Afternoon Thrashing.

So, I ditched work early today, with the intent of going on a long shred to work off some work related stress. So, after a couple hours to have lunch and let some Sobe chill in the freezer, I set off and skirted along the trailing edge of a thunderstorm while trying to decide where I wanted to go.

I'll tell you, Mother Nature, I didn't really need a reminder of why fenders rock, I already knew that. Thanks for the muddy butt.

I eventually decided on heading out a forest road to the section of the Arizona trail that skirts along the top of Walnut Canyon. I rode a few miles out that to a fork in the trail, turned around and rode back to the equestrian bypass trail to drop to the bottom of the canyon at Fisher Point to head home. It's a fast and relatively easy trail. It has technical sections, instead of the whole trail being technical. It was fun, and a great way to blow off steam.

And then, as I was bombing down the bypass trail, I found a couple guys crouching next to a bike. One guy looks up at me and asked if I happened to have a pair of pliers with me. I'm glad my Leathermans are a permanent attachment to my belt... he broke his chain and needed the pliers to squeeze his masterlink back together. We had a nice little discussion about trailside incidents and fixes.

As far as the bike goes... I've been having a really hard time adjusting to the replacement frame I got from Giant for the one I cracked. In the end, I think I started off looking at it as the same bike with new parts. The last few rides, I've been riding it as if it's an entirely new bike, which, when you look at it, it really is. That said, I'm getting used to it, and I'm getting happier with the build.

The B-52B, with the section of trail that broke the old bike behind it. I was a little wary of bringing it here...

Mileage: 34