CranksGiving Clemson 50

Yesterday I made a trip to Clemson to ride the CranksGiving Clemson 50. http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=464919

The ride started at 9am and we finished up at 3:30. There were probably 20-25 riders and the weather was perfect. Thanks to everyone that put it on and I hope you continue to promote these types of events in the future.

Basically the ride started out with the more popular trails that are in the middle of the two fire roads. Then it branched out to the East side out to Dalton Road to the DH course. Somewhere along the way I missed one of the arrows and had to back track. I finally caught back up with Jay and Jonathan. Somewhere out in the wilderness, while bombing down a fire road, I lost control and had a fantastic crash. We were cruising at 20+MPH, I hit a rock, lost control and ended up flipping into the brush off to the side. Jonathan saw the whole thing and got a good 30 minutes of laughs out of it. I am not sure how I did not break anything on my body or bike, but all was good. Then on our way to the Loopty Loop we saw Rob coming back from the DH course. He must have been laying down the pace, because he was about 4 miles ahead of us. The funny thing is that he decided to turn around and ride it again with the group. He actually stuck around for the rest of the day. I guess he needed some base miles. We made it to CP1 for some liquid refreshments and food and then headed out again for CP2. I decided to take up the lead and missed two important turns. Since I knew where I was, I just finished the section and then backtracked to the waterfall section. I probably missed 4 miles of trail through it all. After the waterfall area I was at CP2 with 35 miles down. No one had seen Jonathan or Rob yet so I waited around for them. After about 10 minutes I decided to head out. Then I remembered that my derailleur was acting up. So I turned around to see if anyone had some tools and up comes J and Rob. So while I fixed my bike they got loaded up and then we took off. This next section of trail down at Doyle Bottom is tight single track that is slow going, but really good stuff. We then went back up the stuff I went down earlier-by mistake, and then on to the finish. We got about 45 miles in. They had food, beer, and prizes for everyone that participated. It was definitely worth the trip to support the Upstate SORBA and get an all day ride in at the place where it all started.