hot and sticky off roading

i braved the intense humidity saturday and drove out to castlewood for some mountian biking. it rained at my house on friday night rather hard, so i was expecting a little dust-relief if anything. notta. no rain out there whatsoever. it was a dust bowl.

my intention was just to ride. again, keeping it very far below the threshold. that meant staying away from the lone wolf/grotpeter/cardiac climbs, so i started back toward the blue ribbon. there were ambulances and fire trucks at the entrance to the river trails...uh oh. i knew what that meant.

i rode leisurely along the river trail, dodging a few riders and hikers along the way. after finally making my way back to the "jumps", i saw the reason for the emergency crews. barryman and pfoodman were among the small group of people standing over a guy lying on the ground. they were tending to him, and it looked like he needed it. his thigh was pointing up, his ankle was pointing left. a bit of dislocating action, i guess. i couldn't look at THAT too long, so i said hi to the boys and continued back toward the blue ribbon.

i was already drenched in sweat when i hit the first climb. there was also the beginnings of mud on my legs, the combination of dust and sweat. it's sort of difficult to take it easy on blue ribbon. it climbs a lot, althought they are not hard climbs. i managed to keep it out of the red, doing one clockwise lap and one counterclockwise lap. only one tree down to speek of, right at the entrance going the counterclockwise direction. all in all, besides the dust, it was a good day on the trail.

no so good for the crooked leg guy. he was just getting whisked off in the ambulance when i was getting out of the river section. ouch, what was that, an hour?? i did climb the ranger station hill so that i could come down the love trail. all spring we raced that part of the course going up, and it is quite fun (when dry!!!) coming down.

enough was enough. 75 minutes of hardly-intense sauna action was all that i could take. after being swarmed by miniature sweat bees at the water fountain while rinsing off, i bugged out of there.