the big kahuna does not dissapoint!

saturday started at 545, coffee, clean-up, drive to north shore. watch andy install the disc tab adapter and mechaincal disc brakes on my litespeed. i'm not a total loser and manage to work the espresso maker and microwave for some oats and caffenine crack to get us going. by 830 we're out the door with a 8hrs worth of gu's, luna/cliff bars, water and HEED to get us through. the rain is really coming-down and there's a good river flowing-down every hill. temps in the low 70's - could be the last warm rain of the year, feels great. we're both really pumped for the ride, what's a little rain?

andy hammers the 5miles over to montserrat (sp?) train station in beverly. i've got the HRM on and it's telling me to slow the f down before i blow-up. within mins i can barely see him, en fuego. good sign for that brutha. my legs are fine, it's just been a solid week, no rest days... friday was a scheduled rest day but rode for 120' to get all the papers in order on the '95 saab. man, that thing is mint! paint looks brand-new. after 2-3 yrs of jenn, bronte and i working on it, it'll look its age. anyway, last week turned-out to be a great interval week with a 5-6hr ride on the front and tail-end. a nice long week after taking it easy the previous two. will the legs bust-free for this weekend's Foliage? HUGE rains all weekend up north - up to 9 inches in places. supposed to rain everyday this week. foliage mudfest, october 2005. nice!

back to the KAHUNA! started-off at montserrat train station in beverly, rode some really nice technical singletrack i hadn't seen before, eventually made it to the gordon college area and onto trails i recognized... and right into ancient line. only a handful of us rode the entire line w/others jumping in later or not at all. as usual, ancient line took some skin..., couple good hard knocks, but also rode a couple lines i hadn't ridden before. falling means you're trying... we got back onto more flowing singletrack and eventually got-onto a couple miles of new-cut trail heading towards resevoir i've never ridden before - and it was awesome, flowing stuff, with a couple real challenging features - real nice lines. we did our part to pack it down. the Kahuna was rocking! the new disc brakes and hansventures were rocking! was riding all sorts of lines. andy was awing folks with his ease in the saddle, making it all look so easy.

never noticed the rain in the woods... stopping would fog-up the new lenses from sports optical, but they cleared-out as soon as we started moving. excellent test for the new specs, can ride in confidence in all weather with these puppies on - no more ridding blind in the rain!

got onto resevoir trail, 280mins into the ride. it was decision time. do we ride through bruce and tom's to finish-up or cruise 1m up the road to lobsta-land and the feast, warm clothes and cold beers awaiting us? we say goodbye to Skip, a guy who's enormous smile has been infectious all day. Barry stays-on. by resevoir, we'd trimmed the group-down to the 4 of us. barry knows a route around the bottom of a long technical climb up bruce and tom's. andy and i had been saving energy for that climb for 2 hours, so 20mins later, as we washed-off in a puddle of water in the parking lot of lobst-land, we both felt we had more in us. we dreaded, yet yearned for that massive climb simultaneously. skipping the climb was almost like cutting the trail... same as last weekend, we were done before we were really beat. but that's how it should be. you should always want to ride a little more when you finish-up...

no pics from the kahuna. too wet. was soaked-through before we even started. legs felt terrible yesterday, but had plenty of power on the ride-in this morning. just cruised to work, enjoying the complete lack of cars on the road... chris columbus day. history portrays him as a hero... making me think again about how school curriculums are formulated, what powers are in play. we feed our youth a version of the truth that we find comforting, frequently ignoring the naked, scary truth... need to wrap this up, time to get going to work.