Chriffer

23.2 Miles

I was up with the sun as I normally am while camping and that gave me the perfect chance to take some great photos.  I headed down to the lake the area was named for with a delightfully light bike.  I got to the picnic beach and it was nice and quiet with great lighting coming from the rising sun.  Everything was perfect until I went to take some pictures and found that my camera wouldn't focus properly.  After much experimenting around with all the possible settings, I managed to take one shot and then headed back to the camp area to try and figure out what was going wrong.    I eventually figured out the lens was the problem and it wouldn't focus on anything further than about 10 feet away.  So take a minute to savor the last photo of the trip.

There were plenty of other things going on during the day with vendors setup and opening ceremonies.  Nothing much exciting happened here other than I managed to cut myself gently laying my bike down on the ground.  The lady at the REI booth managed to scrounge up a bandaid so I would be able to fill out their form without getting blood all over the place.  After getting bored in the vendor area, my camping neighorbor Mark and I decided to hit the trails.  The bike he rides is designed for dirt jumping and mine still had the racks for carrying gear on so we made quite the odd pair on the trails.  Right from the start he was having problem in all the uphill sections after having too much fun on the trails the previous day.  We stuck together for a while, but when I realized I would never make the lunch I signed up for in time, we split up.  This was not something I wanted to do because I also was not carrying all the normal things everyone should be carrying on the trails.  All I had was water, a map, and a pump attached to my bike.  He had the tools and patches for flat tires, but wasn't concerned since he was walking his bike much of the time anyway. 

I went tearing off ahead knowing a flat would make for a miserable time.  A mile into my solo portion of this ride I hit a trail intersection that finally let me know where I was at.  We had only covered about half the distance we thought we did when we split up.  The good news was this was one of those trails you just wished would never end.  A nice rhythm of ups and downs with almost nothing that forced a stop.  The amazingly fun and long Ray's trail ended and put me onto the Sidewinder trail that just plunged downhill seemingly the entire way.  Of course what goes down must come back up in the mountain bike world, and the next trail named Osprey took me right back up the same sort of thing I just went down.  The climb was somehow enjoyable with no killer parts just a smooth ramp up into the sky.  I was in a hurry at this point to catch the lunch so I took off down an access road from the top of the climb and made my way to the lunch only a little late.  The lunch of course went on for about two hours which would have left me plenty of time to get back any way I wanted.  I drowned my sorrows in cookies and had a chat about the odd bikes that were around with some random guy.  There was a Surly Big Dummy, Jeff Jones Space Frame ($$$$$$$$$$$$$$), and my bike with racks stood out as well. 

I started reassembling my bike into touring mode before the end of the day.  I was looking forward to getting back on the road with some winds at my back.  There was some fireside beer and chatting for much of the evening.  The winds were kicking up and a few peoples tents were taking off.  I changed my hammock setup to closed up the tarp on the end the wind was coming from.  I was a little worried about all of it because I had set up in very nice weather with no real consideration for high winds.  The wind rocked my hammock back and forth during the night, but that was the worst of it for me.  Next up a short day to start off the ride home.