Could've Been Worse

Thursday's, as is now becoming fairly regular, have become my group mountain bike day in Bath and yesterday was no different. I was especially excited for this ride because I was back on the Selma and it's lock-outable and much more plushly squishy suspension fork AND tubeless tires. In actuality, I think it was the tubeless tires that I missed the most. At some point, I need to build my other wheels with some Stans rims.

The group was rolling large with 11 riders showing up to lay down. Of the 11 riders, it felt like 8 of them were on Santa Cruz's. Very weird. It was like a santa cruz love fest going on. Stupid KillBill and his convincing ways. He should be getting kickbacks from SC.

The ride started out well enough but it wasn't long before "issues" began to happen. First, KB ate shit on a fast downhill while trying to hop two logs. I was right up his ass and somehow managed to only get his pedal stuck in my front wheel as I grabbed every bit of brake I had before laying it down. My bike was good thankfully but KB f'ed up his rear shifting so that required some fiddling. Fast forward a bit and Gary took a swim in a stream crossing and bent his derailleur hanger which took some tweaking. THEN Anna cut her tire and I ended up helping her put a tube into a tire coated with stans fluid and mud. Nice, but at least she was able to ride out of the woods. Once I helped fix her tire I discovered that my tire had gone flat while we were sitting there. I also had Stans so I pumped it up and we rode on. Before long it became apparent that I had more of an issue than I though. Air was leaking out at the base of the valve stem. I tried to tighten it but it was toast (see pic at top of page) so a tube went in my tire as well. What the frig?

Finally, we had everyone rolling and made it back safely to enjoy a few brews.