and proceeded to stuff seven bikes into their front room and ourselves and three dogs into the rest of the house, failed to figure out how to work their TV remote, and threw out all the food in their fridge to make room for our assorted beverages.
Saturday morning, we blasted through two pots of coffee while Dave made us all excellent breakfast burritos, then packed into Matt's truck for a day of riding laps on the 18 Road trails in Fruita.
(Colorowdie ringmaster Tony B. was also in attendance at the Martins' house, but since he had not been cleared to ride mountain bikes yet after his super gnarly surgery, he put on a full spandex Fred "kit" and took his shiny carbon Fredmobile for a spin up Monument Road.)
Though our plan was to shuttle to the top of each run, we agreed to pedal up the first lap so that we could at least pretend we were hardcore. We made our way to the top of PBR and took some quick photos of Matt in his amazing enduro getup
and caught Kelly playing with her phone instead duly admiring Matt's amazing enduro getup
and then we were off!
I'd forgotten how much fun PBR is. It's just pure joy: nothing technical, just flow. The weather was perfect, and so was the dirt. At the bottom, we immediately went back to the parking lot to shuttle up for more.
Next up: Joe's Ridge to Mojo's. I didn't recall what features were where on the trail, so I took it a little slow but still had a blast.
Lap three was Kessel Run; it's always more pedal-y than I remember, and I arrived at the bottom thoroughly out of breath from trying to pin it the whole way.
The short drive back to the top was hardly enough time to recover for the lung-buster of the day, Zippety Do Dah. I stopped during one climb to catch my breath under the pretext of taking a photo of Matt, Kelly and Eric up ahead
and then of Taylor behind me, taking a photo of me taking a photo of the others.
There are a couple of steep, short, sweeping descents on Zippety, and as I swooped down them I took satisfaction in recalling how I was too intimidated to ride those sections on my first visit to Fruita many years ago, on a different bike and with different people. I love the moments like this when my progress as a rider is tangible.
After that, we were pretty worked and the truck was running low on gas, so we drove back into town for a lunch break.
We parked ourselves at some tables in the sun outside Camilla's Kaffe on the main street, which precluded us from ordering beer since we were not within the patio area covered by their liquor license. This was just as well, because the faintest whiff of alcohol would have had me, and likely the others, nodding off for a warm afternoon nap. Once we were sated and sufficiently up to date on social media via our smartphones, we drove back to 18 Road for a few more laps.
The climbs hurt a great deal more after the break, as they tend to do, and on the final lap I made myself a nuisance for Kelly and Taylor by finding a few spots to set up and take "rad action photos". This required a brief tutorial on using the mercurial camera's "sport continuous" setting which, due to my terrible skill at explaining things, resulted in some misfires and shoving bikes back up the trail for second attempts.
First, we set up at the double towards the top of PBR, which I hadn't managed to clear when we were in Fruita the previous year; I was feeling confident now and wanted another crack at it.
Success! Here I am in midair:
And here is proof of my back tire landing on the transition, albeit just barely:
So that was nice.
There was another little feature just down the trail from the double, and I had Kelly take a series of Taylor chasing me on it:
Kelly also hit it, but I made a hash of the photo by not zooming in and getting my shadow in it:
And then, because I'm annoying and high-maintenance, I also wanted some cornering shots, so I stopped at a nice bermed corner with trees framing the mountains behind and got a few decent ones:
The camera is great for taking quick series photos, but clearly the resolution is kinda crap.
Action shots accomplished, we ripped down the rest of the way, reconvened at the truck with the boys, and went back into town for pizza and beer at the Hot Tomato. Tony was already there, heroically holding down a table for 8 on his own. We settled on three large pizzas to share amongst ourselves and claimed the beers that had eluded us at lunch. As our leftovers were boxed up, Kelly went to the bar on orders to "ask for the stickers that they keep behind the counter," which turned out to be these:
I was mystified by most of them until Kelly explained that the owners of the Hot Tomato are a lesbian couple who ride bikes, which is awesome on several levels.
On Day 2 we rode Lunch Loops, and since the shuttle to the top of Free Lunch is particularly inconvenient we agreed to pedal our butts up there. This was somewhat rough due to the extremely large and delicious breakfast we had just consumed at Dream Cafe in town that morning, complete with mimosas for most of us.
What felt like several hours and fifty miles later, we arrived at Free Lunch, where Matt immediately struck another Enduro Jerks pose:
And I attempted to be "artsy" with the camera again:
but mostly just managed to cut the top of Matt's head out of the photo.
After that I gave up taking photos and just rode my damn bike! At the end of Free Lunch, we took Holy Cross back down towards the parking lot, which was just as fun and challenging as I remembered it to be, and I especially enjoy that a sign at the beginning of the trail reminds users that it's supposed to be difficult, and to please not alter the features to make them easier. More trails could use signs like that, I think.
Once back at the cars, we stuffed leftover pizza in our faces and drank some more beer:
The Front Rangers left shortly afterward to sit in the I-70 Sunday afternoon traffic, and Kelly and I mustered enough energy to do a couple laps of the pump track. There were several children out there as well, absolutely crushing the dirt jumps and soaring effortlessly through the air like smug little seagulls, and it gave me yet another opportunity to curse my parents for not putting me on a BMX bike the moment that I developed the motor skills to hold on to handlebars. I could have been a contender!
Altogether it was a pretty perfect weekend, except for the part where Huck blew his anal glands on Taylor's lap in the truck, which caused such acute nasal discomfort for the rest of us that she had to buy and change into a new pair of shorts while we were having lunch in Fruita. Yeah, that happened...
And on that note, thanks for reading and have a shredtastic day!
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