It's been a long time since my last update.

Day Six: I chose to take an off-road ride since I had pretty much exhausted all other possibilities over the past few days of my vacation. I raced my cross bike, I rode it on and off-road, I rode my track bike on the road, I pretty much did it all.

I drove to Greensfelder and took my rigid 29'er singlespeed with me. The ride felt really smooth for the first several hundred feet as a I rode up the gravel road to the radio tower. Once I passed the radio tower and began to ride down hill, all hell broke loose. I'm not going to lie to you. I came to a complete stop in the middle of the downhill and unclipped after being scared shitless by a huge obstacle. My mind was racing.

I sucked less and less over the next several miles as I adapted to the trail. By the time I got to the next serious, rocky downhill, I was riding much better. I realized that I was trying to ride my mountain bike like a cross bike. I was trying to ride around every obstacle with my 700x30 tires when I really had 29x2.35 tires. I began to aim for the middle of the trail and hope for the best. My riding improved several hundredfold.

I rode almost a complete lap of the race course from May, took a few wrong turns and was really starting to enjoy myself on the technical downhills and climbs of the random trails I happened upon...until I got a flat in my rear tire. I guess I chose some pretty kickass lines. I took the first escape route I could find and rode the road back to my car. It was pretty late at this point and I chose to call it a day instead of fixing my flat and riding for another 20 minutes.

I changed and drove home. I had an old routine of stopping at Taco Bell in Fenton and drinking a few Tilt alcoholic beverages. I ran over the scenario in my mind several times but couldn't bring myself to do it. It's unsafe and uncool. I decided to drive all the way to Hampton and exit there for Taco Bell and booze. From there I would descend upon my home to drink and eat the spoils of my conquest. The drive was horrible. The highway system in our state is a flaming pile of shit. Everybody involved should be embarrassed. I feel like Socrates right now.

I exited the horrible, extremely dangerous highway (I'm not kidding here), and drove several blocks north to Arena Liquor. They have so many different kinds of booze it was really hard to decide what to go with, but I went with a six of Lagunitas Maximus. From there I went to Taco Bell and picked up the necessary amount of burritos to make my day awesome.