Thursday night eastern jam

Ended up being able to get out, so Nelson turned up to my place and installed new cleats into his new shoes, and I installed the new 40t Revolution Components replacement for the breakage of a couple weeks month(!) ago, as well as a brand spanking new chain -  which meshed nicely - indicating my drivetrain wear was not left too late.  We headed out to Scumner, encountering weirdly heavy traffic (especially for 6.30 pm) out Humphreys Drive and over the Ferrymead bridge.  Settled down a bit after that  (only thing i could find that might have explained it was a TEDx thing at Sumner School, but that started at 6...?)  Parked up Evans Pass and hit the trail.  Ugh, first rocks caught me out but Nelson cleaned it up.  Gasped for a fair bit of air all the way out, and the new chain on the front ring was a bit noisy in the lowest gear, but not too bad.  Heaps of merino lambs along the climby bits too - totally getting in the way.

Descent to Livingston Col was smooth, but not majorly fast.  A few more sheep just after the boardwalk, but they cleared pretty quick.  Climb round to Breeze was tiresome for me, but Nelson creamed it, and then crashed off on the flat up top, distracted fiddling with his light then caught a rut...  heheh.  Descent to Breeze was smooth and pumpy but again, not that fast - this time mainly due to the tall dead-head grass tops making it difficult to navigate by reflecting heaps of light back and blocking the view of the trail ahead.  Nelson close-shave slid a little on the cattlstop at the bottom.

He did more fiddling with his light here at the Col and then we took the original trail below the road around and out to the end, watching for holes but not finding any.  Pretty good run, but again. long grass tops.  Across the road and up the hill for the Breeze Bay trail, me sweating up a storm here due to lack of wind and hot climbing.  Bit of a break just over the stile and I delayered.  Got going and this trail was REALLY hard to see.  Lonnng grass tops and narrow, with the big exposures below and hidden slippery rocks (from dew and previous days rain and lack of sun), was a little dicey, but fun.  Cleaned most of it, then blasted the final bits back down to the next stile.  More lighting adjustments here by Nelson, then off down for the blast down Anaconda.  Not too much dust while following Nelson, but I backed off a little.  Good speed all the way down, brief pause on the tail then off again, to finish it all off.

Up the road, and onto the singletrack off up steeep, walking only a couple of small sections, in the guts/switchbacks, and then up alongside the fence.  Up the gravel, chuff chuff sweat, around the road and then up the farm track to Godley track again, for the final blast down back to Evans.  My head light ran out of juice on the descent, leaving me with just the handlebar light for all the fun rocky stuff of the last several hundred metres.  The rocks' shadows were like mountains receding as I approached.  Was surprisingly rideable, tho it had allowed Nelson to majorly gap me.  Back to the car about 8.30.