The Do It All Ride!

I just finished a ride with a couple of new riding buddies, Bob and Pat of Helena, Montana. These guys have some secret squirrel trails hidden away that I don’t think get used very often by the looks of parts of the trail. So I was lucky or unlucky enough to get shown the way around some very obscure areas.

After riding the loop Bob showed us I can see why they don’t get used very often. Once you take a guy on this ride he probably always has a reason he can’t make it the next time! You know like I have to mow the lawn or I have a pile of dishes I gotta get done so I can take my wife shopping, etc.

We rode some absolutely awesome almost unridden trails that we had to move logs or cut downed trees with the chainsaw Bob brought in a backpack in order to make it through. I guess I should have caught on when Bob brought the chainsaw, sometimes I am a little slow. Then there were rock sections that resembled the Erzberg Rodeo. All of this was great fun and quite challenging, but just to make sure we didn’t get bored our point man Bob mixes in a little MUD/SWAMP along the way. Did I just say a little bit of Mud? How about over an hour of helping each other get through the FIRST swamp as we each took turns getting stuck. It took having the other two guys push, pull and lift while you tried to get your bike moving.

I have not gone over the bars in quite some time but this swamp was going to take care of that. I had the bright idea that if I went just fast enough to keep the bike driving forward I should be able to make it through the 50 yds of water and muck. Well it was all going according to plan until I found the bottomless water hole that stopped my bike so abruptly that I was looking straight down at the ground while the bike was doing a nose wheelie! Stopped instantly, motionless until I tipped over sideways with me pinned under the bike in the muck. It was so soft and so deep that I could not get up because my leg was pinned under the bike and every time I tried to push myself up with my hands they simply went deeper in the mud until my shoulder was on the ground! There was NO WAY to get up until my two compadres came over and lifted the bike to get my leg out from under it. Then, get this; I still could not push myself up because my hands kept going into the mud up to the shoulder repeatedly as I tried to push myself up. I literally had to ask Pat to come close enough that I could put my hand on top of his boot in order to have enough of a base to push myself up out of the mud. Crazy!

So once we cleared this little hurdle we continued on to some really cool trails that were not really trails but more of a direction on a side hill that required I track our ride leader Bob to hopefully go in the right direction. This eventually became a real trail and I was told we were headed back since this was the second half of the loop. It was now about 4pm and we had been out for just over 4 hours and covered a whopping 25 miles so it was actually turning into my kind of ride. I always like a challenge, Thanks guys! I figured if the second half of this ride was anything like the first, we should be done between 7 and 8 pm. Since I have a Baja Designs Squadron II headlight I knew I was in better shape than both Bob and Pat. I can actually trail ride comfortably with this lighting system as opposed to the stockers on the other bikes.

The rest of the ride was pretty straightforward except for one more mud pit in a heavily wooded section that we got off our bikes and walked before attempting it. We sloshed through and only spent about 30 minutes or so on it.

We arrived back at the truck at about 7 pm loaded our bikes and headed for a cool beverage on our way home. I fully intend to go back and ride with Bob and Pat, unless I have to take my wife shopping.

#33

‘You cannot hang out with negative people and expect to live a positive life’