Beautiful AM and looking forward to MBH shop ride.

Have a band-aid on left middle finger… more later. Typing impaired.

Subset of regular crowd plus Debbie from Prescott. The trails won’t be fit to ride until after I leave.

Rode another piece of unknown by me. Below Sketch down to road, traverses & drops. All narrow sketchy ST cut into hillside w/ exposure. Getting better & more confident, not cocky, just feeling better about what i can do. Rama led us down a hardly used trail. This particular place it dropped down into a sandy soil wash, the tread coming out was about a tire width wide. I blew it out, the front wheel dropped out from underneath me and I launched over the ghost handlebar. I slid in the dirt like superman. Just dirt & a small cut on subject finger. 17.64 miles in 3 hrs riding time & 2234′ climb. Ledge n’ Airy is the most technical trail per Rama. Lots of rocks, step ups, slither arounds, slab roll overs, and some smooth sections mixed in. Well built trail that was built as a tech challenge. Traildoc posted an idea of putting a can out @ end of trail. If a rider dabbed on the trail he would put a dollar in the can. For the rider that rode it clean they would get $10 from the can. There are still several spots that I walk, the count is less than before. Nice bike & confidence.

Ride wore on me and I started really looking forward to completing Ledge n’Airy to go eat some real food. Finished riding upright.

While the trails out of VOC were plugged w/ riders, today from West Sedona we saw only 1 other rider. There are more social trails behind MBH than B & B has. B & B gets the publicity such that most new riders ride from there. Fling was yesterday, just warm temp & clear skies, trails are drying nicely. Forecast thru week is for sunny and upper 60s.

Back out @ Deer pass. Tonight there are 4 other campers here, the most ever. I got my regular spot. Oh, last night the rat was back but trying to gnaw into the body to gain inside access. Gave up.

Beat tonight. Finished ride, sat down inside, took off my gear, wash cloth rinsed grime off, drove to Safeway for groceries & h2o, and then to desert to just sit. Rented a movie.

No pictures taken today.

Only 1 balloon this AM & it was aways away. Rat chewed a small amount of insulation last night.

Today is Sedona’s day to host the AZ Spring Fling ride. Drove down to VOC IGA parking lot for 10:00 AM start by am undeclared leader riding a described ride. Steve from Texas told me he found my blog awhile ago. Local Scott joined in. After 10:00 a collective mass left the parking lot heading up canyon to B & B. Short stop pooling of riders and about 40 riders headed out to ride Double H: Highline and The Hogs. Congo line of varying abilities bunched up whenever a rider missed a technical move. A rider set himself up as traffic director and sent us up a steep hike a bike that was to be entry into Highline. Wrong. Turn around down hike a bike, some rode most walked. Single track single line so it was 1 rider at a time. Group fragmented and segregated when we entered highline. Somehow I ended up leading w/ 5 other riders that stuck with. We were able to ride almost everything w/o getting bunched up. Somehow we got way ahead of rest of group. We were almost on Baldwin and looked back up and watched all these riders contending  w/ steep switchback trail . Lot of exposure made for visibility from below.  Baldwin up nasty switch backs to templeton. Lots of riders out going in opposite direction. Took short food break @ HT junction. 2 guys called on cell phones then dropped out. 5 of us. Next stop is climb up to Chicken Point. Riders all over, beautiful day. Short break & Chicken Point & another rider dropped off, down to 4. Ride Broken Arrow to Hogs trail junction which is unsigned. Hogs is a social trail, built by bikers, again exposure and dicey tech moves. We climbed to high point and were looking for Hogwash drop off. Another rider proffered knowledge and showed us where it dropped off right where we were. Trail was almost a climbers way trail and the only tracks were javelinas. Nasty down climb. Trail intersected another well worn social trail heading towards Broken Arrow, i added more new trails in this last piece. Climbed Broken Arrow trail back to chicken point. 2 guys dropped off because of cactus flat, Scott & I were on our own. Scott’s a bit younger as were the last 2 guys, they made derisive comments out how hard I rode. The ride was wearing on us. We added more miles once on Bell pathway to ride Slim Shady & made in the Shade. Brutal decision.

