Brain Cloud

For the past week and a half I've been in an inexplicable grey area. After surviving the Dragon's Tale race, I have lost a little energy. Last week I had absolutely no motivation to do anything and although I felt tired, every time I went to sleep, I found my mind racing about nothing in particular. The office didn't help either. I'm used to a lot of audible distractions in office since I work in a cube farm, but this past week was especially bad. In order to add another row of cubes, my office was running a metric ton of copper wire. All week the scissor jack motored back and forth while some guy drilled, snaked, pulled, yanked and dropped white cables all over the freakin' place. Just when I felt like I was being productive the lift would appear, rise up, yank on some cables, drive 1 ft., yank on some cables, yank some more, drive 1ft. yank, drive, yank, bzzzz, pffft, zrrrr, kshhhkshhksh, vrrrr. HOLY LORD!! At one point a maintenance worker felt the need to use the lift to change a light bulb which resulted in a 2000 point turn in someones cube to achieve the optimum light changing altitude and angle. Pandora was a life saver this week, but this didn't help my state of mind. It was clear I had a brain cloud.

Scissor Lift Jerkface

The cure seemed pretty simple. Just hit the trails, so that's exactly what I did on Saturday morning. Rain battered the Charlotte area on Wed. and Thurs., so my first choice was closed. I decided to hit Sherman Branch which is always fun. I haven't been there in ages, so it's always fun to discover a few new surprises. There were two new ladder drops that I didn't brave today. Maybe next time.

Bamboo Forest

Log Ride - A balance test. Yes I rode it. :-)

I planned on staying out for a 2 hour ride, but after the first lap I knew I didn't have it in me. I still had a great ride, but have a little more work to do to completely clear my brain cloud. 

In other news, I sold a bunch of bike stuff last week, including my 2008 Trek Fuel EX8. I'm a little sad to see this bike go.

Trek Fuel on a trip up to Mt. Mitchell.

This bike has a ton of significance to me. It brought me out of retirement as I rode myself back into shape. I did my first ORAMM on this bike back in 2009. It's an awesome bike and I will miss it. Now that it's leaving, I'm finding myself looking at long travel 29ers way too much. This bike descended like a runaway train on rails. It was especially adept in the rough stuff and I miss a lot of that extra travel on my current bike especially in Pisgah. I also learned how to repair everything on this bike. After too many bike shop incidents on this bike, I became determined to do all my maintenance myself. Since doing that, I haven't had one single issue. In 2010, I tore the entire suspension apart to replace all the pivot bearings that had seized from too many water crossings. it was a fun project. In a few weeks I have to say goodbye to a great bike.