Tabeguache

Almost as much fun as the Kokopelli (just ask the Crossbowmaker). Well the Uber Ancestors on High have been satiated with the traditional beginning of season bloodletting otherwise known as 'Highroller in Fruita' and it is now safe for y'all to ride. I made three hefty deposits in the pain bank during a hot lap of Zippety on Sunday. Riding a demo Moots 29er I started out strong by getting my left foot stuck in the pedal about 2 minutes from the trail head and wrecking hard onto at least two types of cactus. So there I was, not even out of sight of the 18 Rd. parking lot, gingerly peeling off my vest and jersey and attempting to tweaze small hair like needles out of my back, after plucking the 3 inch long stickers out of course...good fun, good fun. Well your humble narrator is not one to easily take a hint so eventually I soldiered on, hit the double track out to Western Zippety and proceeded to endo at speed on a nice wide open, flat section of the access road. Honestly I have no idea what the hell happened other than getting hit on the head by my bike. So I lay there in the sunshine, flat on my back on the road with a titanium bike wrapped around my face, just breathing deeply, watching the clouds go by and slowly running system scans. Collarbone? Still surprisingly unbroken. Shins? Bleeding, check. Face and/or teeth? Silt bathed but otherwise undamaged. Oh yeah, $6,000 bike? Still functional. Well I could turn around at this point, and probably I should as these sorts of things tend to happen in threes AND I haven't even gotten to the singletrack yet...so I got up and kept going. Crash three almost killed me as I came off the lowside on the steep second switchback up to Zippety Ridge and again couldn't get my left foot unclipped. Oh boy that's a bad feeling, keeling over to the side that is still clipped in, which is also the steeply downhill side of the trail, that is covered in large rocks, that goes down for quite a ways, alone, for the third time in 30 minutes. Just slam dunked the ti Moots into the rocks (and now I truly appreciate the durability of ti) full force while pirouetting off a boulder with my shin bone and twisting to take most of the boulder field impact on my Camelback...ta da! After that were some sweet ridges and plummets and whatnot you all know well and of course I could do no wrong there salvaging some sort of pride by tearing the throat out of Kessel before getting the hell out of Dodge. D- for riding, A positive for bloodletting