the long grassy hill just beofre the V-slot, when suddenly my right foot ejects off the pedal. I'm thinking that my cleat possibly came off my shoe or loosened-up. Upon further inspection I realize that my cleat is fine, but rather my pedal is GONE! I search the ground and locate my Crank Brothers Eggbeater 3 only to find is has somehow seized-up and self-extracted. Hoping to fix this sucker in the field I start to tear it apart only to find that I cannot get it fixed. I need a vice or vise-grips to hold the round sleeve in order to re-thread the cylinder back onto the main body (see exposed threads in comp photo below, left pedal). Just a totally weird mishap which made for a crappy one-legged ride home (with my bad knee).

So even though I had to hike-a-bike and one-legged-pedal *3, 645 miles to get home, all turned out great and I finished up the night hanging around the campfire and camping with my boys. It's times like these that I live for. Keeping my fingers crossed that the forecasted rain misses the area, allowing the Tuesday Night Pirate Ride to commence as scheduled.