Today Paul (on his Rivendell Sam) and I (on my still new Rawland rSogn) decided to explore a road at the far point of our usual 50km mixed surface "SW" loop here in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We met up at 8:15 at the local market, had some hot fresh soymilk and tiny Thai- Chinese donuts (pa thong koh) from a street vendor, and headed south. Where the long dirt section dumps you back on tarmac past the halfway point, we have always gone left/downhill/back to town. Today we decided to go right, which on our GPS map meandered along a stream for perhaps 5km, and then seemed to dead-end. Sounded pretty, anyway.
We had stopped at our usual watering-place, a Hmong village along the longest dirt section, where we were unable to buy liter bottles of water. Instead, not for the first time, our bottles were refilled from a big 20 liter jug, and payment was steadfastly refused, which gave me no choice but to buy a kilo of local mandarin oranges (for the even here ridiculous price of 30 cents) and stuff the bag in my handlebar bag. We would be glad to have them later. The new to us road took us over a ridge, and then dropped us along a narrow paved section into the next valley. The road was being widened, and the operator of an excavator blocking the entire road as it was chipping away at the cliff somehow saw us coming over his shoulder, suspended work and let us sneak by with a nod. No flagmen, here. Dropping down into the valley we found a merry creek and a lush valley floor, a welcome sight here at the height of the dry season. We began climbing up the valley past a couple of little villages and well- tended fields, and a few remaining forest giants above us on the lower slopes. The paved road ended at a little wat (Buddhist temple), where we took a brief rest and admired the plaster buddha statue under construction. Photos start here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gernothuber/6870180197/in/photostream We continued along a dirt road into the remote upper reaches of the valley. After a couple of short steep climbs the valley flattened out again, and an occasional seepage of water from the slope to the left cooled the air and turned a section of road into rutted near-mud. This may not be a good ride in the wet season. As the road narrowed to a motorcycle trail, the creek started meandering like crazy from one side of the valley to the other, which meant that the trail, which ran more or less straight, crossed and re-crossed the stream every couple hundred meters on its way through orchards and tiny pastures. We counted 15 crossings before we had to turn around and recross them all. After making it through the first 3 or 4 unscathed (on 42mm Marathon Extremes and 42mm Grand Bois, respectively) we got cocky and really started to enjoy each crossing, Paul without fenders getting quite wet in the process, a welcome cool-down in the 90+ F / 30+ Centigrade heat. Some of the banks were quite steep and clay-y, which posed a bit of a challenge on the Hetres, especially since the water was deep enough that it was hard to maintain momentum all the way through the creek. So we didn't make it all the way up the far bank every time, but we did make it back onto dry ground every time. We started getting out our phone cameras to attempt some photography, but without too much success. We shall return with a real camera (and a dry bag, just in case). Having tarried, we needed to haul @ss back to town, as I had a yoga class to teach at 1 pm. Pushing hard climbing back over the ridge we got smiles and thumbs-up from the concrete-pouring crew. Somewhere along the way, running on empty, we made an emergency stop for a Coke, and had our water bottles forcibly refilled by the grandmotherly proprietor with water and ice. By the time we got back to the flat road home I was pretty bushed since I hadn't been riding much aside from my super short commute for the last couple of months, so Paul pulled us all the way back home in a mad 15km sprint. I got home, jumped in the shower, got on the scooter because my sit bones were hurting to the point where even sitting on the scooter was painful and riding a bike not to be contemplated. I got to the studio in time and taught my class basically without sitting down (I couldn't). A couple hours later the pain fortunately receded. I never had this happen quite this bad, and that even though I had swapped my most comfy B-17 from my own commuter/kid-hauler Sam Hillborne to my rSogn the night before. The sitbones (and attached hamstring tendons) felt mostly fine until the sprint, but during those last 30 minutes got progressively worse, slowing me down even more than the jello in my legs. Next time we'll take more time and add a few more stream crossings, hopefully following the creek all the way to the head of the valley. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
