Where do I begin? First off, we decided to ditch our planned ride to Ingolf because the forecast was calling for 100% of heavy rain – all day. Brian our resident bridge-builder and all around great guy suggested Clear Lake and I rubber-stamped that idea… We’d never been… and while Brandon Hills (our usual go-to-place when Ingolf is unpleasant) is fun, it’s not exactly the favorite place to ride for many of us. So Clear-Lake it was.
So off to Clear Lake we went with JF’s truck and Leanne’s car. Carmen was held up at a wedding thing so she could not make it so the ride consisted of Kevin (thanks for coming Kev, you should be a fixture on these rides…a GREAT help and delightful to ride with), the always beaming and immensely kind Brian, Leanne “I’ll rip your head off if I have to portage just one more causeway” Batenchuk, The ever so delightful and great friend to all Michelle, The wonderful Jenn: The only girl to ride clipless, regardless of the fact that the marrow in her tibia is starting to ooze out, Gavin “you want me to do WHAT?” Morrison, Kenny “Hey guys my crotch isn’t even CLOSE to the water” Meech, Reeko, Rocky and “but don’t you idiots know I can’t SWIM?” Lola…. and me, the guy who would rather go by sextant than by GPS: JF.
So what started out as a “yawn” old fart ride quickly deteriorated into a 6.5 hour practice for some twisted third world sponsored-by-water-wings-inc. adventure race… Punctuated by amazing riding, not-so-amazing riding, eerie chainsaw massacre-type abandoned campgrounds, abandoned roads, beaver-dam crossings, waist-deep muck fests, great riding, thick brush episodes that taxed everyone’s will to live, alternate trail discoveries, wet tall grass that thankfully wasn’t quite tall yet, marsh riding, “let’s just walk in the lake, at least we won’t need tetanus shots when we get back home”, Fallen trees that would need major chainsaw action to rectify, more fallen trees, quicksand, good riding, more abandoned roads, a near-mutiny that would have seen me hanging from a tree, face first in poison ivy… And a nice ride back in a head-wind that would topple a trailer park.
I remember at the beginning of the ride, I looked at Annandale as she gave me the “you’re #@!$ kidding me, right?” look and I said to her “hey, it’ll give us something to talk about on Monday” I’m sure that’s how Sir Ernest Shackleton started that expedition hundred or so years ago.
Personally, during this ride I cursed the gods, thanked the gods, found wading in waist-deep water fun, aggravating, depressing, refreshing, maddening and kinda cool… I was almost killed by several people on said ride and I’m pretty sure if it had not been for Brian Wood’s kind demeanor, Michelle’s love and Kevin’s “Hey, this yellow leech-infested cesspool is kinda neat to walk through!” attitude I’m sure I’d have been strangled with my hollow-pin SRAM bike chain and left to dangle from the before-mentioned lynching Leanne was pondering… Or lashed using some of that left-over barbed-wire we found from that barbed-wire bed we ran into (the absolute highlight of our visit to the camp-ground of the damned).
So just to ease some leftover mutinous angst (and mostly because Batenchuk is standing over me with her foot on my throat): ok, I kinda got us lost. Although (now that she’s left my office) since we were on the lake-shore… I still maintain we were NOT lost but instead “off course”.
The loop around Clear Lake is supposed to take 3 to 4 hours… We broke a record and did it in 6.5… Although I suggest taking an alternate route at the camp-ground-of-the-living-dead… And now that it’s over, I think it was fun… And I might just do it again… Although next time with chainsaw.
Epic ride indeed… and a great ride. I’m sitting here at my desk this morning… slight aches and pains… But nonetheless with a huge smile on my face… Ah, to ride.
JF® 
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