Seems like a million years ago that I started ripping on guys riding in baggies. We called them ‘Freeriders’ of ‘Alternative bikers’. What a bunch of homos. If not lycra – death. I remember one of my friends from southern California showing up at the office unexpectedly and catching me in my skinsuit after a road ride. “I love what you’ve done with your balls” he said. After I was sick of seeing these baggy wearing homos, I started seeing more and more  full suspension bikes. I had one about 7 years ago – the GT RTS – Really Terrible Suspension. Instead of cushioning the ride this bike basically tossed your salad right off the side of the trail. It would compress going into a tight turn – and then just basically huck you off to the side. Hated that bike. Gave it to my mother in law.  Enough said.

Then – as if it wasn’t confusing enough – after all this advancement and compression damping and crazy technology – I have to end up in the corner of the woods with these alien human hybrids who rode with NO gears – well – one gear – or two as most people like to say: Sitting and standing. They also ride rigid – like stiff forks – like no suspension. I have ridden rigid – and it’s really cool in that you have to pick a very tight line, and really pay attention, and really approach the trail with laser like concentration. I like that – but I prefer dialing out the 120ml on the Viagra fork of love – and sitting back and doing the point and shoot. Braaaaaaaaaap. I have been dialing in my new dual set up – and every time I get it a little closer to Nirvana – it just gets that grin going mad. I have dreams about gliding over trails that used to feel more like a jack hammer session than a trail. I still LOVE my SPOT, steel, hard-tail – direct drive acceleration and handling that is un-matched. But for the hucks, and the enduro rides – I’ll go with squish. Clearly, I have become all the things that I ridiculed and mocked. But, I guess that’s what happens in life when one (me) enjoys having opinions, that are often hypocritical and end up being very self describing…….got it?

So, what the hell does this have to do with some gay Disney flick about a whale?

Back to dialing the new ride. I have been swapping some forks around on it to find the right companion – the right YIN to the YANG of the Vanilla Float. It seems I get a lot of gear that is un-marked, or early versions of this or that – so I threw on this Manitou that I got a few years back after imploding one of their bedspring and intestinal gas type forks. The match – is awesome. I finally feel like I can climb, and some of the angles are better all around for the bike.

Coming around to relevance here – this means that the Viagra Fork (aka RockShox Psylo Monster truck 2002) went a block to the south, across the little single track that connects my house to Timmy’s. Someday, there will be more detail devoted to Twisted Timmy, but I have not the time, nor the desire to go into that here. Suffice to say, Tim likes the basics. This guy could live in a shoebox, eat the same thing 7 days a week, as long as he had access to his wife, daughter, bike and playstation2 he would be totally flying high. TT suffered a pretty serious injury last year, a minor fall over a log that badly broke his pinky – like rolled the little bone over so it had to be pinned and casted, etc. Took him out for quite a good portion of the summer, which is basically like sewing a starving person’ mouth shut at the All-U-Can-Eat Café after they have been stuck in some dried up well getting their skin shrunk for a human suit (See:Clarice). Needless to say, I was somewhat relieved as I had spent a fair bit of time freaking that old Timmy might die and roll off some bridge or drop somewhere (can you say BABY J!!) and I would be carting a corpse and a broken handle bar home to wife and kids. Let’s say he started thinking before dropping – always a great idea – especially when some of us are closing in on 40.

Back around to this year – New Year – clean slate – go to it Boys. Since we didn’t really get a winter, we were riding a ton. We ‘discovered’ a new trail last year that Tim never got to ride due to his injured status. We’ll call it Ricky Ticky Tacky in the land of Leo. It’s a major ass grind to get to, and quite the haul out once you get there (can you say the Golden/Ned Local route back?!). The trail gained its name by the general ass over teakettle nature of the best part of the trail – that would be the descent. After about 2 hours of mixed single track and approach you get to the top of some un-named peak at about 9,200 feet (give or take) and descend – for quite a long time. The descent starts out sort of stair - steppy – lots of rocks, lots of drops, very tight winding in the woods. There are some great sequences in there, where once you set up you are committed to like three drops in a row – miss one – and you go bowling happily through the talus. You then get down to a drainage, and like a small puppy in spring, the trail meanders in and out of the creek, gently lapping up the sides, running through sharp little boulder fields, whirling around blind drops into moss covered off camber logs. I have not yet cleaned this trail, and it ain’t like I am Hans Rey, but I have put some focused effort into it.

So, we head out that way, climb a while, descend a bunch, climb A LOT, and finally get to the descent. I lead out for a while, and mess up one of the drops, and old busted finger cautious dude passes on by. Now, I must qualify in saying that for those of you that are not either Tim or I, we put some shared time in on the bike. Good days, bad days, long days, short days, everything in between. In the four years we have been logging some 200+ days a year together, I have not seen anyone have as much fun as he did on the descent we did that day. The trail is both of our favorites from a ‘genre’ standpoint. Optimum speed is about 66%, as if you go faster you will simply fly off the side, or into the creek, or into a boulder or tree. It demands an agility of the mind and body that doesn’t happen every fucking day, sometimes it doesn’t happen for a bunch of days. Twisted boy was wailing. I was laughing just watching him, as it was like he’d been swinging the quadruple weight bat for like 30 innings, and was now wailing with a laser tuned automatic ninny smasher. He was on fire, effortlessly rolling through the most difficult sections, and just absolutely killing it. I hung back about 15 feet and just watched the whole thing, and it was just so cool. As referenced above, I think the elements come together rarely, and to see the plants align, especially for someone coming back from a pretty gnarly injury – well – that’s why we ride.

I don’t know if the performance will be repeated, by any of us soon, but it won’t be for lack of trying. Free ride on Twisted Timmy, willy has jumped the groin, he is spawning. He is a whale – on fire.