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January 2003
01/21/2003 - Nisene-Demo Ride Report
Oh yeah, all is good with the world again. At least for me. Riding Demo always puts me in a groovy state of mind. Even though the ride was yesterday, I'm still feeling the buzz...or is that the pain in my legs and grumbling in my stomach from all the climbing?
We set out to do the Nisene-Demo epic. Climb to the top of Nisene Marks, drop into Soquel Demo Forest for two laps of singletrack goodness, then back out and down Nisene. About 40 miles, 46 of which are climbing.
"We" was me, Shelly, Arleen, Leah, and Chris, Arleen's personal chair lift. The ride started out in the cold, damp thick forest of Nisene Marks. The sun may have been shining, but not in this Netherworld of Jurassic Park sized ferns. We were cold. Chris was telling us stories of how his hands or feet or something froze while riding in Nisene once. Thanks.
But no worries, the pain of the cold was soon relieved by the pain of climbing. A few hundred feet up and we were out of the inversion layer and feeling sort of toasty. Time to strip off the arm warmers and settle in for the climb. We climbed at a leisurely, civilized pace, but just fast enough to not get passed by runners. Nothing more demolishing to the bike ego than to get passed by a person on foot.
We stopped for a quick refuel at Sand Point. If this were one of my afterwork rides, this would mean the end of climbing. But our climbing had just begun. No time to enjoy the view, Demo was calling from the other side of the mountain. Getting to the other side of the mountain meant climbing the steepest part of the Asstoss Fire Road. We weren't talking anymore, but there were no runners up here to worry about. Silently, we crunched up the hill, groaning at several false summits, we reached the top of Santa Rosalia.
A quick brake fix and a quick catch of the breath and we dived into Demo. A few feet into the trails, and my mud worries were over. The trails were perfectly tacky. Yummy. Traction was so good you could climb a wall if it was made out of this dirt. Shelly and Chris did, by climbing that rocky steep icky hill.
We decided to warm up with a drop down Tractor. Just the thing to get our groove on, what with all those swoopy bermy corners. Sorry no pictures. Hard to stop and take pictures when you are getting your groove on.
Occasionally, when you are descending for a long time, a little voice says, "are you having fun? I hope so, because all this down means we have one hell of a climb coming. enjoy." Ugh. Up the fire road, up stinky Sulfer Springs. Arleen took the chairlift. Bet you didn't know there was a chairlift in Demo. Well, there is, but only for Arleen. Leah was looking spunky, climbing and mashing gears. We stopped to catch our breath, Shelly announced that we were about halfway up. Leah didn't look so spunky anymore.
The last part of Sulfer Springs is particularly evil. After all that climbing it gets really steep and rocky. It was right about at that point that Arleen and Leah decided one lap was enough. They were happy with their decision. I was tempted too, for a minute, but then I thought of how sweet Braille would be all tacky and smooth. So Chris, Shelly and I headed back for more, while Arleen and Leah climbed up and out of Demo.
Braille was Braille. Fun, steep, drops, logs, stuff to play on. Shelly would gracefully go over the ramped logs and yell back at me, "do the log!" So I would. I made it! That became my mantra. Do the log. Until we came up on a sort of nasty looking one. I did not do the log. Shelly told me that Petra crashed on it. Shelly also told me that when telling her crash stories Petra would describe it as 4 feet high, which is about 3 feet of exaggeration. Crash stories rule.
We stopped to take a couple of pictures. Shelly on the teeter-totter and Shelly on the tree. I wanted to take another picture of Shelly, this time with her head, but Chris was waiting at the bottom, and the girls were waiting at the top. Hmm...that doesn't sound quite right, does it?
We all wore big stupid smiles at the bottom of Braille. You now the smile, watch people as they exit a really fun downhill. Its a good childish grin. Our climb was uneventful, the top part of ridge put a twinge in my legs. It was a relief to pop out of the forest, onto to the top of Sanat Rosalia where Leah and Arleen looked fresh as daisies. We had plans to ride other "trails" down to the bottom of Nisene, but as Arleen said, "which ever way is faster to food". So we blitzed down the fireroad and back to the parking lot.
I stretched and cracked my back and enjoyed the "buzz" that a long fun day of mountain biking always gives me. I saw that we had been riding for about 5 hours. Shelly told me that when she and Petra would do this loop hard it would only take them 3 hours and 20 minutes. Yeah? oh yeah? Well, I bet they didn't stop to take cool pictures. Or, maybe they took the chairlift!!
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