Big Ring can BITE me!!

Literally.

I think it's time I took that bitch off and hucked it into a nearby river sewer grate.  It's somewhat fitting that it reared it injurious teeth again today.  See, it was the teeth of the big ring on the HiFi that initially led (helped at least) to the moniker "snakebite."  Saturday evening I was thinking that Eastwood is just fine, I don't need the snakebite nickname.  Legitimately, the night before the ride I was thinking of nixing snakebite.

Fast forward to yesterdays ride.  Not a mile into the singletrack and Sean loses a bottle in the trail.  I shout to him and stop to grab the bottle.  I'm standing in the trail, bike leaning on my leg and I bend forward to pick up the bottle.  Bike slips down my leg, teeth of the big ring SOMEHOW slice down the outside of my leg above the ankle.  FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU (you know the rest).  I look, nothing.  A little scratch.  Then, blood gush commences.  A horrible thought flashes across my brain - ride ending injury?  No.  I won't let that be the truth.  I watch it.  No spurting.  Pick up the HiFi and push forward to give Sean his bottle back.  The pain isn't really noticeable and I try to forget about it.

The pain doesn't set in until after the ride.  The shower sucked and I gingerly cleaned it... without looking directly into the wound.  I uploaded the video that was shot before the skies opened up and drowned us with less than 2 miles left in the ride.  A mile or so down the trail after the injury we paused and I pulled my helmet off to capture the injury - figured it would make for a good cut scene in the action.

I thought I was going to puke when I saw it.

Damnit, does that need stitches?  I dunno.  But the Emergency Room is the last place I wanted to be sitting on a Sunday evening.  I could close it pretty easily with very little pressure so Annie ran out to get some butterfly bandages to see if that would do the job.  What's one more scare on a leg terrorized by pitiful big ring bites?

How were the trails?  Due to rain we only got through Warrior Creek - didn't get to play on Dark Mountain.  But I'll get into the trails tomorrow.  Right now we have to see about this wound.  I will say this, on the day that my New England brethren were taking on the Boneyard I was on what can only be considered the furthest thing from it... super hard packed, bermed, "rail that roller coaster" of a trail.  So, although I didn't feel the pain of the race, I felt my own pain - in honor of the Boneyard!*

courtesy of http://wrathoftheboneyard.blogspot.com/

*Sounds much better than a big ring biting you while picking up an ejected water bottle....

Team Dild's Grill heatin' things up at Kingdom Trails - The Preview

It all goes down Saturday 6/18.  Hide your wife, hide your kids, cause we are riding EVERYTHING up in here!!

Jealous?

So we aren't riding everything... but there you have the "planned" route.  Obviously spur of the moment overrides are perfectly acceptable as are add-ons or repeats of super fun times!!

Here is a run down of the trails hit (the map is pretty straight forward, there is only one section where you might get lost in highlighter)

Start with a climb up East Darling Hill.

Jump on the Loop to Poundcake

Fence Line

Pastore Point Loop

Pastore Point

Hop on Coronary to Loop to Bemis

Tap and Die

River Run 

Webs

River Run

Dry Feet

River Run

West Branch

Hog Back

Sidewinder

West Branch

Border

Old Web's (loop back on itself)

Border

Knob

Sugar Hill

Ridge

Rim

East Branch

Vast

Pines

Widow Maker

East Branch

Riverwood

Vast

Beat Bog

Sugarhouse Run

Kitchel

Herb's

Finish.

This will be similar to the route I rode last year (my first time) except I did it in reverse, I'm thinking the flow this way will be better.  Sean (the other half of Team Dild's Grill) aka Big Red has never been to Kingdom Trails and is coming off an annoying (2 flats and a broken chain) race at Big Bear this past weekend... so he is in for some good times on the bicycle.  He is renting an XL HiFi so we will be bike twins for the day!!

Only a few more days until Snakebite and Big Red are tearing it up again!