Monday, December 10, 2018

Monday Night, Overgrown in the Gloom

Biked home from work, jumped in the car to Nelson's, traffic delaying me somewhat.  Hit the hill just on 6pm, up Parklands, into the second cul-de-sac and up the steep steppy walk track to Huntsbury Tce.  Climby McClimbface.  Up the gravel, onto the grassy singles up, all getting overgrown, and up the sheepshit paddock, finally and up the gravel.  The climbing hurting me; probably over-tapped-ness from previous day's ride.  Gloomy skies were above us the whole ride.  Creaks from the bottom bracket not evident today, for some reason.

Into Vernon, chasing some runners, overtaking much lower down, and bombsville to and through the Rapaki-top, straight into Witchypoo.  Slow climb for me, single dab on usual pesky rock, good climb from there tho, to regroup and snack on the usual high point, before the drop through the end.  Across the road onto the singletrack, - been mowed since we last rode it, but the long cut-grass on it was sappy of energy.  My tiredness made it really hard.  Out of this and up the road to the Castle.

Hadn't been down this for a while, and it was fast.  We were bombing through it and approaching the first hairpin I was hot on Nelson's tail when he jumped, landed, and POP, hiss, hisss, hisssss, hissssssssssssss, goo spraying everywhere.  Bloody bacon-strip and dislodged from his rear tire.  15 minutes later, he's attempted to continue with bacon, failed, and resorted to put in a 29er tube, squeezed in.  I dont think it was bulgey at all...  Onwards down Castlerock, the climby section nearly killing me cos I's cold, and off up the road.

Before the top, we lumbered up onto the 360 walkway, to climb up to the Tors Track.  Then it was an awesome blast down this, me cleaning the one little rocky-over that usually catches me out.  Yippee.  Back onto the trail above the road, around to where a fenceline comes in from the right, where we climbed over and headed across through the long grass, onto the climbing track to get to the top of the Mary Duncan track.

Into this, picking our ways down, bit by bit, cleaning lots of the rocky-droppy bits, Nelson taking at least one extra bit (wooden droppy bit), then up onto the fun razorback ridgeline, down down, techy goodness and fun, under the pylon eventually, and through the gates, and around into the trees, a new way, skirting the top to the left.  Followed down through some droppy sections, a couple of bits of flow, and around then pushed back up and checked out one or two other features, re-riding the droppy flow again, and then out.

Back around the road, the nasty climb around Glenelg Spur and speedsters down Centaurus, around to Parklands and back up, to the car.

We managed 18.43 kms, and 807 m of climbing.

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