Re-Rode & Re-Stung

As much as I would have liked to have made another weekday assault on the mountain, I used some self control, got some "business" things done today and then headed out to do my rail trail/road/crap road route, or at least most of it.

First I mixed up some homemade gel by combining a few scoops of CytoCarb II, some Elete, water, and dash of cherry Crystal Light (with a hint of caffeine). Turned out yummy, and did the job. I did the same thing yesterday with some orange flavoring, but used too much and it was bit overpowering. It wasn't orange gel, it was XTREME ORANGE GEL WITH LONG LASTING ORANGE FLAVOR! FLAVOR! FLAVORRRRR!!!

MY mistake today was not in the gel, but in figuring that if I was using the nice caloric pack punch in my flask, I could skip the calories in the bevies. WRONG! Should have mixed at least ONE bottle with some calories. Water and Elete wasn't cutting it to get me to the end of a full 3 hours comfortably.

Started off nicely rolling the r.t. on the Mamasita. After a few miles I duck down a rocky mile and a half or so stretch of double track that is "officially" a road on Google Maps, but in reality is a dead end service road with a gate. Sure there are POSTED signs up on sides of the trail, but WTF? It's on the map, and I've never seen anyone out there. Today as I approached the gate that has a space on the side to easily scoot around I NOT only noticed that a chain has been stretched over that space, but also there's an old dude fixing the no trespassing sign ON said gate. Hmmm. I was in a tight spot.

Options: Turn around? Ignore the guy? Wait for him to get snitty with me and then go f*cking ape shit on him? Or get all Eddie Haskell on him. Super polite, play dumb (not hard for me) and see what happens. I went with the Eddie Haskell approach.

"Good morning sir, mind if I scoot around the side here?"
"No, go ahead, you'll have to go around that tree though."
"Not a problem sir, thanks a lot, I appreciate it, have a good day."
"No problem, you too."

Hmmmm, not happy about the increased security presences (that would be the chain), but it's still doable, and the dude didn't give me any lip, so the poaching of the service road will continue until shots are fired, or I'm kidnapped by a group of meth head, deer hunting hillbillies, hog tied sodomised, and left for dead along a back road wearing nothing but a now assless pair of bib shorts.


After that, the ride was the ride. Nothing worth getting too in to other than getting stung by more insects. Not sure what the hell is getting me, but I'm covered in itchy welts. I think they're like biting flies. They get in my jersey and then sting, sting, and then sting again. FRIG!! Almost made me crash!

By the 2 hour mark I was realizing my mistake with the bottles, and decided to abort a couple roads and head back. Cutting out those road only really cut about 15 minutes off the ride, but it was enough to get me home faster and into the arms of a tuna salad sandwich.

Salt stains can turn black shorts into urban camo PDQ. Not sure why I was pumping out so much salt. I guess the salt in the 1/2 a bag of tortilla chips I ate with dinner last night had to go somewhere. I think I see Elvis in there!

Not sure what I have on tap tomorrow. I need to start some new pages for the mag, so I might try to do as much of that in the a.m. as possible. Save a low key ride for Friday a.m., and then some longer miles on Saturday.

My trusty old Kodak EasyShare CX7430 point and shoot digital continues to lay in a shat bed. Ever since my bottles leaked on it a few weeks ago it will not hold a charge. Even with new rechargeables. I paid $50 on eBay for it 3 years ago. It's my fave camera to use while riding. Why? Because it has a SUPER easy ON/OFF switch. The newer point and shoot digital camera I got a couple years back has all sorts of mega pixels and what not but SUCKS! The ON/OFF button is recessed. WTF? Have you ever tried to push a tiny little ON/OFF button with full fingered gloves on.

On top the ON/OFF thing, every picture comes out like crap (yeah, it's the camera! -ed.). The flash overpowers everything, every picture blurs, and "image stabilization" just ups the graininess of the pics. So if you wonder why my pics are even MORE monkeyed with than usual, it's because the original is so ephing bad, I have to do SOMETHING to make me want to look at the pics. Truthfully most of the wash out in the "salty" pic is like that on the original. P.O.S.!! Time to hit eBay to seek out another cheap ass EasyShare!

Later.