We hit Merryman's Loop at Loch Raven last night - we being Hoppe and I. Hoppe got hung up at work so I took a quick half hour loop and the timing couldn't have been better. As I rolled back to the lot, Hoppe was pulling in. He got ready, I fueled up on Vitamin Water (I immediately regretted making that decision, VM was a bad choice - read: vurps like acid). Then off we went, up Heart Attack Hill. It's not like the hill is so horrible, it's just the immediacy at which it comes.
Hoppe, on a singlespeed, once again showed me that I always have room for improvement. He rocked the hill like his biznatch. Although, I rolled it pretty nicely too. Then we were off to the races. My only hiccup was my rear tire. Last trip, and I suspect trips previous, I found a rip in my tire's sidewall. Simple physics suggests that the inner tube will expand the outer shell if the outer shell is weaker than the force exerted outwardly by the tube...I watched Mr. Wizard as a kid. The effect is a bulge in the tire, which makes rocky sections and switchbacks a little squirrelly in the rear. Most of the time I was worried about flatting out, so I took every clean line I could find and slowed down during downhill turns...boring.
We capped the ride off with a nice bottle of Burton Baton by DFH. It's a nice tradition Hoppe and I used to have. One bottle shared between friends after a hard ride.
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