Mud Rambled & Rumbled

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After Thursday’s failed ride on the Boone due to a broken spoke and the subsequent fat bike ramble to salvage the day, I just went ahead and planned on riding the fatty on Friday. This was a wise and a stupid decision.

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It was a wise decision because I was fully prepared come Friday morning to ride the Farley; both my bike and gear was prepped in ready. It was also wise to use the Farley because unbeknownst to me, late Thursday night we had a decent amount of rain move through the area which made the dirt and gravel roads the consistency of wet cement. If I am going to ride soft, rutted and muddy dirt roads, it might as well be on a full rigid hardtail mountain bike with 4″ wide knobby tries.

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Of course, there is no getting around the fact that while the Farley is a very capable fat bike and way lighter than my old Pugs, it’s STILL a 33 pound bike with a 200+ pound rider on top of it. Add in super soft dirt roads and a wind out of the south and you have the makings for one of the slowest and mental mind fucking rides of the year. Stupid indeed.

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I wasn’t on the dirt roads more than five minutes before I made the decision that the ride would be a brief one. Like fifteen miles shorter than planned brief! It was taking everything I had to get up to speeds of 9 miles per hour at times. The fog was more like a misty rain than a dense fog and quickly had my glasses covered in water. The wet fog combined with the vaginal like humidity had me soaked within minutes.

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So, I decided to just chill out and do an abbreviated version of an already abbreviated ride. I got myself in the mental zone to just ramble along, take some photos and goof off; to just enjoy being outside in the Michiganderburgh farm land on my bike.

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In the end I did a mere fifteen miles (yes, your read right– fifteen). Yet I managed to have a good time and get some interesting shots of some deer, a family of turkey in no hurry to get out of my way, some cool found signage and other stuff.

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By ride’s end, my bike and I were covered in gritty a gritty gray mud. It was everywhere: drivetrain, brakes, under my saddle, in my hair, in my ears and up my fat ass.

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Through it all my Porcelain Rocket DSLR Slinger kept my camera safe and dry. The only issue I had with the camera was that when the lens got some beads of water on it, it was having a difficult time auto focusing on subjects and I had quite a few stinkers in my batch of pics. In the future taking some lens wipes might be a good idea. Of course taking some ass wipes might be a good idea too.

Once home, a good rinse off got the Farley looking semi-respectable and I set about the rest of my Friday. This was clearly not one of my best rides, but it was a ride and got me outside. Some days that all I can really ask for.

Later.

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