Wednesday Mulgan Richmond Greenwood Godley Taylor

chris and nelson assembled at mine and we vanned to scuzner. headed round to moncks bay and up Mulgans, the boys cleaning the first couple of corners, but not the steppy ones. for some reason chris walking a whole bunch (wrong geared i think), and i lagged behind feeling wheezy and asthma'd, fat and slow. sickmaking climbs up the narrow alleys round the watertanks and past York's old place. layer off once on Panorama.

then up to the rooty singletrack, all of us blowing out on that rocky little up, then relaxing it out on the flatter section up to the trees bout 7.45 to some stoned boyracers who were impressed at our riding prowess. cruise up the road to Greenwood reststop.

singletrack, nelson leading off, chased by Chris and me lagging behind again. legs still not recovered from all of sundays treadling, and staying back from them left me somewhat more dust free... gave them a good headstart from above the ruins, leaving a nice big gap and then took off, flowing nicely, and catching them before the first of the big corners below, chris having had a misbalanced nearmiss on the first rockies. ate their dust for a few corners, then sat in closer behind as staying right on the tail of the next guy leads to marginally less dust in the eyes and mouth.

at the narrow rock gap i stopped and watched as they diminished round and til nelson went round the corner of the hill, then i took off and flowed nicely again, meeting up with them just round from gloomy gulch. off again, and i paused and left them to it again, creating dust settling gap, then took off down the rocky descent and into the groove. lots of fun, but with some slippy dug-in corners through the switchbacks, then over the grate, jump, flowy pump section round to the little (dry) creek, then the 'backstraight', bombing down here, i had one near miss over one of the rockydroppy bits, with the bike aiming directly off the trail, somehow managed to swivel back onto trail and changed down and spun up the rocky uppy bit after the tree, getting jammed at the top. off again, flying down the last bit til the exposed-over-evans-pass-rd corner where i couldnt see a thing for the dust raised by the other two, slowly through there and out to the road.

when were still down on the road before hitting Godley trail, i said, "i've already admitted defeat, i aint gonna clean the first section". nelson and chris led off, i followed slowly behind, watching from a distance as first nelson blew it, came back down for another run, then chris blew it, and i selected an appropriate gear and knuckled into it - got over the first couple of holes, up past Chris, popped up the next rock or two, body-englishing my way up the next bit, then gave a line straight up some solid rock a try i never thought would work, and voila, i made it out the top, not an issue! w00t inspiring. the other two had a struggle at it once or twice more, blowing it again and again... i blew the next bit tho, but for the rest of the way out i stayed on Nelson's tail pretty well for a while, while Chris struggled with balance from then on.

i led on the descent to Livingston, in order to show the way on the new bit, which is getting better, and then left the lead to the others for the next climb. got up to the rocky bit and found chris stopped behind nelson who was down off the track, having bounced off a rock and sorta tumbled backwards. garked his shin, so dressed it, and off we flew again, chris, me then nels, chris losing balance in the rutty narrow grass before the sidle line, missing the sidle turn off where i took the lead down to breeze.

into the eye of the snake. nelson lead, followed by me at a distance (for dust), then Chris. good blat, tho still a lot of dust raised by Nelson, making some jumps difficult to get a good line on due to visibility, but a great blat down, and i had a really good ride down the tail too - the other two complaining of off-balance-ness and other difficulties. the climb out of Taylors i immediately bogged down, riding through treacle, the other two left me for dead. caught up at the top and i lead off down through Nicholson, having a mildly close call with a 4wd when we got down to the road. back to the van bout 9.30 and on home via yunkfood