Thursday Snake moonlit Road Greenwood Godley Snake

Good ride with Nelson last night. We droveded to Taylor's and with my newer DX light on the handlebars (cos my old one on the bars kept cutting out last time), and my old DX light on the helment we climbed the Snake. i found with both lights on dim to be the perfect climbing light. Brights was actually too much. Bit of a chuff up the snake, me keeping it under the wheeze-level, which meant Nelson ploughed on ahead of me.

Then it was up the road, no lights, just the moon which was sitting on 3 days off full. A persistent wee number that road, just steadily climbs you without you realising except for the amount of effort required for seemingly minimal gain. Was a lovely still night, but pretty chilly. We met 3 bikers riding down the road (?why on earth?) before we peaked the highest point before the descent to Evans, with their lights on, so i turned mine on for a minute til they'd gone. Then it was a blast on the downhill to Evans, thankfully the divets in the road made by flying boulders have all had nice little white circles painted round them. Flying down through Evans pass, nice not to have to look for cars, and the climbing resumed. Heaps of massive boulders lying around on the road from here on, results of blasting work undertaken over the last month. Still no lights required, moon sufficiently bright. No other signs of any other riders around. Stopped at top of Greenwood for a stretch and i had my cake and ate it too.

Onto the singletrack and oh what fun. Tried it without lights to start, but the rocks got the better of me, so i submitted and turned them on. Again, both on dim seemed the best for the meandering climbing sections to start. Once at the road crossing it was onto full and off we went, down through the work I'd participated in on Sunday. I had pretty good flow right down the top section, enjoying it all, railing and blazing as per usual. Nelson was not having such the time of it and was apparently blowing perfectly good lines and catching every rock.

Onto the Godley, and Nelson's run of bad form was still running, tho we both cleaned the first section, the second little bit got us both. From there the next few hundred metres with rocky bits on it were hard on Nelson, and not so great on me, tho i got more. Once we were further up tho, Nelson's form returned and mine fell off, with a bad back starting to hurt heading down to Livingston Col. I would have stopped here but Nelson had continued so i struggled onwards upwards and eventually longgrassrutted and crashrolled getting back on line after the PFMTBC rock feature. No harm done tho, certainly nothing sore today.

Next up, Nelson led down the 'conda, me on his tail occasionally. He had an excellent run down here back on form, i had a not so excellent run down, tho enjoyable, it was...

rolled back into town about 9.


AND A BIG HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THIS BLOG!!! 7 YEARS i've been waffling on about my rides!!!!