So I planned a ride in Sutton, one of my favorite riding areas, I had several people lined up to go, but as the temperatures dropped and it rained more until it was nearly non stop, I started losing participants, until once again it was just me, fortunately I did get a last minute partner to go with me, Mike is his name,we arive at Sutton , which is one of the most popular trail systems in the area, there is nobody there, not a sole, evidently nobody else wanted to brave the weather, which is around 38 degrees wind is blowing and there is thick rain. We unloaded and headed out, at first I thought we may have had better than expected trail conditions, well that thought didn't last long. riding on the flat level sections we were fishtailing and struggling to keep the bikes upright, on the steep rutted up hills with the runoff rushing down the eroded double track sections, neither of us made many of the runs on the first attempt, quite often duck paddling the last half of the hill to keep our momentum. Our goggles became useless, having been covered in mud on the outside and at least for me the inside of the goggles were steamed from being out of breath. Line selection was futile, keeping the front tire pointed in the desired general location was a task in itself. We were making headway though, At times we had to get off the trail and ride thru the matted vegetation, roots, and bushes, but at least there was some semblance of traction there, at one point my bike stalled on a hill, I hopped off and grabbed the bike from falling over,except the grip slid off the bars and I watched ithe bike slide to the bottom of the hill as I as holding the handle bar grip in my hand. The fall broke my GoPro bar mount, I threw the camera in my back pack remounted the bike and continued. Finding traction was the story of the day, but we eventually made it to the top of the trail. after a couple minutes of rest we realized the wind was picking up and the temperature was dropping noticeably.Hoping to avoid even crappier weather, we got back on the bikes and set back down all the way we had came, only this time we found controlling our rate of decent on the downhill sections was quite challenging,partly because of low traction and partly because the inboard brake pad on Mike's rear caliper fell out somewhere along the way. This may have explained the high speed pass he made on me on a quite technical downhill section, I thought he was just in the zone, evidently he was in sheer terror at that moment, but he made it and somehow avoided going down. We were holding on to the bikes fiercely as the large rocks and previously mentioned lack of braking control meant we were basically going where gravity took us and trying not to eat the front fender. Somewhere around this time I realized I couldn't feel my fingers from the cold my left forearm was developing major arm pump and my right rotator cuff was flaring, fortunately we got to an area we could rest for a couple minutes so I could regroup. The shoulder felt better and the arm pump was gone but unfortunately I regained feeling in my fingers, each one of them felt like they were being smashed with a hammer. Anyways, we got back on the trail after slipping,sliding and somtimes falling we eventually got to the easier sections where we could pick up the speed, except the rain would sting my eyes unless I tipped my helmet down so the visor would block the rain from my face, however this did obscure my vision, which probably contributed to me not seeng the tree branch that hit me in the head and nearly knocked me off backwards. Anyways we finally did make it back to the truck,and after some food and coffee I could feel the soreness creeping into my neck back and legs. I guess most normal people would think I took a perfectly good day off from work and turned it into a self inflicted tortuous day from hell, well everybody has an opinion. To me it was an awsome ride.
