The heavens opened and a voice said "You boys have a good ride".

Man Oh Man was there some good riding this past weekend. It was the HIP weekend in Pisgah National Forest. 

Now for a little back story on the name. HIP - Homers IN Pisgah. A dreadful name by any account. A group of Turner bike enthusiast came up with it on a group ride one year. There is a BBQ joint near most of the riding area that has a life size Homer Simpson by the cash register. So I don't know if it's Homers or Homer's. As in Homer is. And that is as far as I want to go with that moniker. I just call it the Turner weekend. Although there were a few other bikes of different brands this year and the turn out was much lower. That certainly did not hurt the event. I actually thought it was better. 

There were 11 to 12 of us. 3 from Atlanta. 4 locals at any given time. 1 from Manhattan. The rest were from Alabama. What a great crew of guys. 

Friday Mark and I swung by Cane Creek for a visit with Malcolm and the boys. After that we headed over to I-9 to meet up with the rest of the group and catch the tail end of the tour. They make some super sweet wheels. Oh and they are proud of them. The ano fade has an up charge of 250 bucks. To steep for me. Especially for something I am going to just tear up anyway. None the less some very nice wheels. I wouldn't throw them out of bed for eating crackers. Huh? Yeah.

We decide to head over to Bent Creek. It's after 1pm and I have not eaten anything. A headache is developing and I am drained. I perfect remedy for that is a Jamocha Shake, Reuben Sandwich, and curly fries. I never eat that crap but there really was nothing else in a hurry. It ended up being nothing but foulness on my stomach 30 mins later into a ride. You could trade the nasty stomach for a headache and no energy. Either way I screwed myself. Still managed to hammer out a great ride. Not for all though. This is the ride where some young fella that was feeling his oats at the front of the pack DRILLED his knee. In a big nasty way. This was after we did Greens Lick. I came around a switch back and one guy is sitting right in the middle of the trail and another is standing over him. No one actually saw it happen but, the aftermath was gruesome. A huge flap of meat was split open to reveal his knee cap. He was holding himself together pretty well, mentally. Not a lot of moaning and groaning. Shock? Probably. Mark got on me for yelling "Holy Fuhq" when he moved his hand and I saw the wound. I couldn't help it. It just came out. Man, if you had seen that knee at the time. Just check it out here (scroll on down). 

Later that night we ate at a Mexican Restaurant Jason took us to. Being a local boy now he knows all the spots. 

Saturday we met up with Mike, another local and friend of Jason's. We were also joined by Matt who lives and rides in the area. Laurel Mountain with the Pilot rock downhill would be todays big combo. Such a killer ride. Pilot rock is WFO. Just rocks everywhere. Skillz Baby. Skillz. I could go on and on about how much fun that ride was. There are lots of pictures from the ride on my Flickr site. The link to it is below. After that was Wild Hawg's BBQ for lunch. Ohh that was much needed. We got in one more short ride. It was over by Black Mountain. Actually it was up to the bottom of that run and then around to do Sycamore. That was a really fun run as well. That evening we had the T2bikes.com sponsored raffle. Two bike frames that none of us won. Both went tickets bought from folks in California. I won a pair of gloves and the Push certificates that I really could have cared less about. Gavin won a new Cane Creek 110 headset and traded it to me for the certs. Yeah! Score!

Sunday plans got kind of hosed up and we got to the Dupont forest trailhead late and missed the group. We decided to pack it up and just head home. What a great weekend of riding. Enjoying life.

All the Pictures.