Embarrassment Avoided

When picking out a bike today for riding the ODC:AR I spent a fair amount of time thinking about riding TBFKaU.  Unfortunately, I just couldn't do it.  How could I possibly stand the humiliation of anyone noticing my 32:21, and on a 26er no less.  That shit is just ridiculous and I need to put it right.  Of course, I have in fact used that same ratio once before, but I had a much better excuse that time.  So with TBFKaU off the menu that left El M.  A quick wheel change and I was on my way.

Damn I felt good rolling out, and by good I meant that my legs hurt, but in a good way.  It was if I had just recently taken up mountain biking again after a long and poorly rationalized hiatus.  With my last ride at the same location I knew what to expect, at least for the first few miles.  Climbing.

Well, I'm happy to report that the climbing keeps going for nearly four miles.  It's never so steep that one needs to resort to walking, but still it's four solid miles and a cumulative gain of around 800-1000ft (my GPS is not to be trusted currently so I could be way off, but that's a different blog post).  I stopped to head back as soon as the trail looked like it was going to head downhill for more than just a few hundred yards.  Conveniently enough that happened here:

I damn near shit myself when I popped out into this clearing.  One minute I'm screaming through a dark dense forest reminiscent of the forest moon of Endor and suddenly I'm blinded by sunlight and standing in a clearing with a beautiful view of distant peaks and a valley below.  I'm afraid my cell phone's camera just doesn't do this vista any justice.  Next time maybe I'll bring something better along (although for the life of me I can't think of what that would be) and I'll probably even go a little further.