Blue Tires :: Old Randomer

Blue Tires.

Goo
5/7/05

Today I was supposed to go mountainboarding at what was rumored to be a super sweet spot. It was supposed to have huge downhill stretches of single track. Excitement number 1.

This place is on a decent size hill, that I’ve been wanting to mountainboard for quite some time. Excitements 2 and 3.

Later on in the morning before we were planning on going, I found out that they were supposed to have a decent jump section. As there is nothing in the way of freestyle jumps where I come from, that excited me all the more. Excitements 4, 5, and 6. Also, excitements 7 and 8.

But, we have to work all morning, doing stuff for my grandparents (which I didn’t mind so much) and doing stuff for my brother (which I minded more, but not too much), but I was thinking about mountainboarding during the entire expanse of time. Excitement factor reaches 9.

Finally we decide to leave. Excitement factor equals ten.

But, then my Mom (everyone goes “Ha, your mom.”) decides that she and my brother will tag along with me and watch. They turn out to be super annoying. Excitement factor decreases to 7.

We wander around for two hours trying to find stuff to ride. It didn’t help that we went the wrong way for the kind of riding I was looking for. We ended up searching for 2 hours and came up with next to nothing. Excitement factor decreases to 2.

Then, as we are coming back out, we meet a guy that claims that the mountainbikers “have crazy $#!+ everywhere” including “jumps and $#!+.” He gives us directions to a “teeter totter,” so we go to check it out. Excitement factor increases back to 7. There’s still some hope for some mountainboarding.

So we get where we’re going, and I find a couple of tracks that look to be a great ride. One was a super technical track that wound down through a gully, a drainage ditch of some sort. It had dead, rotting trees that were lying across it, like most of the gullies in this area, but in here they had been cut through just enough for one or two different sections of single track snake down through the severed trunks, rocks, and other debris. All of this was on a good slope, so speed control could definitely be an issue. (I don’t ride with a brake.) Down at the bottom there was a good drop that promised some airtime. The other run was a doubletrack that started off with a gradual downhill, then steepened up quickly and dropped out of site. It looked like a challenging ride, carving/powersliding most of the way down. Excitement factor has reached 12.

But, the only thing missing from the picture is that a piece of my binding had come off, and I tried to reattach it, but it was still very loose. Out of all the tools I have for on trail repairs, I do not have a screwdriver, the one tool I needed. So, we hiked around and looked, planning on going back to the vehicle to repair the board and then come back to let me do some riding. By the time we had hiked back out to the car, my Mom decided that it was time to go. Time to go? I hadn’t even gone mountainboarding yet! We’ve hiked around for 2 fricking hours, me dragging you along, not able to enjoy the solitude of the woods, and not even getting any mountainboarding or airtime in. And then, you have the audacity to even suggest that we leave after I find 2 excellent spots... 2 fricking excellent spots, that I could have spent at least 2 hours on each of them? What is this? You’re tired, because you just got done hiking for 2 hours. I thought you were the mountainbiking queen. I just got done, also hiking for 2 hours, in full pads, helmet, with a backpack and a mountainboard on my back, weighing in at least 25-30 pounds, sweating profusely the whole fricking time.

So we left. I ended up with such a bad case of blue tires, I had to mountainboard in the flipping parking lot of the store my mom decided to go to. When we got back to my grandparent’s, I ended up road riding on their flipping shallow hill/road near their house to get release. For about an hour and a half.

I have just suffered through a horrible case of level 12 blue tires. I’m still in pain.