Wherein I began to coast. Or: The Tuesday Morning Walk

Done broke down

Promised myself I wasn't going to blog about today's Tuesday Morning Ride. I always seem to end up blogging about the Tuesday Morning Ride... year after year.  And this year, even though I was super-stoked to finally get out on a Tuesday Morning Ride (We were moving out of our old house last week), on my new bike too-boot, I at least wanted to wait a few weeks before putting words to what's become my requisite TMR blog-post.

But then, low-and-behold, I had a mechanical this morning on the burnt-up-but-still-fun Little Bear trail. A mechanical of the unfixable variety: a broken break-away derailleur-hanger bolt... With no replacement bolt to be found among us, despite the fact that the three of us were on nearly identical Epic 29ers, the unfixable mechanical subsequently led to a broken chain when I tried to jury-rig the drivetrain as a singlespeed... Not something you can do with a full-suspension bike, I guess.

Now chainless and derailleur-less, I was compelled to abandon my friends and hike back up to the top of Mount Elden along the trail I'd just ridden down, rather than continue to ride down the trail and then have to hike up Elden Spring trail and a billion ups-and-downs on Schultz Creek trail... The better choice? Flip-of-a-coin, probably. Upon reaching the saddle-ridge after a 20 minute walk, I began to coast and walk and coast for miles and miles, first down Red Onion and then down the Elden Lookout Road, in order to get home... home to my new home, natch, which, it just so happens, is now conveniently located near the bottom of said-road.

And, well, after all that, plus a fine picture of the incident by Chris, I felt like I had something to write about.