Sunday's Fat Thomas, God of the Snake

Brisk start, Steve was leaving his at 9 so I left mine at five to and pedaled the length of Linwood and Humphrey's to the Ferrymead bridge, finding Wayne, who said Tony and Andy had already passed by in the car, then Steve turned up.  We rode the nice new smooth bikeway the length of the causeway, my fat tires sounding like a box of angry bees, then through to Scumner, finding the other two here, we treadled up into the valley and delaminated at the start of the track.  Fatty climbs pretty good, and cleaned all the switchbacks but not the usual rocky bits.  Regroups at Evans and on up through the guts, which I cleaned the main difficult one but no the top one.  Rest of the ride out was good.  Stopped to let some folk through, one of which was on a carbon Salsa fatty with a Bluto up front.  Into the descent, and the smooth was good but once we got down towards Livingston I started getting a pounding.  Speed and rocks don't go together on this bike.Climb from Livingston was good, then round and down was sweet, as the trail's all smooth through there.  Bit scary bouncing over PFMTBC Rock, but the rest was good, and we hauled up at Breeze.

Decided to head around above the road and take the sweet wee narrow trail.  This was good, and the descent from it was fun speed.  Across the road and around the singletrack back.  Good blat round here too.  Then it was into the Anaconda.  First half good, but as soon as it got going hard down, I was bashed around, handling was freaky and speed hard to control.  Andy was on my tail and I was genuinely slowing him down.  Pulled up at the bottom and Steve rolled in phissing tire goo all out of a hole in his tire.  Got to the bottom and it made a big puddle on the track while he pumped it up.  But it seemed to hold.  So him and Andy led off along the 'tail and then Steve pulled up at the cattlestop.  We carried on, and I rode this bit better than higher up.  The others rolled in and then Steve who'd chucked more air in.  I bailed here, cos I was gonna meet the family at the bach while the boys continued over the hill, i assume for coffee at DotCom.  I rode down onto the beach and along it, and the family appeared on the path, so we played with the dog on the beach for a while before adjourning back up to the house where we had a nice soak in the spa.