We have this little sayin' that our trusty team captain, Blaster, only gets paid when the tires get wet. If that means he needs to pee on them at the end of the ride so be it. However, this weekend there would be no lack of hydration. In fact, we lost count of 'notable' water crossings.
But this ride should have been aptly named "Terrapin Trekking". I don't think I have seen so many turtles/terrapins in my entire 2 scores of life as I did in 48 hours! As we approached the check-in camp ground, we were dually notified of the Terrapin situation with this sign:
As we awaited our turn in the pickle barrel for the all encompassing (and rigorous!) bike inspection, we find this little dude:
Among the team, EOD3MC is especially tickled. You see, he is "Team Turtle Recovery Unit". (Yep, he's even got the license plate to prove it!)
When Deadly99 warned us that we should walk the water XCings before we attempted to ride them, I thought it was to check the water depth. Imagine my surprise when the "rocks" started to scatter
Luckily, this one doesn't appear to be snapper and wasn't aggressive. We mostly played "rocks, paper, scissors" to see who would walk the next crossing. Blaster was happy when he saw some 1-lb sized tad poles, as that meant there was nothing around to eat them (or him!)
But it seems his joy was short lived. The hub-capped sized snapper was on the exit point
The water never failed to impress us
Some rode it out like a champ
Occasionally, we got to see pretty water that we could just gaze at, and not have to traverse. This one complete with a fortified beaver dam
It seems that Canada had one of the driest winters, and thus the water XCings were reported as low. However, what we lacked in water height, we made up for in mud height. We realized that we were so coated in mud, that despite helping a dozen riders through the bog, nary a single photo of it as we were literally so greased in mud there was no hope to keeping the camera lens clean! This was the aftermath of the 34" inch mud bog on track 1A. A track mind you, that only took us a mere 4 hours to complete. Fortuitously, the bikes only got cleaner as they molted their mud shells through next 400 million water XCings
If you have ever dated an Italian Supermodel, you'd know that she's pretty to look at, but probably something you should avoid overtaxing. The same analogy could be said of a Husqvarna motorcycle. One bike decided she really didn't like getting her toes wet, and ended up needing a tow jump start after the track 1A mud-wallow pit. Later in the day, she flat out laid down with a horrendous motor "clunk". TTRU was back in action, and towing the Husky off the powerlines to main road to await a pickup from her truck chariot.
By the time we hit Calabogie, the sun was low on the horizon. It was time to slab to camp. What a great day of riding though!