First day back!!

This morning a shrill alarm roused my consciousness and despite a brief desire to curse my clock, silence the dream thief and roll back into my warm cocoon, I got out of bed rather slowly. Cutting through the fog was the thought that today, for the first time in the 7 months since my knee surgery and back injury, I would get the chance to take my downhill steed out of the lonely basement and point her tires downhill. That thought alone made the slight pain in my head and exhaustion slightly less relevant. I opened my door to find every available inch of counter space in my house covered in bottles of every size as well as various partially eaten potluck dishes and birthday treats. I greeted the broken wine glasses, spills on the floor and wine-soaked rags in the sink and grabbed a glass of water before laughing to myself. Last night was my room-mate and her twin sister's birthday party and we had done it up in style. Epic celebrations consisting of a packed house of the best of friends anyone could ask for, delicious potluck feast, singing, dancing and general mayhem flashed through my head... And that was before we made it to the bar. So epic, but that is another story all together.

I called up the two like-minded hooligans who were to be in on the mid-winter jailbreak of a riding mission. They were both slightly worse off than I, but the excitement of the adventure was contagious and before long excuses were set aside and a plan to ride Rio was enacted. After a fitting breakfast and a lifesaving cold shower my best friend and ride showed up, and we packed up my bike and bags containing the gear from a seemingly long-lost life. We met up with a brother from old-days, my best friend from high-school who had a lot to do with why I got into riding in such a big way. The three of us headed up the hill discussing life and exuding pure stoke.

At the top of the hill we found a fair bit more snow than expected but we geared up and giddily did what we had come there to do, pointed our tires downhill and got on the pedals. Now the 3 inches of snow at the top of the hill didn't do too much other than bring a new dimension to the trail and increase our stoke, but what lay ahead promised to be more challenging. Once we hit the treed-in flats the snow increased in both depth and crust and we were forced to get off our bikes and push. We achieved the downslope into the roadgap and were again getting zesty sliding everywhere but the fun was cut short once we hit the side-hill and were again cursing winter's cold heart. Once we got into the gully the snow got even deeper, but we had come too far to go back so we counted on the snow loosing depth further on and hammered through it. Adding to the challenge of just riding in the snow was a layer of crust from snowshoers who had apparently become fond of walking the trail, so needless to say the first third of the gully was a lot of work, pedalling like mad on the flats just to maintain rolling momentum. At one of the road-crossings the snowshoers turned off the trail and the snow simultaneously became hard enough to ride on. This was what we had come for - the hard work until that point had sapped at our lacking energy reserves but we put it behind us and immediately picked up both the pace and the volume of our cheers down the trail. I instantly fell back in love with my Glory - light, balanced and responsive as ever - and the mid-section was a lot of fun. After the steeper ravine section the snow had become quite shallow but, as I was soon to discover, under the white veil of winter there were patches of black ice in inopportune locations. Unweighting into a compression while thinking to myself how happy I was to be on my bike, I came down on a slightly off-camber downslope and instantly lost the front end. I saved the drift in staying upright but I shot off the trail directly into a little stand of trees, letting go of my bike right as I slammed into a decently-solid sapling. Hearing my buddy fast approaching and out-of-control behind me, I pretty much rolled out and had to scramble off the trail to avoid getting hit. At that point we looked under the snow and realized that we were pretty much riding on sheet ice. This made the bottom part of the trail super fun - it was pretty much like a burmed out luge track with next to no traction. I love anything drifty so this was a nice little challenging slice of heaven - the best kind of escape from my usual-as-of-late world of studying - so it was nice to have a clear mind and focus on staying upright. At the end of the trail high-fives were exchanged and we rode out to the truck. One part of the trio was in too rough of shape to challenge a second run so we called it a day at that point, making plans to try to escape winter's grip again some time soon in the future. Slightly later on we decided a mission to Savona and Batch must be pursued in short order, so plans are in place to break out at our first coming chance. It was so indescribably good to get back on the steed and steal back a major peace of my life it is tough to communicate. I cannot wait for the next chance and all who are interested are invited to come join! All the best!

Justin