When Everything That Can Go Wrong Does

So last night was my first time on San Juan at night. Plan was just to go to Cocktail and back. It might be a little dramatic to say that everything went wrong, but certainly the overall situation was far from ideal.

Things that failed:

1. Me

I'm not sure what it was but I felt kind of out of it physically. I didn't feel horrible and I wasn't going to bonk, but I thought I would feel stronger. Part of it could have been that the group was pretty fast in general.

2. Bike

Ugh. I've been fighting with my bike for the last month or so like it's an ex-wife. I just can't seem to get the components functioning correctly. I'm taking the bike in _again_ today to see if they can fix a few things. Why can't it just work well and stay that way?

3. Trail

The trail wasn't horrible, but it wasn't good either. Mud, ruts and loose dirt made it more of a struggle than I would have liked. It was by far the best option for riding after all the rain we've been having, but it is definitely more rutted than it normally is. Everyone knows it's the best "rain" trail so it gets hammered a bit more than other trails hence the ruts.

4. Light

I always knew this day was coming. The day when my light just stops working. Ugh. I turned on the light after mounting it and it came on and then when I touched the cable connecting the light to the battery, the light died. I wasn't able to get it to turn on after that.

Jake and Jason were nice enough to lend me their backup lights and so I decided to use those to ride. I might have been wiser to just drive home. The lights were very dim and any time I moved the handlebars the entire trail just went dark. I was constantly riding into ruts and having to walk a lot of sections I would normally ride. Several times I just pointed the bike towards where I thought the trail was and prayed that there weren't any rocks or ruts because I couldn't see.


I ended up crashing on the way down on one of the upper switchbacks but it wasn't too bad. I got several scrapes and I think I broke my rear shifter (which I _just_ replaced!) but other than that nothing too bad.

Unless I can get the light working again there won't be any night riding for a bit until I can get a new light.

I swear sometimes I hate mountain biking. Things wear out so easily and are so expensive to replace.