Stick versus Derailleur or Suddenly Single

It was a great 8 days of vacation, lots of time to relax, work on the house and of course get in a lot of awesome riding, whether it was on the road or on the trails. The last day was planned for a great 5o mile ride through the trails of Stewart State Forest (home of the Dark Horse 40) which are characterized by fast flowing single track and every weekend more new single track having been cut by the motocross bikes.

Well all started out great, hitting the usual trails and cranking out some great miles.  Then came the new trails, the pace easing as we wound our way through the woods. Suddenly, faster then a cobra can strike, there was a crack of a branch, the locking up of the cranks and a horrible sound of metal tangling in the spokes of some beautiful Industry Nine wheels!!! My stomach turned as I dismounted, looked down and saw this horrible sight -

Having always intended to race this bike as a single speed, once the NUE Series is over, it was built with Paragon sliders so the option for on the fly conversion to single speed was available. The only requirement was to remove the slider, use a couple of rocks to bash it back into shape so that I could put the wheel back on and remove a section of chain - then I could finish off the ride and in the spirit of Team Seagal, snapping the wrists of my companions!

Well the damage was a bit more then we could repair on the fly and with gears rubbing against the bent slider it was all I could do to get it back to the car and call it a day on the trails. The upside to all of this was two fold - First "Beth" finally has officially become a Team Seagal bike, wearing the colors and ready to snap some wrists at the Baja Epic.

Second, the real Beth and I broke out the kayaks and headed to the roaring rapids of the Wall Kill River. Recalling the trials and tribulations of Powell as he explored the Grand Canyon we were able to put a new rating scale in place for rapids. Rapids are rated for how many times you have to either push with the paddle or simply get out and walk across the rocks since the river was so low. Well we hit several class 20+ rapids and even had to portage across one section. Of course we made sure never to spill the beer!