Wow, what a weekend…….I should not be alive!

So I wore long pants to work today for the first time all summer. I had to cover the legs…….they are unsightly. If Jessica thinks she has a lot of bruises, she aint seen nothing yet. I have bruises, scratches, bug bites and a few rashes all kickin’ it up on my lower body parts. I think the chigger bites on my ankles will drive me so far over the edge that they will come in white suits to collect me. I am already plotting to make them all bleed, then pour on the alcohol so they sting instead of itch. (Why is it that a sting feels better than an itch?)

Saturday morning, James and I met Mike D. and Slebos at Ernie’s for the pre-ride chow down. Slebos ate pancakes with peanut butter AND syrup on them. No wonder the man is an animal!! I tried his little delicacy and wanted to spit it out REAL bad…….however, since we were in public and I was trying to be a lady, I swallowed………….yuck. I don’t much care for syrup, so I should have known better. I ordered B&G and let me advise you, Lucy’s is the place to get good gravy, not Ernie’s. They do make some tasty sunny side up eggs and hash browns though (of course I sampled off other plates for those items – buffet syndrome ya know).

The plan for the day was to go biking at Mark Twain National Forest – starting from Pine Ridge Recreation area. I guess they were hoping to get lost and make the whole experience into a “free” adventure race. And, I assure you, no one was disappointed.

We got to the camp grounds a little before 10 am and took off down the main trail. The trail was wide and pretty easy to ride. Not as overgrown as I expected. It was however, muggier and hotter than I thought it would be and it wasn’t long before we were all sweating like pigs and all stinky and just plain gross. The trails at Pine Ridge are used by horse back riders as well, and I was glad to see they were not real rutted out with hoof prints. This was probably because we have not had any rain in the area in the last 25 years! (Well it seems like that long) As we were riding, a number of horse flies decided to eat us for lunch. I guess they were tired of waiting for a horse to come by. James seems to always get the worst of it, for some reason the horse flies just love his butt. I also got assaulted by the little devils. I swear, they must have a full set of big teeth and a burning desire to hurt cyclist. They seem to land on your ass and bite real hard right when you are descending some technical down hill that is requiring all your skills to remain upright and you have absolutely no way of getting a hand free to swat the damn thing dead. I enjoy killing the 4 pound f*&kers more than anything I can think of. I am not exaggerating when I tell you I have 4 or 5 whelps on my rear that came from the horse flies!

After riding for an hour maybe, I lost all track of time after the flies ate me; we came to a gravel road. Slebos and James pulled the map out and decided which way to go next. We started down the gravel road and picked up speed. Wow, the air flowing over my sweaty body felt wonderful. It wasn’t long before we came to a two lane paved road, obviously a main drag. The boys consulted the map and we turned on to the paved road and headed due west……..at least that is where I thought we were going. Soon I saw a sign that said “camp ground ½ mile” so, I assumed we were back on the main road near where we had started. The boys stopped and turned back and I followed. We cut south thru a field. Then more map looking. Then back on the road, past the gravel road and keep going East. Now we get to the intersection and I am thinking……..I have no idea where they are going, but we must just about be in Guthrie. More map consulting was done by our fearless navigational team. Finally, they came to the revelation that we were just east of the camp grounds where we had started………..dur……….I knew that!! I had assumed they were trying to find a trail head, not that they were flat out lost. I chuckled and thought to myself “from now on, I am brining my own map and not blindly following the leader anymore.” And “boys are stupid”. (I think that a lot even when they have not gotten me lost)

We went back to the start and decided to try the loop in reverse this time. Nick had showed up and was riding the way we had went earlier and we thought we could run into him if we headed clockwise as he went counter clockwise. The boys (one was wearing a GPS) consulted the map again and determined what had gone wrong so far. We drank a beer while we talked strategy. This brightened my spirits as usual.

Heading south west from the camp grounds we had to cut thru a few fields. I wasn’t paying too much attention when all of a sudden, we started a cow stampede…………must have been about 40 of the things that started running towards us. Freaked me out, but I soon figure out they were not going to hurt us they just wanted to be in a different area of their field if strange bikers were going to bike past them. Mike took my picture with the cows. He's such a dear.

