Hard Rockin' Too Hard

Another quick look at the dates shows it was now November. A couple of the Carolina boys were planning on coming down our way to be subjected to Hardrock for the next Lost Weekend. Max an' I decided to head down to check on the condition of the trails and screw around a bit. On a previous trip, at the top of a section that we had been over a bunch on our usual loop, Max had rediscovered a horrifying downhill he had been subjected to in his first race. The first time I looked down it I believe I said something manly like "do you mind if we don't go down this today?" But we were back and it was time to pay the piper. It was so steep there was no way to actually stop, short of running off, which put you in weeds on one side, and over a cliff on the other. Plus, because of a slight kink half way down you couldn't see the bottom. It was lovely, we both dumped our bike at the bottom. I have no pictures of that drop, because I was too busy pooping myself from fear, but there was at least the benefit that it dropped us down into a section we hadn't ridden before.

This is Picture Hill. We named it that because we took pictures of ourselves going up it, pretty clever...eh? It was limerock and so was nice and solid, but the top was like a knife edge and dropped off immediately on the backside, so you had to be careful with the throttle going over the top or you'd be floating in space with 15 feet or so of clean air beneath you.

These things don't have the suspension of modern bikes, so a landing like that would break 'em in half and make you an inch shorter.
Also down there, we found an uphill I though was un-climbable for our bikes. It was steep, rocky, loose, rooted, rutted, steep, and steep. Max was optimistic, we tried it anyway.
My first attempt was a pretty sorry affair.

Which wasn't shocking, considering I kinda suck. Max was a bit more successful, getting a bit further up and keeping it upright until he ran outta forward momentum.

He gave it a couple attempts, but the results were mostly the same.

Max is infuriatingly optimistic about these things compared to me, and despite my doubts his optimism was contagious and I gave it another go. Look how optimistic I am in the next pic! That's an optimistic face, dammit!

Sadly, optimism is no good if you're an idiot, and the attempt might have gone better had I not screwed up a shift right at the base of the climb. Before I even got to anything steep, I dumped the bike and I guess my foot got caught between it and a rock. I stood up and my foot did not feel right. Plus, it was making a clicking noise when I walked. I'm no expert, but that seemed wrong to me, so we headed out. Back at the truck we were trying to deduce what a broken foot would be like, neither of us having broken a foot before. Despite the clicking and swelling,  I could still walk on it and was able to start my bike so our erudite, non-medical opinions pretty much boiled down to "hmm, not sure". On the way home we had to stop by Max's parents house in Palatka anyway, so decided to hit a walk in clinic to avoid hospital costs if it wasn't broken, but...

It Was!

Which sucked because that made it seem at the time like I wasn't gonna get to play when our NC friends came down. With sad heart we headed back to town and a few weeks with my foot in a boot. Luckily, I'm made of sterner/stupider stuff, and would be able to enjoy that weekend, but that's for the next post.