Okay, I hope I got all my bad luck over yesterday.  Bill, Trudi and I jumped into the van and drove to the Bass River Resort, outside of Steelville Missouri, an hour south St. Louis. It’s about 5 hours.   Bill and I are riding the Berryman Epic this morning at 8:30 am.

We got there early enough to pre-ride an hour or so.  And it got ugly for me.  We rode out the gravel climb and then got to the first singletrack section, about 4 miles in.  There is a pretty rocky descent, totally covered with leaves, early in the section.  We rode down it, but it was sketchy.  We kept riding up the next technical climb, then turned around to do the descent and climb again.

The 2nd time down the descent, I blew my rear tire off the rim.  I think what happened was that I had a couple thorns in the tire, it lost air, I burped it, then it came off.  Whatever the reason, it wasn’t good.  I put in a tube, only to find another thorn, so changed the tube again.

Then I spent the next two hours trying to mount another tire.  We got to an air compressor, but it didn’t put shit out for air.

Plus, my rim was dented in 4 or 5 places.  I straightened the rim and finally just patched the original tire and got it remounted.  Not without using two CO2 cartridges.   Plus, my best pump, a Park, started leaking air, so I don’t have any correct air pressure.

Anyway, it was stressful.  Okay, have to get going.  50 miles of mostly singletrack to ride fast today.  I think I’m going alright, so it should be fun.

The whole course is going to be deep covered in leaves.  This is the road we start on, then it is pure singletrack.

My rim was dented in a few places.

Fixin’ it with a Cresent wrench and Campy BB tool.

You have to be careful not to over bend it.

A tube after latex is a mess.

Berryman was yesterday and it was epic, at least for me.  I finished 2nd, but I’ll to get to that tomorrow. The awards go kind of late there, so we didn’t get back until after 1am.  By the time I unpacked and got clean, it was nearly 3 before I went to sleep.  To my amazement, I slept past 10, which isn’t normal anymore.

We’re meeting up for a road ride pretty soon, so I have to rush a little.

What I was reminded of this weekend is that it is super fun to race through the woods fast on a bike.  Riding singletrack fast is something that takes a while to learn.  I wasn’t doing it all that consistently, but when I was “on”, it was a blast.  There is such a huge speed difference between just riding off-road and racing.

The MTB crowd seems to have more enthusiasm than the road.  I’m not sure why that is.  But everyone seemed so into the race, the day, just the whole surroundings.  There were a bunch of happy people there.

Okay, that is about all I got this morning.  Don’t want to spend too much of a beautiful fall day on the computer.

Imagine riding 5 or 6 hours on a singlespeed, on rocks, with your seat flopping around like this? Lots of standing. Pretty ugly and amazing at the same time.

Scott and Jake always have a nice fire going at the finish. This year was no different.