Nothing too bad happened, but it was a series of breakdowns that characterized my most recent trip out to the hill. I was the first with a minor issue: going down the first decent hill in the middle of Fat Chuck’s Demise I realized that I had my back brake hard on and was still accelerating. A couple of minutes later to adjust the tension on the rear brake (the pad of which was nearly out) and we’re off again, although it took me a while to trust it again.

We did about sixteen linear miles of biking, and it was absolutely gorgeous out there. 70 degrees (21C), deep blue skies, beautiful green trees: truly amazing. There were five of us for the first 10 miles or so, and we all had different levels of conditioning, which meant taking a lot of brakes (kinda the lowest common denominator - whatever the terrain was like, there was someone who was done in by it :)). That was fine, this wasn’t a race after all, and we still got some great quad/calf burn out of the ride.

Anyway, back to those bike failures. Next on the list was Jason, whose rear caliper somehow twisted under his back rim after an endo. This was fixed, but he ended up having to loosen the cable quite a bit afterwords - which caused his second issue, having the pin come out of his right brake handle (not a pleasant sensation I can assure you). It was replaced, and a compromise tension was found that kept him rolling while giving him the option of stopping when needed :)

After this we were on our way back down the last few miles (going over some fragrant pine needles - I felt like I was in a commercial it was so pretty out there), when Don snapped his chain. This was a first for us, and nobody had a chain tool, so Jason and I ended up riding all the way back to the start so that he could get his Jeep and meet up with Don and Marcus at a trail crossing. Some kind soul (an ex-bike mechanic, for real) actually came up and fixed the chain about 30 minutes after we’d split, but neither of their celphones had any reception so they ended up coming in while Jason was out looking for them… ah, much chaos.

Where was I during the hunt? Why, I’d volunteered to stay down to look after the bikes (only 2 can fit on Jason’s rack, so mine and his had to stay put while he went on the unnecessary rescue). That meant that I was stuck sitting at the saloon, sipping on a Shiner and ordering food. Ah, well. The sacrifices you sometimes have to make for friends, and all that.

So all told, we did about sixteen miles of biking up and down some decently technical trails. I was more than a little exhausted after it was all over, and between that and the fact that it took us a couple of hours longer than we had anticipated thanks to all of the issues, I didn’t get any running in at all. Still, it was a great workout and I don’t begrudge trading my marathon-pace day for it in terms of cardio and muscular stresses. Rocky Hill lives up to both parts of its name quite well.

Oh - there was one more incident to relate. As I was backing out of the parking lot to head home, I heard a “thunk.” Yes, sure enough, I’d managed to find a telephone pole and back into it, out in the middle of fscking nowhere. This was all the more frustrating because I was looking out of the rear window as I did it, making sure that the bikes were secure! I had to get out of the car to see the pole - it was just perfectly obscured by the car’s C pillar. Damn. The only damage to the bikes was on my rear wheel, which will need to be retrued at a bike shop before it will, well, rotate. My rear derailleur and my pedal both scraped the car quite a bit as well.

Even with everything that went wrong it was a great day out with the guys, and I wouldn’t trade losing the bad for losing the good in the slightest.

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