When Good Docents Go Bad
This last Saturday I went on a docent led ride in Limestone Canyon. It's always nice to be able to go out and ride in an area that is closed to the public. Limestone has amazing wildflowers, some natural history (Indians grinding grain in rocks?) and "the sinks", which are pretty unique rock formations.
The problem with these rides though is that they are slow. Not just a little slow though. Painfully slow. We had five flats on the ride and the overall ability level was pretty low. It took about three hours to go 12 miles, which starts to become very frustrating.
I was happy to ride the entire trail in my middle ring (and higher when needed) because there were a few steep climbs. I'm trying to ride in higher gears more and more to gain some strength and to get used to resistance and pain.
The entire ride however for me was a little tainted by one of the volunteer docents. The dude shows up with his downhill bike (Intense) and it was obvious from the start that he had something to prove. I hate riding with guys like that. Guys that feel the need to always be in front and have to take every downhill as fast as they can and try to jump off everything they see.
This punk actually clipped Jason's handlebars on a downhill which is totally uncalled for. I mean he was a docent! He decided to go in between two people riding side by side down a fire road and in the process almost took Jason out. Are you kidding me?
Even worse was that he didn't apologize for it when Jason pointed it out to him.
Later in the ride he kept bragging about his riding exploits and it gave me some serious satisfaction to see him eat it later in the ride trying to jump on a tame singletrack. He went down pretty hard. I don't want to see anyone get hurt, but it felt good to see his ego take a hit. He was scraped up a bit, but nothing serious.
Unless the future docent rides are in new places for me I think I'm going to start passing on them. I just don't have the patience for rides where the time spent standing around exceeds the time spent riding. I don't want to ride for 5 minutes and wait for 15.
I'm tempted to write the Irvine Ranch people about this docent because he was not needed and a danger to other riders.
The problem with these rides though is that they are slow. Not just a little slow though. Painfully slow. We had five flats on the ride and the overall ability level was pretty low. It took about three hours to go 12 miles, which starts to become very frustrating.
I was happy to ride the entire trail in my middle ring (and higher when needed) because there were a few steep climbs. I'm trying to ride in higher gears more and more to gain some strength and to get used to resistance and pain.
The entire ride however for me was a little tainted by one of the volunteer docents. The dude shows up with his downhill bike (Intense) and it was obvious from the start that he had something to prove. I hate riding with guys like that. Guys that feel the need to always be in front and have to take every downhill as fast as they can and try to jump off everything they see.
This punk actually clipped Jason's handlebars on a downhill which is totally uncalled for. I mean he was a docent! He decided to go in between two people riding side by side down a fire road and in the process almost took Jason out. Are you kidding me?
Even worse was that he didn't apologize for it when Jason pointed it out to him.
Later in the ride he kept bragging about his riding exploits and it gave me some serious satisfaction to see him eat it later in the ride trying to jump on a tame singletrack. He went down pretty hard. I don't want to see anyone get hurt, but it felt good to see his ego take a hit. He was scraped up a bit, but nothing serious.
Unless the future docent rides are in new places for me I think I'm going to start passing on them. I just don't have the patience for rides where the time spent standing around exceeds the time spent riding. I don't want to ride for 5 minutes and wait for 15.
I'm tempted to write the Irvine Ranch people about this docent because he was not needed and a danger to other riders.
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3:25 PM
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