This is kindofa weird image to follow a title of "strangulation" but that's what happens when one has been subsisting on coffee and deadlines for a month straight. This photo, and all the road trip photos that follow, courtesy of the lovely and talented strange-angel.com

It has been a while folks, and aside from a gargantuan list of “shit that must get done” there is no excuse for the silence from this end of the wire. We shall try to be more proactive about not being silent in the upcoming days/weeks/months, especially since we just got guilt tripped by the Man With No Home, otherwise known as Seb Kemp. More about him in another post.

So, as of last post, we were still threatening to show pictures of the trip out into the Great Western Desert for the frabjous days (callooh callay) to be had at the Fruita Fat Tire Festival. Plenty of time has lapsed since the actual event itself, no souls were burned this year, so we will give our brief summation below, and then try to get this blog pointed down the line with some subsequent posts. Think of this one as an overdue catchup exercise, an attempt to get the typing fingers stretched out a bit and back on task. The basic summation of this particular road trip would read as follows: Expectations of crunching out fat miles of awesome trails while getting a tan were severely wronged. We had an awesome time anyway…

It started snowing going over Donner Pass. Almost into May. There's a saying, "March comes in like a lion, out like a lamb." I was relating to a friend recently, now that it is the end of May and the shit weather is still kicking us in the teeth, that March came in like a lion, followed by some more lions, who bred. Then a lamb showed up, but it got eaten by another lion. Smelling the blood of the lamb (woah!), a whole pride of lions followed. Lions are assholes.

So much for rolling across highway 50 at warp speed...

We got seriously stomped by the weather. It added a day to our drive time, and saw us arriving at the festival just in time for a weekend that alternated between hailstorms, snow flurries and short downpours that turned trails to quagmires in nothing flat. Opting to stay relatively dry, we enacted plan b:

Former Hellride contestant, Kristin Butcher, showing proper mom technique while lulling her spawn, Slagathor Megatron the third, to sleep.

For those who don’t recognize The Butcher, she can be seen strutting her stuff in the video below. Interesting to note that by the time the Hellride came around, she discovered about two weeks before the event that young Slaggy was gestating inside her. Good to see they both made it out the other side. Yes, he really is known as Slagathor Megatron the third, by the way:

The weather gods began to smile a little toward the end of things, and some trails were ripped the way Dog intended:

Dogs are cool. Check out the gut on the guy in the Swobo jersey. It should be noted that in most cases, Swobo jerseys will make the wearer look like a statue of a Greek god. In most cases...

Some cruisers were railed:

And eventually we had to run away home, but not without a quick detour:

Ahhh, Moab. Nothing like scouring the rust off the synapses by scaring the bejesus out of yourself on red, red rock.

Alright, thanks for reading. Glad we got that out of the way. We now return to our regularly scheduled spamming of carbon fiber bikes, big wheels, tall downhillers, and the petition to exchange one of our builders for a guy who works at Ibis. More on that next time…