Its rides like this that give me an idea of what it must have been like to ride Repack with a group of friends 20 years ago, promoted purely by word of mouth. Down home, grass roots silly racing. I realized early on that I chose the wrong bike, with the wrong gearing and maybe even the wrong wicking top and gloves. A fully rigid steel bike is clearly practical for everyday riding where time isn’t an objective (unless everyone else is also on the same kind of bike), but not ideal for extended narrow trail riding including more than average amounts of loose piles of rocks and roots. Determination to continue and survive the event was the primary strategy – there was too great of an opportunity to experience the unknown trails of San Francisco.

It was a lot like an alleycat race, except there were blue arrows sprayed onto pavement and clumps of leaves whenever there was a turn to make – 90% of the riding time was on singletrack (all of which was, indeed, legal), high above the sf skyline.

They had tests of mental agility at each map point. One test was to use a slingshot to hit a plastic dinosaur sitting on a stump 20 feet away. I didn’t see anyone hit it, another was to each a donut before a steep climb, another was to push down on a pump to spin a wheel of fortune (I won a golden cog?). It was a long ride, though.  Click the map for motionbased data.

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