i double dare you

The day before my first Double Dare it rained. That was 1996, which seems like an eternity ago, I'd only been riding for a year and it was my third race ever. At 5pm that rainy Friday I got a call from the LBS that the shock I'd been waiting for had just come in. I rushed over to pick it up before they closed and then rushed home to get it installed. I had to transfer all the parts off my hard tail onto the squishy bike so it was quite the process. I got it all done around 10pm and when I tried to test ride it in the kitchen I discovered the new shock was the wrong size. There was no way it was going to work. So, a quick run to the store for a second pizza and a second twelve pack and then it was right back to transferring all the parts from the squishy bike back to the hard tail. I won't even go into how I still had to pack for the race and drive from Charlotte.

That year I think we got four checkpoints the first day and three the second day. It was my partners first time riding Pisgah and those meager seven checkpoints still made for quite a challenging weekend. It was won by Zach Broussard and Nick Kindt who reached an amazing 20 checkpoints over the course of the race. If you would have told me then that five years later I would be racing with Broussard for the second time as real contenders I would never have believed you!

I haven't been doing much this week. Just standing around watching the world glide by:



Of course I had to do some light bike testing so I hit Bear Branch one day and got a few geocaches in the process.

Gnome Freedom Project:



Death to Film Canisters:



Yesterday I went to a hidden little corner of Pisgah where I go sometimes when I just want to get in an easy little mini ride.







I'd tell you where it is but that would spoil the fun!