Well, I put my first bruise on my brand new OCLV carbon fiber TREK "Y" mountain bike frame today. And what do you think got me?

Yes friends, the Damn Four Foot Log!

For the past few months I've OWNED the Four Foot Log! It was Mine! I guess IT decided today IT would humble me.

I was excited. I hadn't ridden since my big crash in Lawrence, and I had just gotten the OK from my Doctor to ride again. He said my ribs had healed just fine, but try and take it easy for a while. Since I was fine, I wanted Bike N Bob's shop to look over my bike and see if it was fine. When I took the "Y" in, Gil, his number 1 mechanic, was out test riding a Specialized M2. I should have waited for Gil to return, cause Bob himself took a wrench to the "Y" bike.

I wanted to ride the River Trails, just to prove I wasn't scared to go back to the scene of my rib cracking night ride. I took Jim "The Animal" and his 10 year old son, Adam (nickname, "Master of Disaster") over to Lawrence. Jim had never been there and I knew that these trails wouldn't kill his son. However, I had hoped they would do Jim in!

Jim already has his young son in endurance training. He is using both a physical training method and a psychological training method. On the half hour drive over to Lawrence, Jim made Adam drink two 16 ounce bottles of water, eat a chocolate power bar, 3 bananas, a strawberry Carnation breakfast bar, and drink down some homemade banana flavored power drink that Team Shakley sells. By the time we got to the trails, the poor kid had to pee so bad he was turning green!

As Adam kept drinking and drinking, Jim kept saying to his son:

"You don't want Mr. Bonk to visit you on the trail do you?"

"You don't want Mr. Bonk's black spots on YOUR eyes?"

"You don't want Mr. Bonk's cold shivering chills in your body?"

"You don't want Mr. Bonk's viscous leg cramps, do you?"

He then told both of us a horrible story about when he was about 10 years old; how Mr. Bonk had attacked him in a road race in Arizona. How he had laid beside the road, deaf, dumb and blind for two days in 100 degree heat, while buzzards circled over his head and his skin started to melt off his face. He almost cried, as he remembered waking up in the hospital in a full body cast with 3 or 4 needles in each arm, each one hooked up to saline bags, trying to put vital fluids back into his dehydrated body. And the doctors whispering, behind the pale green curtains around his bed; "If only the boy would have drank a little water, we might have been able to save his legs. If he doesn't improve we may have to amputate both of them in the morning." And Jim went on that the scars on his back weren't really road rash from a bike wreck, but scars from the hundreds of vultures that dove out of the sky and picked as his flesh. And as he lay boiling in the sun, trying to sell his soul for a thimble full of water, he could always hear Mr. Bonk, somewhere, off in the distance, laughing and taunting.