Relaxo, killer halfs and One Big Red Onion

I know it's been a while I've given a pic post....my bad....I've been a slouch since the 88...most of my riding has been maintenance rides and my only action pics would have been of me picking up a few growlers from 4-Peaks, drinking a couple and then yelling at OU's Offensive line....as in, their performance is offensive.

To bring me out of my funk, Chollaball introduced me to another riding buddy who has a 3-day, early fall tradition of inviting some like minded riders up to his cabin in Williams, AZ for a Rancho Relaxo weekend.....perfect!

We started out with a scenic detour on the Friday drive up to Prescott for a spin on the rocks.

Thanks to the Prescott crew for showing us the lines....

..........and the dots....

......otherwise I would have had to make up my own route...like chollaball......

There were plenty of fun power up's....

.....rock bridge ups.....

......and entrenched crazy ups.....

The only carnage was a little blood from Byron....which looks rad enough to be a tattoo.....

.....and the only downer was at the end of the ride when we discovered that someone's SPOT unit had sent a 911 distress signal out.....so that someone (who looks like me) had to explain to the friendly Sheriff's Deputy that it was a false-signal. Note to self: Tape my spot '911' button over to prevent accidental activation. Note to SPOT: Add cover to your '911' button to prevent me from accidentally informing the world that I'm bleeding out.....

I can't thank the Prescott crew enough for a wonderful ride and great Indian food recommendation afterwords! Props also go to the Yavapai Sheriff Department for responding to the SPOT distress signal and finding me in less than 15 minutes....even though I was code 4. When I asked if Code 4 meant "dumbass"....the Deputy replied, "No....it's code for we're gonna kick your ass now".

Leaving Prescott behind, Chollaball and I headed north towards Rancho for some happy hour(s)....is that actually an RFID on a bottle of El Jimador?.....

As folks trickled in and unloaded their bikes....we all felt compelled to test ride everybody else's ride....it was like Christmas getting to play with all my friends toys....only with Tequila and beer....

That's when the serious part of the weekend started.....disk golf. It turns out I am the only one who has never played....the rest of the group had an average of 20 yrs of Ultimate experience....I decided to drink more beer to mask my angry throws.....and my crappy technique...

The course Alex set up was pretty cool. We got to see some wild life......

.....we Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.....

.....and we even saw some finesse shots made from in the rough.....

Following disk-golf....we cooked up some dinner.....

....and gamed until we passed out......

Rising on Saturday morning....we were met with thunder and lightning on the ride up Schultz.....I was optimistic that it would blow away...it kinda did at times leaving us jacketless.....

....and it kinda didn't at times leaving us steaming with jackets....

....either way...it was beautiful riding.....

All in all....a great ride on Eldon riding Schultz, Gnarly, Pickle, Eldon, Red Onion, Hobbit......

And then it started looking grim again...memories of lightning on an exposed ridge in the Canyon Range of Utah promoted me to insist on a halt....so we scrapped the rest of the climb and started heading down....Alex and Cholla taking Wassabi...the rest of the crew heading back down the way we came. We all then joined up to ride Rocky Ridge back to the Schultz base. The only carnage on the day was Byron hitting his knee on a power up and me wrapping myself around a tree on lower Red Onion.....creating a bruise the size of a cantaloupe on my inner thigh/quad....it turned the color of a Red Onion in mere minutes. When it happened, I also slammed my neck and chest into the tree....not knocking the wind out of me...but dazing me enough to force me to take pause for a few minutes before riding again.


Back at the Rancho, we grilled and watched people grill.....


Had some half's....and half's....and half's.....


.....and got skunked while partying it up.....apparently they like peaches.....


On Sunday we scrapped plans to hit Bill Williams Mtn, and instead opted for more Eldon goodness.....which translated into Schultz-Onceler-Overlook-Secret-Supermoto....alot of log rolls.....


....skinny's to log rolls....

....and one angry Tarantula...

At this point, I started to really feel the Red Onion bruise wearing on me....limiting my ability on power-ups due to constant pain in my quadricep....so I called it in for the rest of the ride....riding sloppy for half of secret and all of supermoto. The pain was so bad by the end of the ride, it hurt to clip in or use my legs to soak and pump the terrain on what should have been a super-fun, supermoto. In the end though, I was happy to ride out of the 100 degree temps for three days and to push my riding past my comfort zone each day....finding new skills for which I previously had not worked on and making new friends in the process.