What do you get when you cross 3 criminally insane mountain faces with 16 clinically insane mountain unicyclists?.. LA MUNI WEEKEND!
Never in my four years of muni have I seen such a high concentration of performance distributed across such a small number of riders. The skill that people brought to the trails, in my opinion, raised the bar a notch on the muni scene. The majority of the riders were pulling heart-stopping airs. These were on the order of 6 ft vert, or 10 ft total-distance leaps, depending on what sounds more impressive to you. They were also bombing 18 ft rocky steeps that were so steep that a frontal view looks like a flat wall. In truth, I don’t know how a roll could get any steeper without skipping off the slab into a full-blown skydive. What’s more, the less experienced riders… well, I can’t call them less experienced anymore! Every single rider was taking advanced lines, many of whom had never seen them before.
So our LA muni “experiment” was a huge success. But there were many other reasons for this, besides skill…
First of all, we were graced with badass company:
Mike Scalisi
Chris LaBonte
Nathan Hoover
Beau Hoover
Megumi Hoover
Jason Heinmann
Dennis D’Alfonso
Jess Riegel
Julian Lim
Eyal Aharoni
Hans Van Koppen
Josh Schoocraft
John Long
John Sprague
Jake Sprague
Erik (Mango) Doane
Rod Wylie
Second of all, the trails:
Friday: Suicide Connector in Augoura Hills. The hike up was long and steep. On the way down, we cleaned lines that we never even dreamed of the first time we ever saw them. But Suicide Connector will offer much more fun and challenge for the upcoming years.
Saturday: Southridge Park in Fontana. This was a bit of a pilot test, since Josh was the only one who had been there before. But he showed us how to dominate the web of mountain bike lines, and people warmed up to them quick. Best part is, barely a 10 minute hike up!
Sunday: Gspot & Devil’s Slide in Simi Valley. Despite gusty winds kicking up dust, the horizon was clear and beautiful. Riders mastered just almost every launch and chute of the high-flying Gspot, and then rolled just about every damn bump of the relentless Devil’s Slide.
This is not to say we weren’t challenged! Riders definitely earned their keep. There were so many ugly, dirt-spitting biffs, we quickly lost track. But what’s more impressive is that for all those biffs, no one got seriously hurt… mostly. JL did have to pass up some of his favorite trailage because on Friday he crunched his knee launching off a small cliff and doing what was possibly the longest gut-to-seat muni coast I’d ever seen. But he said he’ll heal in a few weeks, and what JL says, goes. Mango tweaked his ankle on the first daring drop of Gspot. John Sprague did something to earn a bloody knee (that oozed for the subsequent 19 hours). Jess got stung by a bee on the ear. And somehow, Chris grazed some razor wire with his hand in Fontana. The rest of us, just dirty, bruised, and happy (case in point: my playing the role of “final basket” during our impromptu disc golf tourney.)
I don’t have any photos to post yet, but the others will be posting or linking their pictures here soon.
Meanwhile, a big thanks to everyone for coming so far, thanks to Megumi for constant moral (and NSAID) support. A big thanks to Josh (this weekend’s mvp) for figuring out all the directions, for letting dirty stinky boys crash on his floor, and for showing us all we’re going to need to work a little harder now to keep up with his skills. Thanks to JL and Nathan for being our very own paparazzi. Thanks to Rod for actually finding time to rip it up with us again. And thanks to everyone for helping us put the jaw-dropping LA muni scene on the map. Hope to see you all again soon.
And now I’d like to pass the mic…
eyal
I can’t forget Eyal and Hans - day, duh men!