wednesday night... thomas and richmond

nelson picked me up in the van at 7. we cruised to Slumner and hit Capt Thomas. try as i might, my new LED light was too focussed to light up the trail well enough. it'll be fine for ascending Rapaki, or probably even Worsley's, but its just too tight for singletrack. so, burning a fair bit of the 35W i could see good. think i might consider carrying the 20watt for these sorts of occasions...

anyway, good ride up, cleaned a fair bit, blew a couple bits too. then just near the top, the lollies i'd scoffed on the way home from the supermarket with T earlier gave me a coldsweat weakness inducing sugar crash... i was dying the last few hundred metres. anyway, had some OSM (those things are great!) and softdried banana and choc-coffee beans and dates and we set off up the road for the top of Pleasant... not bad going up the road, only a couple of cars, and one helluva headwind.

from the top, i led the way, tail wind blowing us along. takes a bit to get used to the lack of surface definition and limited field of view that lights-riding does for ya. numerous occasions the edge of the trail rutt caught us, or rocks that you couldnt see properly would grab ya. but the Vanilla forks are doing their job and making my riding smooooooth. was a fast and fun descent. nelson had a good bail, he said following me he couldnt see shit cos of the dust, so was giving me plenty of room. so this one bit, near the bottom he was on my tail and missed a rock, ie didnt see it, and stopped dead, then toppled, unable to clip out, ending up upside down down the steep bank. all i heard was him gaining on me, a little bit of a clatter and then nothing... i stopped further up and there was no sign of him... anyway, nothing major, slight knee scrape and a rotor zing he was annoyed about.

then on down Capt Thomas. bombed it, cleaned it all, nearly took out a hedgehog, then most of the way down, a possum. nelson got the possum with his back wheel, it scarpered through a fence and down a hill after i'd nearly hit it too.

by the bottom nelson's rotor zing was more of a scritch scritch scritch... something not sounding right there. he'll investigate in the light.