May 30, 2020

ADFRIENDTURE

WHAT ARE THE BEST BIKE RIDES? Adventures with friends. With all the warm feelings of finally being back together after months... something was bound to happen over the course of 45 miles with 7000' of vert in our local forest.

For examples...

One crank falling off

Two bleeding legs

One tumble in the moon dust

A fair amount of cramping

And, a complete detonation on the final climb.

But, the worst...

... the one that had howls of pain ricocheting across the canyon...

... I won't soon forget.

Our final decent was on The Luge. A trail with huge berms and jumps and nasty braking bumps... offering chances to fall off a cliff to one's death.

Which is exactly what those screams sounded like.

They were coming from a young lad of 12ish years on his own adfriendture with his big brother and another buddy. He was the last rider in their trio... all riding on crappy bikes and adrenalin.

He'd fallen 15' and landed in a cactus plant.

We formed a huMan chain and yanked him out.

Scared and shaken.

He'll be fine, and have a story he can tell the rest of his life... which no doubt will get better with time.

An adfriendture.

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Apologies to today's tour guide, MG. I thought his prediction of 4 hours was nuts. He insisted we'd push each other.

Perhaps it was his pep talk... This is a drop ride, so keep up!