The story we will never speak of again

The story we will never speak of again

The ride from Vicente Guerrero to Mike’s Sky Rancho and on to Ojos Negros was supposed to be completed in six hours and as usual, it took much longer partly due to making a major wrong turn onto a more difficult track. The road from El Coyote to Mike’s was also rockier in places than we expected. The part of this day that I will recount will be referred to in the future as “the story we will never speak of again”.

Riding into El Coyote, we met the woman who runs the ranch, and who sold us each a gallon of gas ($5 per gallon siphoned from her drum) and a bottle of water. She also gave us some great advice on which track to take to Mike’s – the bad road, not the really, really bad road. Starting down that road, it was surprisingly smooth, so I twisted the throttle open and headed out to the hills. One thing we learned over the past two weeks is that vados and washouts can sneak up on you. Most dips can be ridden through or jumped. Not all.

Coming over a ridge, I noticed a trail spur to the right and let off my throttle a bit to survey the situation and surmised that the right trail was a detour around a washout. Can I jump this washout? In a split second I could see the washout growing deeper and knew I had to stop. With a full-out clamp-down on the brakes, the rear tire slid nicely to the right and as the washout grew, the tires hit rocks and knocked off my balance and I fell to the right, sliding up to the edge of the steep drop-off. Phew.

Knowing Glenn would be right on my tail, I pushed the bike off my leg and got it upright so I could signal the rest of the riders to go to the right. Five feet across and five feet down can make you go from 40 MPH to zero in a hurry.

Glenn says that I need to delete this now, but even the story that we will never speak of again needs to be told so that we remember the moral of the story – you should always be more cautious when riding on new trails for the first time.