We had big plans for this last weekend, and were watching the weather daily
since it’s been so unseasonably wet in Northern California lately. Saturday
morning, the first sound I heard was POUNDING rain., but it eased off and in
fact stopped just at 1pm as we pulled up at Bruce’s house in Santa Cruz.
Unfortunately he is still recovering from his giraffe freemounting
demonstration a few weeks ago, but at least the cast is off. So it was just Rob
Bowman and Bronson Silva who Beau and I rode with, at The Forest of Nisene
Marks State Park in Aptos.
Even with all the recent rain, the singletrack was in good shape due to the
thick pine needles. We splashed through many puddles, sometimes the width of the
trail for a long way. After 1/4 mile, we came to a river crossing, usually a
series of hops between rocks. We waded 100’ through the deep muddy cold water -
invigorating! The trail is quite challenging with many steep and technical
sections, some completely unrideable. Others required 10 tries or so which
everyone really enjoyed (especially Beau when he managed one steep uphill before
anyone else). His new 20" Monty from unicycle.com is a terrible thing. It has
certainly shortened the time I’ll be able to outride him. Don’t buy one for your
kid without being aware of this ‘design flaw’.
He uses it for MUni with 127mm cranks instead of the stock 140s.
After 2+ hours we reached the turnaround point, and realized we had to hurry to
make the next event. The return trip took only 45 minutes with some dramatic
wipeouts. I think we all improved at least one skill during this ride: the
ability to ride up short but very steep sections that are really slippery. You
can’t apply too much power or you just spin the wheel, but you have to keep your
momentum. When we came to the largest river crossing, we were so wet we just
walked on through. Then someone had a brilliant idea: wash all the mud off in
the river! We arrived back at Rob’s van very wet, but almost clean. Everyone
agreed it was one of the best rides ever.
Back at Bruce’s house, people were starting to arrive for the next event:
dinner. Bruce decided he could “easily whip up dinner for 10 people in 10
minutes”, so the restaurant idea was scrapped. Sure enough, in short order, a
massive amount of huevos rancheros was being consumed. From there, off to UC
Santa Cruz for the first night of the Banff Mountain Film Festival
http://www.banffcentre.ab.ca/CMC/fest2000/film/ ) We all rode unicycles to the
theater which is the only way to go. It was a sellout crowd of at least 500
people who came to see various climbing, skiing, kayak, paragliding and MOUNTAIN
UNICYCLING films. Kris Holm’s short, Skilleto, was the final film before the
intermission, and watching it with such a large audience, all cheering and
gasping, was fantastic. During the intermission, we had to ride, so Bruce, Rob,
David Poznanter and I ran outside and jumped on, but everyone who saw us was
disappointed. So many said, “Ok, up on that railing” or similar. Sadly, we
couldn’t oblige. Back inside, Beau and Geoff were stuffing the raffle ticket box
and both won prizes. Three more films and it was time to head home through the
now POURING rain. Got to bed pretty late due to packing for Sunday.
At 6:25am, Rob arrived and joined Beau and me for the 3 hour drive to Folsom
Lake above Sacramento. John Foss arrived moments later, followed by local Andy
Jennings, and John Hooten with several of his scouts. We started the famous
Salmon Falls trail at 10am in nice weather, inspired by Andy’s reading of his
new unicycle poem. The trail http://www.unicycling.com/brett/salmon.shtml ) is
very rocky and steep at the beginning and was a little slippery and had many
puddles, but overall is continually varying, challenging and fun. The best part
of this ride, however, was the group. I could barely believe that all 9 of these
unicyclists, from age 9 to John Hooten, were blasting along, shooting through
deep rocky stream crossings, up the slippery mud, with no one was lagging at
all. And everyone except Superman Andy had a fat tired MUni. I can see why John
Foss and Brett have been raving about this trail for a long time. We turned
around after 1 1/2 hours and returned to the car a slightly different route
which included a very steep slippery section over jagged dangerous rocks, but
even this was ridden by quite a few. It also included the rare sight of John
Foss, wet from head to toe after a wipeout mid-stream. Beau was introduced to
stinging nettles too. The last section down to the road was difficult and we had
an injury: one of the scouts brought his dad on one of those two-wheeled things,
I forget what they’re called, but I think they’re hard to ride. Anyway he
sprained his ankle. His son was heard to say, “Dad, you really HAVE to learn how
to unicycle!”
After too quick good-byes, the three of us stopped for a quick lunch and headed
home, arriving just before 5pm. Geoff joined us, and back to Santa Cruz we went.
Day two of the film festival featured 8 films, but the only unicycling was us
riding to and from the parking lot. I think our favorite was a short called
“Resident Bruise” that was 100% ski/snowboard crashes - as in “fly across a road
doing a flip, but land on your back.” Check the website above to see if any of
the 150 locations of this touring festival are close to you. If you like sports
(the real kind, not professional lame TV stuff), you’d love it. There are dates
in San Francisco and Berkeley in April.
For the first time in a long time, Beau didn’t wake up early this morning!
—Nathan
