Big Bear

For those of you who did not know, today was my sisters birthday. All she wanted to do was to have breakfast with her friends and go up to Big Bear and go mountain biking. I showed up as she was finishing the dishes, breakfast had been a success. Her sidekick, Amy, was a no show at breakfast, we waited about 45 minutes while I haased down the leftovers, and we decided"Fuck it, let's go" and off we set. We made it to BB in about two and a half hours. On the way up the mountain, she was driving like she went to the same driving school as Brandon...I was hitting the oh shit break every 15 seconds as she would zoom up on peoples asses, and then curse them for driving slow. Mind you we were going up a fucking mountain, and yes I see the irony in me being the one bringing this to your alls attention.

We get to the bike place right at the base of BB and the guy asks a silly question, "hard tail or full suspension?" Julie looks at me and then without missing a beat blurts out "Full suspension". We get set up with these sweet ass Trek bikes, helmets, the whole 9. We head up the hill on the bikes, leaving the car at the shop. By the time we get to the lodge, we are both pooped, but figured out the shifting of gears and what not. At the lift, we go to purchase our tickets, and BB is free on your birthday! Julie's $25 lift ticket was free. I paid $12 because we didn't know how long it would take us to get down and the lifts close at 5...it was about 2, so I paid for a single trip and then could upgrade later. Last time she had been there, she and Amy had gone up some crazy ass hill and then it took them 2 hours to get down. When we got off the lift, which was a fucking trip to walk off of a ski lift, we decided, well you went right last time, lets go left. If you know anything about BB the black diamonds and double blacks are this way...totally forgot this little fact. We ended up on a single track that was FUCKING INSANE. Julie wiped out 3 times before we were halfway down. I went down twice. I was riding the back break and some of the drops were so steep that I went over the handle bars...it was a warm day and my cockles missed the tube that connects the handlebars to the bike by mere millimeters. Another time I was going through a rotted log, caught the pedal and ended up dismounting the bike as it skidded out from under me. Then there were the serious bikers that were flying down this insanity at mach 3 with full on face protected motorcycle helmets and they were wrapped up like one of the fucking mythbusters. They were fun to get out of the way of. It was a hell of a lot of fun, but just fucking CRAZY!

We eventually got down the mountain, and decided let's go again. So as we pull up to the chairlift, I am bullshitting with the operator who was missing half of his fucking ear, and he advised me to go back to the bike shop and get my back tire looked at. When he asked where we had been, and I told him, he said "I would hate to see you get up on top of the mountain and get stuck." Remember this line. We go to the shop, the guys swap out the tire with a fresh one and off we go. Get to the lift, they wave my 12 bucks and get us on our way. The lift guy set us up with an awesome series of fire road trails that would be much more our speed. We get to the top, head right, blow by some people and are hauling ass....then I realize, I have no back breaks. They are hydraulic disc fucking brakes, and I know they worked earlier. I end up stopping carefully with the front brake hop off and start to look at the brake mechanism. I am fucking around with the brake, and then I get the bright idea to dust off the disc...that was awesome. It was so hot, that I didn't even feel the heat, I did however see the white smoke coming off from under my FINGERS. That was even more awesome, or the fact that the edge of the disc melted right through the skin of my first joint of my pointer finger or that I could feel the layers of skin slip against each other. I now have these really cool blisters in the shape of the holes of the disc brakes on my thumb, my pointer finger and my middle finger on my right hand...writing on the board will be way fun. By this time, it's 3:30, lift closes at 5, shop closes at 6. We are too far down to walk up, oh did I forget to mention that the brake had completely SEIZED. The back tire couldn't move...not at all. There was no release lever or anything....so anyways. We couldn't walk up, we decided I would run it down dragging the back tire as we went. I kept taking a pedal to just above my knee...even more awesome is the bruise and the bloody marks I now have. After about a mile or so, we stopped some guys coming up the trail. They had a wrench and disassembled the rear brake. "In all my years riding, I have never seen anything like this" so they already think I am a tard. Then I blurt out, "I burned my fingers trying to look for a release lever." both guys stop, and look at me and say, "Yeah, brakes can get hot." SO I coasted down the hill using only the front brake. I would ride for 5 and walk for 5 because I didn't want the front brake to seize also...we would really be fucked.

We finally make it to the bike shop, and as we pull up the same dipshits who changed the tire ask "How was it?" Julie responds, "Oh we had some problems" They respond with, "I am sure, it occurred to us after you left that we put a tire from a smaller frame on the bike, and they have different sized calipers. When we called the lift to stop you, you had already gone." I showed them my fingers and recounted the story. One of the kids comes in, I guess he was the manager, and tells the guy behind the desk to only charge us for 2 hours for each bike. Now I had kept my cool pretty well with the situation for the most part. Came a little unglued at the thought of spending the night on the mountain, or at the thought of having the shop close and being stuck with two fucking bicycles and Julies car. At this point, I turn to the guy behind the desk and ask "I burned the shit out of my hand because your bike broke and you want to charge me for being forced to run it a mile or so, and have some stranger MacGyver the fucking thing so I could make it down. Are you serious?" Whole nother run around, but we got the bikes free for the day. In the end, we ended up spending 12 bucks total. On the way out of town, stopped for a fountain drink so I could hold onto something cold because my fingers kind of hurt and Julie decides she wants beef jerky. At the checkstand, the total comes to 17 bucks...she managed to grab a 16 dollar bag of fucking jerky! Jesus Christ was that the best jerky ever!  --Joe