The Return to BCG and the Hill of Life

Saturday Chris and I returned to the Barton Creek Greenbelt - after months of rain, it was finally open to bicycles! I was particularly excited since the last time I rode this trail was with the "TBS" bike... see previous posts for more about this wonderful piece of machinery. I was looking forward to a great ride, and so we parked at Zilker Park and unloaded our bikes.

We left the parking lot with me in the lead, and it was awesome - I was riding over rocky terrain that had totally stumped me on the TBS, I felt good about the pace and I was enjoying the morning on the trail... we continued our record of meeting new people on the BCG, talking to a guy named Chuck at one of the water-crossings. Everything was going great until shortly after we had crossed under 360 and passed the spot where I had crashed after bonking on our third BCG trip...

>snap<

Oh, great! The @#?&!! chain broke!! And neither of us has a repair link (of course)... so we decide to just take the broken links out and ride on. Since we are still pretty green, it took about an hour to get the chain back on the bike :) Next time, it will be much easier, plus we both realized the importance of having repair links. During the repair process, I noticed that my shifter lever for the rear derailleur was not functioning properly. Wonderful - stuck on one sprocket... okay, no worries, I'll just ride out like this, using only the front chainrings to shift. I mean what else could go wrong? Once we got back on the trail, we actually made pretty good time considering I couldn't speed through the flats; then we arrived at

THE HILL OF LIFE

I had heard tales of THoL; tales of punishing climbs and technical descents... but nothing prepared me for the reality. As we started up the hill, stretched before me was a steep climbing slope, strewn with rocks, ledges and gullies, that stretched on forever (in reality about 1/3 mile)... suffice to say that I was totally unprepared for climbing THoL and it Totally. Kicked. My. Ass. The climb took forever, and I ran out of gas about 100m from the top, fell twice and generally bonked despite a good breakfast, Clif Bars and plenty of water/electrolytes. Once at the top and after a bit of rest, we rode the asphalt back to Zilker Park - plenty of nice long downhill runs, a couple of hills that were gnarly only because I couldn't get into the proper gear and no rocks to climb! :)

Once we were on Capitol of Texas Highway, I noticed that I had a wobble in my rear wheel... oh that's just fine - one more thing to fix. Fortunately it was not so severe as to prevent riding. Looks like Murphy was my ride buddy for sure this day... so I pulled off the road and adjusted the chain onto a smaller sprocket to get away from the wheel and get some speed on the pavement... The capper on the day came only about 1/4 mi. from the Jeep - we had made it that far when I heard a loud BANG from my rear wheel - blowout!!! It was the final blow... I was done. We pushed our bikes back to the jeep, loaded up and headed for Whataburger for some comfort burgers.

I learned a lot that Saturday morning:

1. Always have a spare chain-link in your kit, along with a spare tube and, if possible, a spare spoke... never assume your chain is too new to break
2. When things go wrong, there is always a way to limp home - be creative
3. When things go wrong, they often do in bunches - don't be frustrated
4. The Hill of Life is a cold-hearted life-sucking bitch. Period.
5. I can be positively unpleasant when I am down to my last energy reserves (okay I knew that already :) )
6. Biking the BCG is still my favorite trail in Austin!!!

Until next time - andiamo!