Saturday, July 18, 2015
A post-posting. Or, keeping the log up-to-date.
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Wake up and get the car loaded to go to Stewart to
mark the course. It's a kid's weekend so this is not easy. However, we have a plan. First part of the plan is that Julia is going to Seattle for the next week with her mother so I drop her off at 8:45 and hit the road to Boonton and the world-famous DD meetup.com location. The second part of the plan is that I am bringing a 9-year-old Zac with me to mark a 15 mile course the day after he was in the emergency room. This also expected from a kid who has biked about 8 miles max ever on a MTB in the flat south of NJ. What could go wrong?
So we meet up with
@muddybike and
@UtahJoe and we roll up to Stewart and meet
@Schilling. This is it. 4 adults. 1 child. 15 miles. Initially we were going to make Zac a mule but we reassess and decide that Zac is going to carry some spare water and help with some logs and such, and Kris/Chris will be in charge of the mule duties of carrying arrows & tape. Utah & I have the staplers. We park in the middle of the park and are off on our
journey of 1000 (or 15) miles.
So for those of you who have never
marked a course with Utah, let me give you the general idea of how type A he can get. Imagine that God were with us marking the course, and we were at an intersection where there was a possible 1% of 1% chance someone might go down the wrong path.
God: I have ordained by the laws of the universe that nobody will go that way
Utah: Fuck that, hang more tape.
This is
Utah Course Marking 101. In general, I agree with it. If there is any slight minuscule chance someone can get lost, they will. If there is no chance someone will get lost, they will. You have to make it deaf/dumb/blind proof as best you can. So this is what we do for roughly 15 miles.
About 20 staples in, Utah
runs out of staples. And he has no more as my T-50s do not fit his stapler that is apparently about 35 years old. So we are down to 1 stapler which is me.
Around 2 miles in, Zac asks me
when lunch is. This is a concern, as we have not even scratched the surface of this endeavor. I tell him basically not for a while and we're going to have to live on Gatorade and bike food for now. I do not even entertain the idea of how to bail him out yet, as I cannot leave the 3 of them out there with 13 miles to go. I encourage him to eat the blocks at every stop and I give up my bottle of gatorade so he has 2. For the most part, he seems a little tired but all in all he hangs in there.
We get to the
mile 10 mark (we started around mile 5) and we go back to the car for supplies. By this time he has knocked off 2 full bottles of gatorade and 2 bags of blocks. Still I'm not ready to entertain escape options. I want to get to 1 hour before I start to think about it and we're not there yet. We fill up with water and are on our way.
Shortly after Utah & I realize we need to
move faster. So we stop the chit chat and keep rolling. For the most part at this point we keep Zac moving with someone, one way or another. Sometimes he'll go ahead with Kris or stay behind with Chris or me. But we minimize his standing time and he does better this way. The not moving seems to drain him more, and the moving works better, even if it does tire him out more. We bang out the next 5 and are at the end of the course much faster than the first 5. At this point, however, Zac looks like a baked eggplant.
We decide it is
time to go plaid at this point and we have Zac & Chris stick to the road and hop from section to section for the next 2.5 miles or so. So he gets to rest and Utah, Kris, and I just smash out this part of the course as fast as possible. We all dive into the woods at the end of Bear because I want him to ride Camp at the end. That's the super fun stuff and I want him to enjoy the best trails the park has to offer. We ride together for a bit but when the 3 of us go to Sara's Way, Zac & Chris head directly to Camp then to the car. Many thanks to
@Schilling for helping tremendously on this one.
We start at 11, end at 4. We get changed and loaded up and go straight to the pizza place where we
decimate $50 of pizza in minutes. The 5 of us get like 7 drinks, 8 slices, and a sandwich. Chris then heads to camp and the 4 of us head to DD to decouple and go our own ways.
I get home and my parents are there. About 3 hours after lunch we eat dinner. Then I start to re-pack the car to drive right back up to Stewart. We shower, put the boys to bed, then get in the car around 10:00 for another long drive up there. We meet up with
@Schilling,
@gtluke,
@mattybfat, and
@soundz at the Darkhorse Campgrounds. At this point
@Robin &
@pedals are asleep,
@capedoc is going to bed, and the kids are in the tent.
I
Hulk Smash 2 beers while D gobbles up some salt & vinegar chips that Chris gave her. I sit 40 feet from the most useless fire ever (200 degrees outside) and get bitten 98 times then we go to bed shortly after midnight.
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