Right, so I’ve (the Hubs) been placed on the lifetime ban list. I feel like what Jerry and Kramer must have felt after getting banned from Joe’s fruit shop. So I orchestrated a hostile takeover. I hypnotized her with gardening magazines and chocolate in order to get the password and well... Terribly sorry about the delay, but for those who were curious about rest of the details from the 25 hour frog hollow thing, here it is.
Jem being sent off with the the team slogan "Nice Ass!"
When we left off, Jem had just spanked the course and was placing the team into the capable hands of Clem, who was the 2 in the 1-2 punch combo. Unfortunately for Clem, 10 minutes into his lap, his bike’s top tube discovered the seat tube cheating with the down tube, which explosively resulted in irreconcilable differences. Apparently, in the middle of a sizable dip, he mistook a huge “Bang!” for a bottomed out suspension (which was now dramatically squishier). At some point, I’m sure he looked down and had the “ohhh #$^&#@” realization, but it didn’t faze him a bit. He decided to ride the rest of the lap out of the saddle, running the more techy spots (to help prevent his bike from completely exploding). Even with his bike being held together with a shoe string and a prayer, he was able to punch through with a time just over 1:10… absolutely amazing, for the bike and him.
Clem handed the ass off to Tiff and while she was crushing it, asked me if he could borrow my bike for his next lap. I think I saw my bike shudder a wee bit, but I was confident it would work out (he’s only 3 or so inches taller than me, so raising the seat would be the only adjustment). Plus with the new tube and spoke, the bike should be riding like it had just been taken from the showroom floor. Of course that is if I could figure out why the shifting was grumbling more and more. On that note, I quickly went to work tuning the sram grip-shifting when I noticed that the derailleur was at a slight angle to the cogs. At the time I thought this was a bit odd, the engineer in me told me to refer to a working bike (yeah, the derailleur was perfectly parallel to the cogs). A slight yank (ok, maybe a bit more than slight), and the thing was shifting a tad better even though it was far from parallel. I comforted myself by chalking the difference to a sram vs shimano thing. In the back of my mind, I knew that I could always just stay in the biggest cog (that should be safe as a two-speed after all). As for Clem using it after me, I was sure I’d get the shifting figured out during my next lap.
Fueled with soft ginger cookies and some string cheese, I was charged up and ready to make up for my last lap. The going was great for most of the lap. 40 minutes in and I only had to adjust the shifting cable tension 4-5 times, but as this can be done on the fly, I didn’t even lose any time. Up comes this techy section that I had practiced about 8 times to find the perfect line. On one side, the train had a step up, on the other side of the step up was a tight fit between another huge rock. I chose the line straight over the step up. Just as I got my front tire over, bang, I nail the center of the step-up with what I thought was my big chain ring. No prob, at worst I crushed a chain ring tooth… there’s like 40 more where that one came from, so I should be good. The next pedal stroke however was not to be. It was the same feeling as when you swap out your chain but forget to put new cogs on (chain skip). When I looked down though, to my horror I saw that my derailleur had now found a home around one of my spokes. The current predicament brought some fond biking memories flooding back. A riding buddy from grad school, Chris, had powered through this situation and had ended up with a trail of derailleur parts sprinkled along the road like a trail of tears. Well, at least that didn’t happen. I sighed in relief and looked back down at my sad rig, but noticed that the derailleur hanger had broken clean off, bummer, so now it was more than simply getting the thing unstuck from the spoke.
The broken hanger reminded me of the same poor Chris who had also been afflicted with this problem 85 miles into our ride around the White Rim in 92-106 degree weather and 40-50 mph gusts of wind (but that’s a whole other story). The moral of that story was, aside from the obvious, never put your bike upside down to fix it. A flat, a gust, and in an instant, his hanger was no more. It’s not as if it was a unique experience, but it did clue me into the idea that I could turn my bike into a single speed (which is what he had to ride for the remainder, not exactly a gimme). Without further ado, I got to work trying to decide what gearing to choose and a short 17 minutes, some hard lessons in chain tool usage, and 6-8 “got everything”s later and I was back in the game. As I was finishing the lap, my only thought was ‘sorry Clem, I guess your gonna have to ride a single’. My other thought was ‘I wonder how much time I lost’. Turns out a lot, I was also the proud recipient of our team’s slowest lap at 1:24.
With the exception of a “I heart my bike” bell that deserted Tiff in a moment of need, the next few laps were run without incident. Clem wisely decided to use Jems bike instead of mine. While resting before the next night lap (how the hell did I end up with three of these) I thought it better to fret about which single speed to use rather than to recharge my lights. I seemed to remember that one could get at least 3 hours out of a single charge and a combination of recharging them after the first night lap and doing the math I figured I had a good hour of charge left. If I just used one light at a time, I should have plenty of charge left for the whole lap. About 5 minutes into the lap and that logic wasn’t looking too hot when my head lamp winked out. Now it was a race against time on a more lethargic single-speed and significantly more lethargic (and crampy) legs. Although the moon had been full and shining brightly for my last lap, it was setting for this one. So I guess I don’t have that going for me. I spent the next 50 or so minutes trying to re-calculate how long I had used the lights on the other two laps and wondering how fast I’d be able to go in complete darkness. Luckily, I made it to the final section of single track before my last light gave up. At least I wasn’t surrounded by snakes. One doesn’t realize how bright these bike lights are until they go out in the middle of a ride. You really can’t see a damn thing. I had some vague notion of the trail, but I can’t be certain I stayed on the single track. All I can say is that some heroic sage brush sacrificed itself for my cause.
The next few hours were a blur, but along with Clem getting his best time on his fifth lap, some smack was being thrown around about batteries being unplugged prematurely and clothing being donated to the Frog Hollow organizers. All in all, it was the best mountain bike race and 25 hour event I’ve ever been a part of (also the first of each). I’d do it again in a heartbeat, but I might take the Dawg into the Wild Rose for some rehab first. Since Clem won’t be needing that frame, perhaps I could steal his derailleur hanger.
