(falsetto) Wednesday night rippahhhh!

After the customary safety meeting, we rolled from Bonzai's, and Romulus immediately started in with the punishing body shots, leading us in furious sprints uphill toward the summit of Mt. Davidson. Wobbling around like Ukrainian glassjaw Vladimir Klitchko after taking a couple of middling punches, I swerved all over the road, drooled on myself, squinted through blurry vision, and pushed on rubbery legs in doing all I could to hang on through the swirling jumble of rights, and lefts, and hills. Bonzai professed the same, but as usual, his lack of recent cycling activity was imperceptible. Despite the pain, this first five miles up hills ranging from steep (5-7°) to fucking steep (17°+) rocked because we all had lots of energy and pushed hard to grab those polka dot jersey points waiting at each crest. Romulus laid down an absolutely blistering pace for the first half of the ride, but we each nabbed a couple of hill sprints on the way to Davidson.

After topping out on Mt. Davidson, we dropped down to the coast for a lap around Lake Merced and a blistering rip up the Grand Highway bike path. We covered about a three to four mile stretch in there like a runaway train, with Romulus once again laying down the hammer BIG time. From the Grand Highway, we headed inland and did some city-street sprinting. This section was really cool because we drafted, had breakaways, pursuits, the whole road race flavor. Sprinting then gave way to the third major phase of the ride: the technical single track in Golden Gate Park. As we threaded our way back toward the panhandle, Bonzai took the reins and zipped us through tight, rooty, sometimes sandy, sometimes muddy, dark, overgrown trails that could be ridden daily without getting old. It was very fun riding behind Bonzai as he deftly negotiated the myriad of tracks. It always seems as if I'm in a Warren Miller movie as everything goes slo-mo, Bonzai slips a "catch and release" through the apex of a blind left turn, and disappears in a blaze of light down a steep, smooth drop into the next section of trail. Silky.

Tonight we each rode brilliantly, but even more than that, we rode brilliantly together. Each of us has great individual strengths -- when we ride together we really leverage our combined abilities in a way that makes every ride an epic. I'm not talking shit when I say, I think we could lay the hurt on a few people if there was some kind of team mountain bike race out there where we could all ride together at the same time. More than once tonight, the cry of "Sweep the leg" was heard as three swift riders carved through an intersection or a spur of single track in perfect formation.

No mechanicals of any kind tonight. Not only did we ride fast, but it seemed like we hardly stopped. Tonight was just two nonstop hours of rippin'. I did have a slight problem going up Mt. Davidson. It was somewhat foggy up there and combined with the heavy exertion up the hills to get there and our very labored pace up the single track near the top, my glasses completely fogged up. I pulled them down so I could see something, but without glasses, I can only see in generalities. However, I was able to make it up the entire little single track stitch before the lookout point at the top, despite barely being able to see the trail.

Romulus is riding in the cross-country race at the Sea Otter on Sunday, and he certainly looked ready to do some damage. I'm calling top 25 for him right here. If he can match tonight's ferocious pace, he'll pass a lot of people on the fast track at Laguna Seca.

Surprisingly, no significant animalia to report tonight. However, with the long day and the heavy pace, I wasn't at my most alert for anything outside my illumination footprint, which by the way is fucking awesome right now after the substitution of a Jet Lite Phantom 13i for the old bullshit NiteRider headlamp. The Jet Lite rocks: it's much, much lighter, pivots easily, and lights up the night -- and it was cheaper than a comparable NiteRider light.

Ugh. Worked until 7:30; started the ride from Bonzai's at 9:00; home at 12:00; in bed at 2:30. Tomorrow is going to be a long one, but tonight was well worth it.