Jackrabbit

I ended up staying up prettylate trying to wash clothes and get ready for the trip. I had a broken spoke and didn't have time to get it fixed, so I tried to cary it by Cahaba Cycle at Trussville on my way. I knew this would make me a bit late, but I didn't know what we were going to be riding and I didn't want to mess up my wheel. I got to Cahaba about 9:30 and luckily Parker got there early. He said they didn't have any spokes but he offered to look at it and saw the nipple was broken and the spoke was still ok. He managed to fix it for me (even though he had to rob a nipple off another wheel). I cannot say enough good stuff about Cahaba.

I headed on my way and finally got there about 3:00. The cabin Monty had choosen had a better view off the back deck than most senic overlooks I have seen. We headed out quickly and went to Jackrabbit to ride. This was a relatively new little trail system that was mostly level and very flowy. It was covered by lots of small berms that made this trail trememdously fun to ride. It kept begging to be ridden just a bit faster than I could go. The trail allowed one to carry so much speed, but was curvy enough to really be fun. There was one trail (I think Orange) that went up and over the hill. This was a bit technical and had a small rockly climb and even a relatively narrow bridge at the top to ride over. This was followed by a quick descent back down to meet the Blue trail.

We ran into Robert (A local) and he joined us as I think he was happy to have someone to ride with. We rode out to the beach area and this trail was much more winding and we had to go a little slower through the trees but it was built up on a raised path so it was interesting to ride. We got back as thsi was an out and back and Robert wanted to ride the new section of trail. I don't think everyone was up to it, so me and Robert took off. I mentioned we could just hammer through it before we started and he took this literally. I managed to keep up for a bit but he started pulling away from me. I actually just couldn't get through the trees fast enough. We kept going with him having to slow perodically to let me catch back up. Eventaully we came to the small hill at the end and this got me. I was huffing and puffing when we came back out and I stopped to rest a minute or two before riding the Yellow loop. We cruised around this and back to the parking lot. We stopped on the way home and picked up a pizza, and got back in time to catch the sunset. I was exhausted and went to bed early.

Pictures here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/grundcm/MontySTripDay19182008#