~ Bruneau ~
On Saturday, Josh and I drove out to Bruneau with our mountain bikes. We forgot sunscreen, developed sunburns, and, despite no lack of effort on our part, failed to locate any good mountain biking trails. I may have come off as a little cranky, yet I did have a lot of fun. When we got to Bruneau, we were struck by how unhelpful the rangers were in directing us to some trails. The first thing that we did was to climb the tallest dune.
This was quite challenging. We both wore inappropriate footwear for hiking up a dune and quickly removed said footwear (which tends to be the norm, I believe). It was steep and sandy. I found that it was easier to hike up backwards. Once at the top, we admired the view, ran up and down the edge of ridge, and caused some sand avalanches onto unsuspecting insects. For the descent, we located the steepest portion of the dune and ran down it. This was quite an exiliarating experience. With one leg rotation, we decended a surprising length of dune, and once we started to run we could not stop, the possibility of falling proving more thrill than fear.
And that was that. We located some sunscreen at a visitor's center up the road (but the damage had already been done) and drove down to the edge of the Snake River to locate a wicked mountain biking trail. We unloaded the bikes, changed into our spandex and protective gear, and headed down some kind of restricted sportsman's access road. I became quickly cranky after seeing the dead body of a snake, which indicated to me that we might be venturing into snake territory, and after being somewhat-severely scratched, cut, and poked by these massive bushes with thorns growing all over the road. Incidentally, today my cut legs are all swollen and I have multiple thorn splinters in my legs and hands. Another thing that was making me cranky, was that the sportsman's access road we were riding on was anything but a wicked mountain biking trail. Eventually, we turned around and rode down the highway in search of another possible wicked trail. We located another sportsman's access road which seemed to travel parallel to the River and rode it for a time. This was much better, no fear of snakes and no thorny bushes, but we came to a dead end. Again, we turned around in search of the elusive wicked mountain biking trail. This time we headed towards the horse park of Bruneau and, being careful not to surprise any of the horses, rode down an overgrown road. This area was carpetted with very dead versions of the thorny bushes and I felt some satisfaction crunching over them with my tires without being cut. A persistent difficulty, was that the dead thorny bushes branches kept getting lodged in my spokes and it was kind of annoying. Soon the road became unridable because there were simply too many thorny bush corpses to ride a bike through, and I came up with the brilliant idea of "Hey, why do we need a trail? Let's just ride this way" and by "this way" I indicated towards a space with less thorny bushes, no trail, and lots of sand. It proved really brilliant, my idea, except, you know, the opposite of that and eventually we turned around for the final time and rode back to the car.
In sum, Bruneau is not an area to find wicked mountain biking trails.
~ Fifteenth Monthiversary ~
At some point on Friday, while I was at my place of employment, I was proofing an email to verify that it contained none of the snarking attitudes that I was articulating in my head, when the coworkers I share a corner with became excited about the presence of someone in our corner. Given that I inhabit the far corner of our modest corner, my back was to the excitment and I had no clue what was happening behind me. Then I heard something about "pumping our tires" and I turned around to see what was up. It was Josh! At my place of employment! With a bike pump??? The very social coworker seemed to be monopolizing his time (something about making jokes about pumping our tires) and it took me a while to even have an opportunity to inquire about his presence. He wanted to have lunch! With me! And he was going to fix the flat on the tandem so that we could ride it to a park!!! I then escorted him through the building and we toured a conference that was going on and picked up some pens and breath mints the vendors were giving away. It was exciting. Later, when I noticed that it was about time to meet the little whipper-snapper, I discovered a text-message that he had left for me saying "Happy Fifteenth Monthiversary!" I said, "Oh" in a meek voice and my coworker asked what was wrong. "I forgot" I said and she said that she found Josh very cute.
We rode the bike over to Pioneer Square and ate Josh's homemade-by-a-store sandwiches. We sat near the waterwheel, ate, chatted, and engaged in general forms of p.d.a.
When I got off work, Josh and I utilized our gift certificate to the Boise Consumer Co-Op which my friend Devlyn gave to us for Boxing Day. For $25.48 we purchased a breast of chicken breaded with shitaki mushrooms, blue cheese, crackers, spinach dip, and a bottle of taste wine, only $0.48 of which we spent out-of-pocket. It was so delightful that we decided that we should send Devlyn a thank-you note...four months post-receipt. We then inserted our consumer co-op items into our picnic backpack, also a gift from Devlyn, and took off on the tandem.
We rode out to Sandy Pointe Beach (and by "Sandy Point Beach" I mean the nicer beach just south of Sandy Pointe that I don't know the name of) and it was a lovely ride. I caused myself to get a sore throat by blabbing non-stop in a loud voice so that Josh could hear everything that I was saying while dry air was rushing against the back of my throat. Among many of the exciting things we saw on our ride, was a large herd of deer grazing on the alfalfa fields. When we got to "Sandy Pointe Beach", we spread out consumer co-op items on a picnic table and experienced flavors.
Then we tossed the football around for a time and watched the raging waters of the Boise River. Josh also fed some squirrels, because you know they don't get enough food and are just starving. On the ride back, I made it my responsibility to be a photographer for the duration of my time on the rear of the tandem. I had not directed Josh's attention to this, and at some point while I was sitting on the bike, peddling but not holding on at all or watching where we were going (which never happens anyway, since I can't actually see past Josh's back), we started going down a hill relatively fast (relative to our previous pace) and I latched onto my digital camera as though my life depended on it and then proceeded to inform Josh that sometimes I am doing other than paying 100% attention to what I am doing. Most of my photos from this photography experience were kinda blurry which has led me to deduce that taking photographs on the back of a tandem bicycle is the most high quality photography experience one might have.
~ Barking Spider ~
Taking advantage of the break in the clouds over the Owyhees, while all of Ada and Canyon Counties were grey, I drove out to the Barking Spider racecourse on Saturday with Josh. The weather was perfect and I got my first sunburn of the year.
We were all alone except for some people on dirt bikes...a lot of people on dirt bikes...making a lot of noise with said dirt bikes and kicking up a lot of dirt. From the parking lot, we rode North with a tail wind around the initial part of the course. As I rode around the other side of the first loop, the tail wind turned into a strong head wind, and I performed my first major downshift. The initial part of the course was relatively flat with some gravelly "woop-dees". After crossing a cattle guard, we rode over some inclines, encountered some sandy pits, and I had a skills lab on a few "roller coaster" dealies. This initial part of the course formed a loop which brought us back to the parking lot, at which point we crossed over onto the other side and rode up a steady mild incline with a strong-to-very-strong headwind. We rode up to a point at the top and had a bio and photo break.
Then we began the decent. This took us down some rocky steepes, some "woop-dees", some incredibly delightful side-sweep dealies (for which I have failed to remember the term), some sandy pits (in which I lodged my front tire and flipped over my bicycle in slow motion and sustained a deep tissue bruise), some roller coasters, and some canyon-sorts of things.
We arrived back at the car after riding this 9-mile course and ate some lunch. Then we headed out once again and rode a variation of the initial loop, followed with an adventure into a section of the trails that neither of us had ever explored. These trails were nice because the wind wasn't as strong. Additionally, the downhill was so much fun that I could have died. I handed Josh the camera and have these amazing photos of me riding.
I now have my first sunburn of the year, on my wrists, marking precisely the location of my gloves. It was such a fun adventure and I'm feeling inarticulate in trying to describe it. With the weather no longer being in the winter vein, I have identified the goal of going on adventures, hopefully weekly.
