Mountain Biking Non Stop! Great Rides! FLUME TRAIL, Fall 1998

Mountain Biking Non Stop! Great Rides!
FLUME TRAIL, Lake Tahoe, California

Sept 3, 1998 - Flume Trail, Lake Tahoe, CA.

Well, it all started as most rides I go on do:

Getting up way tooo early for lack of preparation the night before,
Drinking a wHOLe lot of java, and...
Playing early morning phone tag with the carpool.

This trip it was Don (aka; Freak) and I riding up together in his bucket to meet riders from at least two other cities at Spooner Lake.
When Don and I arrived at Spooner we were just a little late so first thing we did was to gear up! Gary spotted us and came over to give us the low down. Larry and Sandra took their vehicles down to Incline Village so that they all could do the shuttle thang. This was Don's first time to the Flume so I was planing on showing him the whole loop, which ment leaving the others at the down hill to Incline and going on to the second half of the Flume.
Just as Larry and Sandra got back to the parking lot Myron showed up with two of his buds. Myron is a competitive road cyclist and is sponsored by the same shop that sponsors the BMX team that I'm on and this would be the first time that I had ridden with a "Leg Shaver" (my term of endearment for roadies) from the SGW/O'Neils Road Team. So now we were 10 riders strong:

Gary, Larry and a freind of theirs where all from Stockton,
Myron and his two buds from Sacramento,
Steve and Sandra from S. Lake Tahoe, plus...
Don and myself from Sac.

By the way... Steve whom I have yet to mention at length is to be our guide for the day and it was Gary and Steve who had organized this ride. With the introductions and preperation out of the way it was time to RIDE!
Up the hill we go. As with all group rides you have click's of skill levels and the basic rule of... with each rider added to a group ride you need to multiply the total ride time by X-amount, don't ask me why? it just works out that way!
I was feeling particulary strong that day and was missing climbing as I had been racing my BMX'er all year so I was digging it and made it to the top first. Once at the top I sheded all my upper layers and layed them out to dry. As soon as I was naked, well almost naked, Don arrived! Now here is one of the reasons I call Don a FREAK!... this is like Freak's second time MTB'ing and the first real ride on his new bike and he is the second one up to the top? The FREAK is a natural!
As we are waiting for the rest of our group to reach the top, two of my ride buds from Davis, California cruise on up on their way back to the parking lot, how cool to see a couple of ride buds you didn't expect to see when you're like 200 miles from home!
As you can see by the photo above it was clowdy with a threat of rain or snow and my naked upper half was chillin' so back on went the poly-pro under garment and my BMX Team jersey, thats when the last of our group made it to the top. It was Steve and I think Gary, I was wondering why our guide was so long in reaching the top, I figured he was bringing up the rear just to make sure everyone made it like a good guide would! NOPE! Steve had a little problem with his back rim, it was taco'd and un-ridable. With a bit of ego stroking about my rim truing experiance (BMX'ing is hard on the rims!) by Gary I soon got to work on Steve's back rim.
Twenty minutes later Steve's rim was off of the brake pads and so we decended down to Marlette Lake where we lost Myron and his two bud's. Due to a late start and a party to be at in the valley they decided to turn back, OH YEAH... it was starting to sprinkle so that might have scared them off too ;)

From here onto where the next picture was shot it was smooth riding except for Gary's unusual amount of pee breaks!

Where the above photo was taken is where the others go down to the shuttle vehicles and Don and I were to go right for some more trail action but we were talked out of the additional milage by Steve and Sandra. Since Steve was the guide and both Steve and Sandra were locals we beleived them when they said it was getting to late for us to make it around the loop and we were about to get rained/snowed on! The others were to meet up at Steve's resturant, Killer Chicken, on the S. Shore for the big chow down and since Steve promised me a FREE meal for doing his rim Don and I scrambled back down the trail the way we came.

I have one thing to say about our ride back to the parking lot...
D O W N H I L L Baby!!

Back at the parking lot which was pretty much empty by know, Don and myself celebrated with High Fives and Flying Chest Slams, I tossed down a couple of cold ones, we removed phone numbers from under Don's winsheild wipers of other riders we met that day, loaded up and boogied on down the road to S. Shore. Back to the Main Flume page.