Man down...

So Chip, Doogie and I made our way to FATS yesterday for a long mountain ride. First, let me say that FATS is better than ANYTHING else in SC. It makes Newberry look like a cow track and Harbison isn't even worth mentioning in the same breath. It's a properly built trail where you can pick up speed, kept some flow and get your HR up on the climbs.
Okay, now on to the action. We got there @ 9:30 and were on the bikes by 9:45. It was a perfect day to ride. 55 degrees and cloudy. The trail was a bit damp, but by no means sloppy. We completely missed the turn for the first loop of the 4 and just continued on down the track to the beginning of the rest of the trails. The bottom three loops are inter-contected at one trail head and go off in different directions.
The first trail was uneventful and quite fun. It was only the third time I'd ridden the new 29er, so I was getting more comfortable and a bit faster. About a mile into the second loop, there is a downhill whoop-de-doo section. Chip and Doogie were about 100 yards ahead, so I foolishly tried to make up ground in this section. The whoops got progressively bigger and closer together. Everyhting was fine until I landed in the transition between the 3rd and 4th bump. When I landed, the fork compressed into the face of number four and shot me off the lip like a I was attached to a booster rocket. I landed HARD and the bike just came out from under me. I augered into the ground like a human lawn dart. Bike, body, bottles and glasses went in four different directions. It was...a yardsale! I had the breath knocked out of me pretty good, but could still assess the severity of my injuries. Fortunately, the only shooting pains I had were on my right elbow and right hip. My elbow looks llike the tiger from the San Francisco Zoo got a grip on it and my hip bears a rather large strawberry. Nothing broken though, which is a big plus. I'm REALLY fucking sore this morning though! We'll see how I do tomorrow on the road ride!
I got up, cleaned off, got laughed at by my compatriots and we continued on our merry way.

We hit all four sections, @ 25 miles of pure singletrack in 3.5 hours, including time for crashes and breaks. I will be going back!

Nick gets the hardman award for doing the entire ride on his cross bike! All the bikes were DIRRRTY and all of us were less than clean.

I'd planned on riding today, but the H.O. is very Type A and felt the need to go into work, even though she had the week off...

Time to go take some Advil...

Edit: and after further review, I broke my Giro Pneumo when I hit my head on the hard Earth. I knew I hit my head, but had no headache or other ill effects. Big kudos to Giro! Wear your helmet kids!