Weekend Ride Report

So there was some riding over the weekend, as you may have heard.  As nocar pointed out to me yesterday, I was the only one to attend both LRP outings so it seems to make sense for me to put up the report. 

I’ll start with Sunday’s ride.  It was sweet and you should have attended.  Yes it was a long drive to access the goods, but well worth it.  Nocar would know the location details better than I, but we were on the Tahoe NF and started near French Meadows Reservoir.  A portion of our route was on the 2015 TS100, and we rolled along the Royal Gorge near Soda Springs, and passed behind Squaw Valley near the Granite Chief Wilderness (we did not poach).  A portion of the ride is slated to very soon be swallowed by the expanding wilderness area, making the pedal all the more special.  We put in a long initial climb on a rough road (TS100 section), spoked out to Wabeena (sp?) Point (killer view 3K’ into the Gorge) and back, grinningly slayed high elevation, wind-swept ridges (including Tevis) to the current wilderness boundary, then dropped at high speeds back down to the car with an impromptu stop at an old Basque sheepherder’s cabin along the way.  The ride was 30 miles and had 5K’ of climbing.  Since we started where we finished and finished where we started it un-coincidentally also had 5K’ of descending.  Nocar and I were the only attendees.  LRP’s already considerable regional purview has been expanded.

Here is a slideshow from the Sunday ride.

Saturday’s edition of SBKW started just like many others.  J from Tahoe, a SBKW and LRP veteran who has yet to attend a Tuesday ride pulled onto the 42-Mile Tract road just as our caravan from P-town did.  Our contingent included Ride Leader NoHandle, Buttons, NoHandle’s bud from Oakland (who had previously attended some FT3 road outings), and myself.  I was tasked with navigational duties for the day.  We decided to pedal around the hikey-bikey trip up the Cody Meadows Trail by going up Packsaddle Pass on chip seal.  That adds some mileage and vertical, and is nearly all on “pavement” but does not involve shouldering a bike, not even once.  Pick your poison.  After a brief wrong turn toward the BSA camp at Cody Lake, we corrected course and made our way to the Haunta-house, Cody Cabin.  We enjoyed some snacks there briefly, posed for photos, and then moved along thinking we still had miles and miles to go.  We made our way past Hay Flat to ‘whatever it is' Flat, and hooked the hard left to single-track.  We bumped along that and made our way to the sweet drop into the Caples Creek drainage.  That’s where things went South, and south.  I was in the lead and stopped about half way down the trail to wait for a regroup.  Buttons and I gathered and he said something about a possible mechanical above us, so back up he and I went.  If you are an FT3 Strava devotee you may know something about the next part of this story from photos already posted there.  NoHandle’s buddy got filleted by his own hot brake rotor during a high-side dismount gone wrong.  Calf steaks for lunch anyone?  Gruesome is not an overstatement - that damn rotor cut through all the dermises and you could see parts.  Good thing we had a suture kit in a camel’s pack.  The cut was field laced without anesthesia.  Pliers were used to push the needle.  The wound was packed with toilet paper then wrapped with electrical tape.  The injured rider, having suffered through the stitching without complaint or even a whimper, continued to man-up and pedaled his way with us all back down to the car.  Running on shock, his pace was strong, as in he was crushing it.  I kept glancing at the cut and never saw more than two small, dried drips of blood.  The hot rotor had obviously cauterized the cut because there was almost no blood at all.

We all regrouped at the car and did what FT3 does with a target cooler.  The mood was still high all around, but the clock was ticking so we ended the gathering.  Not wanting to encroach on the recommended  12-hour window for a proper stitching at the ER, our party split in two and THTH drove the rotor victim back down the hill to Marshall.  What is our bicycle related Marshall count now?  I’m good for 2 personally.  I do not know if Ed, our Team Nurse, was on duty in the ER.  With our pressing health care issues now in good order, the three remaining riders decided to make use of our two cars and the remaining daylight.  We had already put in 25 miles and 4K’ of climbing but wanted a little bit more from the day.  After a bite at the Strawberry Lodge we shuttled up to Echo Summit for a turn on the seminal LRP trail, the one on our jerseys, the XP.  We rolled that fine piece of trail down to the Lodge, our pedaling now done for the day.

So what shall his handle be when he returns in August for another dose of LRP?  Field Sutures? Stitches? Field-Stitch? Laces?  Our KWalified good ride doctor probably needs one too. 

I'm out this week, working out of range.