Sunday Morning Captain Greenwood Thomas

lift with Pete to Scumner, passing Andy and Wayne in the van, then Steve riding out on the causeway and sitting behind Dallas through Redcliffs, we all assembled outside DotComa, joined by Rex and headed up the Captain. nice climb, refreshing to be back on the newly fork serviced headsetted stemmed and barred Cotic. time for some new forks unfortunately, with bad wear on the insides of the stanchions... i'll just have to make do til money allows.

at evans
we headed up Greenwood, something none of us have done recently nor often. not such a bad wee climb really, only one or two bits of trickiness. managing to clean everything bar the odd off balance dab in places that i shouldnt have. at one break a guy on a yellow speci hardtail coming down went right over the bars right next to me... oops.

yarned at the top a bit and it was off and down. here's Andrew arriving with the lovely Slumner view and the undersides of the clouds at our level.

and obligatory artyfarty shot, Steve's wheel.

off we went then, i led the way, feeling pretty good, Pete sticking to me pretty good most of the way. then round through gloomy gulch and on a bit i heard a yell from waaay back. it was Andy, hollering me down, Pete'd flatted further back, so i turned back and rode back up to the rest of the posse. off again and down down down, catching a guy and then breaking to let him go for a bit. then off again and blazing down catching him up again til finally he let me past and on down down fast and squirrelly. the new 720 wide bars proving pretty good.

off down the Kapitan, pete in the lead, me struggling to stay on his tail. he took the high line i took the low and then he cleaned the bit i never do and got a good lead. i clambered it back then botched the wee climb after the two ex-nemeses and he absolutely blasted away from me not catching him til the first gate - he was on fire! brief regroup and off again, having a great run down the rest of the way. somewhere along after the creekgully Wayne had an off and put a big ding in his top tube and a wee gark between a couple of fingers. i was blooded by blackberry somewhere too. lovin' the last bits of the trail, then out the bottom to Dotcoma, coffee and a lift back home with the family who'd been in Taylors.


PS. Little did we know that 2 days later a big quake would come along and destroy so much, including access to Capt Thomas. The pines at the bottom had some massive rocks through them, one being snapped off like a matchstick.