Made B & B where the place was packed w/ riders. Apparently there was still beer in the keg. Greeted Tae from Hurricane and he disappeared.

The rides were loosely structured. An attempt was made to break out by ability & duration. I rode a B++ for the H2 route. 7 guys rode H3 for 30 miles. The 3rd H is Hangover that to me was the hardest and most exposed of the 3 Hs. I had a stellar Sedona ride of 22 miles, 3286′ climb in 3 hours 52 mins. of ride time. Sedona riding is very technical which burns lots of energy on short climbs, step ups, floating over rocks, walking the tough ups & downs. I heard that the downhills in Sedona is 51% down, 49% up.  Really going to miss riding here.

Back out @ Deer pass camp. Sunday MBH ride if it doesn’t rain per forecast.

Tonight is Spring forward. AZ doesn’t do daylight savings. Big jump going east

Yesterday AM the sun shown. Several of the yellow and green patterned hot air balloons livened the morning sky. Drove off to MBH for 10ish ride. Rama didn’t show and didn’t answer his phone. I deemed trails too wet anyway. After while I drove over to Soldiers Pass TH to hike over Soldiers pass. System trail that weathers the wet, several bikes rode thru. B4 the wilderness where bikes are allowed, the bikes went thru the muddy spots, the hikers worked around the edges actually making the hole larger. After the pass the trail turned less slickrock, more soil & like small boulders. Ground was saturated, h2o mostly ran down the trail, poor design.Biker made trails don’t have that problem as our trails are built to get the h2o off quickly. Nice day, warm.

Back out to Deer pass camp late afternoon. Just after dark I heard scratching in the engine compartment again. Pack rat return? Put on the headlamp & headed out to check under the hood. Opened it and the rat ran back & down from engine. Chewed pile of sound insulation from somewhere on van lay on the top of engine. Bits of wood & a few juniper berries. Cleared out the nest, shut the hood & crawled back inside van. Short time later heard scratching again. Checked engine and there was a small pile of insulation started. Damn, who is going to win this squatting battle? What tools do I have? I propped open the hood to make it less nesting hospitable. decided to set the mouse trap on the engine. The trap was too small for this critter. Concern was that if the rat got caught by the trap and wasn’t killed that it could crawl away w/ trap attached to die and stink. Or that the trap would scare it off. Today i checked under the hood to find the sprung trap and no rat, more importantly no chewed nesting material. I won last night.

Today I was swarmed by 4 balloons.

Drove down to Hilton for morning shower. My contact leaves @ 1:30. I hoped that B & B would have an afternoon ride which would dirt up my clean body. I needed the shower and would wash the sweat off. Hung @ B & B but started feeling queasy, almost sick. I wasn’t feeling well enough to ride. I decided that I would go out to Beaverhead flats and rest to see if I would get better before 2:30 ride. Parked @ my spot. Nice day. At first I stayed inside the van doing stuff. i noticed several rigs drive by. Sunny warm day outside. I set up my chair and sat in the sun reading. Several more rigs went by. One jockeyed & pulled up. Driver stuck his head outside and asked if I wanted to have some fun. I had been propositioned @ gaydar. Sat night this place will be the camping spot for the AZ Spring Fling. So many guys so little time.

My heart felt like it was pounding in my chest, I suspected my blood pressure was up, I was concerned about being able to ride. Drove back to West Sedona to Urgent Care. BP was OK, heart fine. DR said my feeling could be from not riding for several days. Don’t think so but he wasn’t going any further. This Thurs I have an appointment w/ a gastro dr down in Scottsdale. Suspect that gut problem is source of health issue. Flag is closer but their next appointment is early May as they are the only gastro facility in northern AZ.

Went for solo ride. Late afternoon. Saw 2 riders. Finished in long shadows of afternoon. Still comfortable 60 degrees. Trails are dry. Heart didn’t restrict effort, heart pounded from exertion. Downloaded the heart rate data to see that I had  high heart rates.

Sat is the Spring Fling ride in Sedona. Place will be packed w/ Flingers and weekend riders. Slight chance of showers