Spinning in Sedona

     As soon as I left The Republic, the front end of my Honda van was all over the road.  Something was definitely not right, but I was on a mission from God, or maybe it was Dog. I was going to get to Sedona for the Big Friggin Loop no matter what. Time to get back on track. Enough of riding the CX bike around the dirt of Boulder, enough of hours in the wind in the name of getting my old ass in shape. Time to get some red desert dirt grinding in the chain of the MTB.  I ended up pulled off the interstate twice to crawl under the front end and make sure the wheels were not going to fall off.  I know nothing about cars, but figured I should at least take a look.
     It all looked good to me so I got back in and punched it. Half way to Santa Fe I called a repair shop, pretty sure I wouldn't make it to Sedona safely. Since I was staying with The Kid in Santa Fe, I had a day to play with, hopefully they could fix it quickly. Ended up talking The Kid into going along, which didn't take much. Kid's a natural, won the Cochiti 100 last year, one of my favorite riding partners.
     We rolled in his old Diesel Benz that has something like 275,000 mile on it. He's shooting for the 300,000 mile mark when he'll get a golden belt buckle or something from Mr. Benz. It was kind of like riding a single speed, use your momentum. We made it.
     The riding was insane! Lots and lots of technical singletrack, so many trails, and, of course vortexes! I'm sure we were caught in a couple of these tornadoes of vibe. Wierd stuff was happening out there on the trail. We were lost, but not lost, the entire day. We came off some single track after two hours without seeing anybody, only to find some freeriders sessioning some drops in a dry creek bed, full armor and all. We crossed a slippery ass creek only to turn right back around and cross it again.  We crashed, well, The Kid crashed. We extracted all sorts of cacti from all sorts of body parts, but most of all we rode singletrack that demanded 100% focus and an A Game to keep it on the trail.
     Oh yeah, and I did work on Saturday, trying to put all the recon we did on Friday to use by following the race by car, bike and foot to get photos of a killer race in a killer land, on killer trails.  Here's the Mt. Flyer report with some pics.  http://www.mountainflyermagazine.com/view.php/sedona-big-friggin-loop.html