Saturday, November 26, 2005

Pain and Pleasure...



Craig, Ryan, Mark, and Rob, taking a little break.

I have heard a lot of good things about riding Wissahickon, so when it was brought up as the ride for today, I was in. After meeting up with Marcus at Victory we headed for the ride. The rest of the group met us at the trail head. Things started a little strange for me. After I got dressed I hopped on my bike and there was a problem. My rear hub was just spinning. Luckily, Mark had seen this before and knew how to get it going again. Whew, here I thought my day was over before it started.

I was warned about the climbing but I still wasn't ready for it, especially when it started right off the bat. We hit 3 or 4 tough climbs in the the first 45 minutes. After that the fun really started. The trails up there are Fucking Awesome. Some of the down hills were ripping fast and others were super technical. We rolled through some pretty cool sections did a few more climbs, then Rob had to bail. We headed for the last section. Marcus tells me 1 more climb, of course he had been saying that all day. The last climb was a bitch, but the down hills were sweet.

We also ran into Nick Schaffer and his step aunt Jill, who were leading a nice group. We rolled into the lot after 2 hours of some of the best riding I have done in a long time. I can't wait to get back there.

Well Thanks for reading,

Buddy

1 comment:

Frank Brigandi said...

HI Buddy,
Glad to hear you liked Ol' Wiss.
Agreed the trails there are pretty sweet, albeit now you can only ride designated areas. I grew up riding in that park that's where we all learned, people with the likes of Mike Yozell, Scott Hicks, and noable others. Riders come from the west coast to check out Wissahickon and are stunned that us east coasters actually ride trails as mangled as some are in the wiss.
I have been ridin there since the early 80's, learning on a 40-50 pound bike, no suspension at all just big tires and lots of adrenaline. I took my first ride on a single speed there, it was obviously difficult.
Erosion there is bad because of the soil content, there is lots of Mica which doesn;t stick to itself very well so, the trails change everytime it rains. We used to maintain the trails but now some company does it and alot of the time trails are closed because of the treturous nature.. ( huh?)
Climbing.. yep there is lots of it, not many flowy places. You can spot some one who has been riding in wiss for too long of a a time with no break from it, they have this sort of choppy style that has no flow. They think everyclimb is a death grind and all of the downhills may be the last time they look down a hill, they are bug-eyed tend to scream alot and their bikes and bodies are a fucking wreck, dents, scratches, broken things that are rigged, it's our mortal hell. But a fun place to ride anyway.
Me? I stay away from it this time of year, all of the leaves that are down on the trail make for a bad game of peek-a-boo with the rocks, that mostly ends with us losing. And that frigging dirt gets super slippery when it's wet.
there's nothing like being overconfident in wiss, picking a nice line then suddenly sliding down into the middle of the trail where all of the uglies are, not being able to get out of it and slamming you and your bike onto an orgy of Agate the size of small ranging from small children, small animals, soft balls, and dinner plates. It's always that way.
did you ride yor single?