The grateful dead ride

Saturday was my 'rising up from the dead' ride after the plague visited my sinuses for a few days.  The drugs were working miracles and I was either going to enjoy a ride or die trying.  I sent out a few invites for a singlespeed only ride on a local trail that is a crown jewel of the forest.  The oak trees up there are not the typical Live Oak that stays green all year, but these trees turn color and drop their leaves in big drifts of clutter that gather in all the sweeping corners of the trail, or, at least they do that just as soon as they are done placing acorns on the rest of it.  So what you have then is a stratified layer of detritus that is deadly and lovely all at the same time.

The loudest thing in the forest was our tires rolling through the leaf piles and the occasional "brrrrraaaaapppp" of one stuck against the tire like a paper boy's bike laced with playing cards.  Well, that and our SS induced wheezing and breathing and panting.

It ended up just being Navy Mike and I as all the others were unable to come out and play.  It is great to ride with someone that is at the same level of ability and fitness as you and has nothing to prove.  We rode-pushed-rode-pushed-rode until we were close enough to the top to call it good.  And it was good.  Out of the wind, under the oaks, in the sun, on the grass.  We were unhurried on purpose.

Not dead...just rusting.  New steel and old steel.

 Singlespeed 29ers are just amazing beasts of conveyance.  I never tire of the challenge and the rewards they offer.  I never tire of the amazing creation I get to ride them on, this earth.  Flawed as it is, it is a special place.  Today was just a couple of old guys on simple bikes in a lovely place on a great trail, and we had the good sense to slow down and enjoy it.

Yeah, that could happen way more often than it does and it would be ok with me.  Label me alive and grateful, not dead yet....just resting.