technical difficulties

Hooray for February. After all that cold weather, the nicest day of the year hit Sunday with temperatures topping 70 degrees. We headed out to the Umstead area for some quality mountain biking. Forces converged: JD and Daniel from Raleigh, Ben and I from Durham, and BCC's newest recruit, Calvin from...I'm actually not sure where Calvin's from, but we're thrilled to have him with Bull City now.

Before I get too far into this one, I need to mention that my lack of conditioning extends beyond bicycle riding, but also to blogging, so my endurance in both these areas is minimal. Therefore, my typical longwinded text may be shorter today. In fact, here's a short, one act play entitled "Technical Difficulties"

scene 1: Umstead Park, North Carolina
Chorus: Lo, the gods are smiling upon northern Wake county with beautiful weather. But beware ye, with these blessings are minor curses.
enter Ben and Calvin. Ben inspects Calvin's full suspension Specialized.
Ben, testing the rear shock: man you've got this thing set up really stiff.
Calvin: no, actually, it's still broken.

secne 2:
Daniel: hang on, my shifting is all messed up.
Chris, attempting to adjust a rear derailleur: here, let me take a look at that.
Daniel getting back on his bike: okay. no, now the chain's broken.

scene 3:
Ben, standing, holding his saddle like Yorik's skull: what in the hell is making that creaking sound?...that is the question. out-out, damn creak.

scene 4:
Chris, riding, slows to a stop: A flat! Oh Stan's No Tubes, why hast thou forsaken me?!? But of course, my new RockShox (tm) brand Reba (tm) fork is performing flawlessly.

[Intermission: sponsored by RockShox]

scene 5:
JD, with his trouble-free bike rides off into the sunset, along with Ben and his creaky saddle.
Narrator: While it's not surprising that the fella with the fully rigid singlespeed had the fewest technical difficulties, it is strange that the guy with the dirtiest bike (i.e. JD) had no problems, while guys with much cleaner bikes had the biggest problems. And so the moral to this story is, never wash your bike.

Curtain.