Some more Skidmore

Some of my more loyal readers might remember an epic 6hr tour we took a season or two ago at SMBA's trails back behind Skidmore.

Well apparently 6hrs, a trip to one or several other dimensions and a possible Jerry sighting was not enough for Jomo and he wanted more.  Fresh off a UT road trip a few of the gang decided to head out as well to welcome the traveler back to the right coast with miles and miles of singletrack...and maybe a beer or two.

The weather more than cooperated and we got two great days of riding in.  Saturday we snagged a solid 15 miles that felt a bit more like 25.  There are plenty of rocks in the Adirondacks (and surrounding areas where we were) and the SMBA trail cutters are seemingly very proficient at cutting trails to make sure that you have to ride over every single one of them or avoid them accordingly.  It's a nice little 2 mile road warm up to the trails through gorgeous horse farm country.

We (Myself, Adam, Jomo, Dustin, DT and Jeff) set right to the task of trail slaying early on.  I got the mechanical ball rolling somewhat early with a rear flat I gave myself by riding some terrain perfectly wrong.  Fine display of how not to keep your tires inflated on my part.  Chalked it up as some trail side wrenching practice before race season and continued on.  Unfortunately I failed to notice that when I flipped my bike over to change the flat my Garmin stopped recording and it took me about a half mile or so to notice and the data got a bit screwed up.  Oh well.

Everybody was riding well and seeing as I had already put on a clinic on how not to ride, I figured I would also demonstrate some highly advanced techniques as well.  The group was coming up on a short but fairly steep technical rise, almost a two or three stage step up of sorts.  I forget exactly who was in front or behind but a rider or two had stalled at various points and as I rode up I thought I had a sporting chance so I went for it.  My initial surge got me about halfway up and as I tried to continue to muscle up my front end started to lift off the ground...(can you see where this is going? I bet you can but you have no idea)

This is actually somewhat common, the wagon wheels on a 29er put your front end up a bit higher and depending on your cockpit config (some 29er riders don't like risers because they put you too high) you have to keep your weight fairly forward.  Usually if this starts to happen you have to either bail or commit and hope that your forward momentum is enough to balance things out in time.  As you can guess I had an audience so I committed and things did NOT balance out.  In fact they did the opposite, really fast.

I gave it one last grunt and when I did that every ounce of force I put to the pedals was translated directly in to me going completely airborne and inverted landing straight on my back/shoulders still clipped into my pedals.  Please note I didn't just fall over backwards, I went from right side up to upside down while not touching the ground.  Very proud of this, and several people witnessed the whole thing and there were absolutely no injuries.  Perfect.

After that the ride was fairly standard fair, lots of great terrain, rock features and man made bridges galore:

 looks steep right? it wasn't.

This was a special moment in DT's life.

not bad for a pink walmart camera.

oh and by standard fair I mean pretty damn awesome.

 

one of these days we are going to find that iPhone

We also did some riding on Sunday but there is something about a 15 mile ride the day before and then a night out on the town that turns 12 miles into a bit of a haze.  Either that or maybe it was that shot of hot sauce concoction I drank for $10.  I guess we'll never know.