Later, the boys got ahead of me and I knew I had to get onto a gravel road and out of the field we were in. I saw a spot in the barbed wire fence that looked wider so I popped my bike in there to hold the wire open. As I climbed thru, my camelback got stuck on the upper wire. Shit, I was stuck. I took the camelback off. Glad no one was watching as I know I looked like a tard. I was laying on the ground, ½ in and ½ out of the field squirming around trying to take off my sweaty water pack so I could free myself. Once off, it was no easy task to get the barb to release from my camelback. Finally I was thru and with only a few scratched on my leg to show for my effort. I cruised up the road where the boys were waiting for me. I said “where did you guys cross the fence?” and pointed to my scratched up leg. They pointed to the big gate that was ½ open waiting for me. Ugh……..I need to keep up better!!

After riding the gravel road a bit, we went back into the woods. This time, the trail was almost non-existent, obviously never used. There were bad descends with big rock and trees poking into my line all over the place. It was not much fun, but I kept on moving as the boys were somewhere up ahead of me and I didn’t want to get lost. I decided to err on the side of caution and ended up walking my bike a lot. Better than falling and killing myself and it taking them hours to queue up and to come back and find me!

Then, finally we came to gravel road again. By now we were all running low on water and hours had passed. We had not seen Nick yet, so in an effort to entertain ourselves, we went speeding along yelling “Nick, Nick” over and over again……..like he was a lost dog or something. The weird part was (and I assumed Nick had left hours ago after not finding us) we actually came upon Nick about this time. We were all at the 1/ 2 way point!

We consulted the maps again and decided to go back the way Nick had came from so we all followed him in that direction. After a few more cow fields, and cow poop getting flung up onto my legs from my wheels, stinky, we were back in the woods. Again, these trails were brutal, no maintenance. James crashed his bike and fell a half dozen times. He is a great rider and I have never seen him crash before. A fallen tree lay across the trail about every 10 feet and most of them were not jumpable. I clipped in and out of my pedals 5,632 times!

We were snaking along on this trail that was about 5 inches wide at best with weeds and pricker bushes whipping across our ankles for what seemed like another 3 hours and then…………..we started to smell barbeque. Yea, we were hungry and out of water and the smell was straight from heaven. I thought “kick ass, we must be near civilization if we can smell barbeque!” We finally popped out of the woods and onto a gravel road that was full of parked cars. Across the street was a little white church and a large crowd of African American men. They were cooking carcasses on a huge grill. The thing was at least 6 ft wide and 15 feet long and made of cinder blocks. I could see full size rib cages on the fire and for a moment I was scared……….what the heck are they cooking I wondered. They did let us get a drink of water so they were saints in my book. They told us they were cooking mutton. We drank a little more water and asked for directions back to the camp grounds. As we sped off down the gravel road I had to ask “what is mutton?” Turn out it is sheep. Fine by me, we planned on returning to eat dinner.

Back at the car, we drank some much needed adult beverages and took off our soaking wet bike shoes and I scrounged up some spare shorts and took my soggy shammy off………..ahhhh, now that feels much better. We drank all the beer and then headed out for food.

Upon returning to the church, the crowd had died down quite a bit. I was worried they ate it all and we would starve to death. They directed us into the building where some nice ladies stood in front of giant crock pots ready to serve us. James and I had a total of $10 and quickly decided we could afford one sandwich and one “plate” with sides. So we told them what we wanted. I am not sure why or how but our group of 6 white cyclist, some still in spandex, seemed to confuse these ladies and it took them what seemed like forever to get our order straight and then to put it in styrofoam containers and then collect our money. I ran to the car to scrounge up some change so we could purchase a couple of cans of soda to wash down out sheep dinner.

It was pretty good, but we were pretty hungry. I think it was a little fatty for my taste, but I like my meat VERY lean. The sauce was like runny barbeque sauce. The coleslaw was sour and the baked beans were great. It was a nice meal and quite a cultural experience. Some of the church men stopped and talked to us and others kept a safe distance. I am sure they thought we were all nuts. We all know Nick is anyway!