Thursday Slippery when wet

Nelson picked me up opposite work and the traffic was typically heavy, slowing our journey to Mt Pleasant, eventually we parked up top on the Upper Major as the rain began.  Paused briefly in the car thinking it might desist, and it did, until we actually got riding and then it just opened up properly, but we were riding, Nelson had his jacket on, and I just resigned myself to getting 'a bit' wet.  Up Britten Reserve and then around on the first (of many) rocky slickages, around the original Britten track.  Brief pause in the dry under the trees deciding where to go, then onwards around, slick-as greasy-arse rocks squirrelling us all around the show.  Onto the road and a slow (to avoid splecky splashage) descent to Cavendish Saddle.

Up the climb, nice pace, trail in good nick, water just starting to flow down it in spots.  Near the top, some fucking imbeciles in a 4wd have obviously driven over it - dicks have run down all the tussocks on first one side of the track then the other.  At the top, the rain was still falling and so we figured the descent might be a bit dodge...  It was.  We picked our way down through the first rocky sections, getting the hang of descending, braking and not braking, and squirellations, before the stile.  Over that and down through the first steep rocks, hmmm... no problemo.  Onwards down and sweet running, allowing the back wheel to make it's own path down and hoping it wouldn't make that path too far from the one the front was taking.  Once in the open tussocks section the rain continued, but the trail was less pin-bally, tho the dirt looked to have potential slickness (but seemed to flow okay).  Some quite eerie low cloud through here too.  Then, in the even heavier rain, on the 4wd bit down to Greenwood, we stopped for Nelson to eat something.  I was utterly drenched to the skin at this point.

Onwards down, past the ruins and into the trail, rocks dicey but we were getting used to it, and speed was not high.  All the way down, bit of water starting to run or pool in places, rocks pinging wheels about the place, but not as bad as it could have been.  Rain continuing to fall heavily on this lee side of the hill.  Lower down, where the nasty quag was before the wee valley, the clay here would stick to the tires, but the rest of the browner dirt was good to go.  Bollocksed both rocky ups.  Neither of us trusted them.  Last blast to the road was fine, tho a bit of pooling on the swoopy stuff before the last corners.

Up the road, the rain easing now that we were off the singletrack.  And almost gone by the rounding of the corner under the pines, but returning as we climbed to top of Britten.  Final descent: dirt looked untrustworthy and so we were careful.  Nelson said it was slick, but I didn't really notice it so much.  May have just been the one corner tho.  Back to the car, and the rain stopped...  typical.  I was totally soaked, so instead of him dropping me at TFC and me biking home, he dropped me off at home and I had to hustle to get back to the meeting at TFC a little late.