Lady's Night

We rode tuesday.

Conditions were superior. So good, that the majority of FT3 decided to hold off and wait for the next freezing rain storm before venturing up to Pollywood.

Three riders indulged in the pleasure of mountain biking on a balmy night with ideal soil conditions. Xteric acknowledged that he had a route planned, so B in I fell in behind him and we headed out the back to MET, dropped the horse trail below the dam then up Chiquita Banana (cleaned it), dropped the left lip (at lake level, while we paused to reflect on the excellent trail quality, we encountered a mountain biking couple -dubbed Hansel and Gretel), turned around and climbed (do you call the left lip the right lip when you are going up it?) the trail we had just descended. At this point we had several options to cut over to Fleming. In keeping with hallowed FT3 tradition we chose the route that forced us into thickly overgrown brush. Having found MET we dropped to the Fleming trailhead at Blue gouge mine road, and started a CW loop. Somewhere in between 8A and 8B our venerable ride leader turned right onto a quad track used to service a utility line. The "Catenary Trail" is a whoop inducer with short steep drops followed immediately by short steep climbs. In consideration of last week's scolding from the Mother, we skipped the climb to the apex of Fleming, Plunged Palin and Bristol, took the road out and finished the last bit of Lake loop to the Knott lott.

The bar was busy and we were allowed to take a table. The tacos were the greasiest I've seen. They saturated the shells so thoroughly that I had multiple complete taco failures. I tried to lift the taco from the basket and ended up with just two halves of shell. Safety First made a roll up just in time for the second batch of Mother Rye's famous nachos (no doubt she was trying to make up for the tallow cakes). The fun really got started when Xteric tried to help Mother Rye bus some of the trash off the table and spilled his basket of two tacos onto the floor. She got a broom and swept the mess into the basket and he went to put it on the table and dropped it to the floor again. I'd laugh, but he is handicapped now, so that would be rude. Clearly the staff wanted us to leave as the table was wiped and most of the lights shut off. The last customer, a Knott Hole regular, made a last, desperate request to take home a male companion, was met with silence and left. We stood at the bar for a bit, lingering, reluctant to let the night end.