We all slept in this morning in order to recover a bit from the previous day's journey. Adam, Andrew and I spent the morning pulling thorns and goat heads out of each of our tires and before finally inserting new tubes. Lange and the rest of the gang made bfast and lounged around in preparation for the day's activities.
We all finally made it to the trailhead by 1pm. Yup, late start as usual. We set our sights on Cow Creek, Lodgepole Gulch and Greenhorn Gulch. Before we even left the trailhead, Adam rear tire went flat and we had to patch a mystery hole. All nine of us started up the singletrack, adding to the longest mountain biking train I had ever seen. It was great to have us all chugging our way up this hill. Near the top, Adam's rear tire went flat again and Lange broke a link in his chain. Out list of mechanicals was slowly growing. Once all patch up, we ripped some single track down to Greenhorn Gulch, where we split into two groups. One group headed to the car to get dinner ready while the rest tacked on the Lodgepole Gulch Loop onto the ride.
The descent back down to the car was awesome as we passed birch trees in their full autumn grandeur and tore through open meadow with traces of lingering, stubborn wildflowers, not yet ready to succumb to winter's grasp. We toasted our ride with a round of victory beers and headed back for dinner.
That night Andrew and John arranged a blind IPA taste test, as we had a regionally diverse array of 6 growlers. Andrew was beyond confident that his beloved Sockeye IPA would win hands down. The range of beers included Sockeye's Dagger Falls IPA, Lucky Lab's Super Dog IPA, Barley Brown's WFO IPA, Boundary Bay Imperial IPA, Boundary Bay IPA and Madison Rivers's Hop Juice.
Much to everyone's dismay, Andrew's addiction to the Dagger Falls materialized in the rest of us as it took 1st place overall. Yes, Andrew did not stop talking about this for the rest of the evening and had his fare share of birthday by the end of the evening to celebrate.
Overall results:
1) Dagger Falls
2) WFO IPA
3) BB Imperial IPA
4) Super Dog
5) Hop Juice
6) BB IPA
However, I am certain that we did not put Portland's best foot forward due to the proximity of our PDX dwelling. It was easily the best choice to represent Portland.
That night we stayed up late polishing off all of our growlers except for the Jalapeno Cream Ale. We all got to bed very late and were severely dehydrated in the traditional fashion, but good times were had regardless.
Andrew closed the night with the soon-to-be ritual of declaring: To Bed Men! For we Ride at Dawn!
UNT
Bryan
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