Wesley’s Wild World of Kayaking w/ the Jackson Action Wagon (J.A.W.)

A couple of Saturdays ago (Aug 11, 2007), I met up with Dan Thomas and Brain Plant for a quick late afternoon lap down the Pigeon River Gorge.  This was my second run on this section.  We had a great time on the river running the rapids and playing a little along the way.  We all had good lines at the three biggest rapids on the river, except for Dan.  He thought he would be brave and try to bust through Presidential Hole on Accelerator.  He quickly found out that running that hole in a play boat is like getting ran over by a Presidential Motorcade!  He got back endered into the hole, but then quickly was flushed and he managed to execute a good combat roll.  Some how during the combat roll; Dan strained some muscles in his lower rib area.  He came up screaming.  I quickly paddled over to check on him and he told me what happened.  We managed to get him on down to the take out fine, but he was quite sore.  Other than the one incident we had a great afternoon on the Dirty Bird.

Last Weekend (Aug 17-19), One of my new mountain biking buddies (Matt Rowland) invited me to go to Snowshoe for some Downhill Mountain Biking.  Since all the river is the south are all, but completely dry; it was a great time to go!  I was super stoked about the trip, because I went a couple of years ago and I had a blast!  The other guys we met up with for the trip was Mike Thomas and Matt’s buddy, Shane.

We drove up to Snowshoe Friday afternoon and Matt grilled up some chicken and bratwurst for supper once we got there.  We were visited by a 250 lb black bear at 3:00 a.m. Saturday morning from the left over smell on the grill.  Fortunately Matt pulled the grill up on the deck and closed the gate.  The bear tried to climb up onto the deck, but it was startled and walked off when the bear heard Matt talking about it at the door.  Matt could not sleep the rest of the night because he got so excited over the incident.

We woke up at 7 a.m. on Saturday morning and ate a quick bite of breakfast.  We hit the trails as soon as they opened.  We bombed down the mountain all day long until 6 p.m.  I estimated that we got over 9,000 total vertical feet of riding that day.  We had no major carnage to report, other that a few endos and slide outs.  However, our bikes under went some damage from the jarring trails.  Both Matt and Shane had flat tires on our second lap down the Western Territory.  Shane completely blew out his front shock later in the day, so he had to rent a bike for the rest of the day.  Matt came off a log jump on one trail and managed to completely destroy his rear drive train.  He sheared his derailleur hanger off into his wheels, which tore out 3 spokes and it bent his rear disc brake.  Fortunately Matt found a really cool guy in the bike shop to get his bike fixed back up in less than thirty minutes and he only charged him$23 for the repair, which totally rocked!

Shane turned into a machine on the rented Kona Freight Train from the bike shop.  No one could keep up with him.  The bike was an awesome downhill bike!  Shane said that the bike makes you fell way more confident going through the gnarly terrain.

Matt served up some tasty grilled salmon and Cajon shrimp Saturday night.  We all went to bed early from all the day’s physical activities.  We all sleep like babies.  The next morning we were up by 7 a.m. and Matt served up some awesome deer sausage and deer tenderloin.  Mike had more than the legal limit of fun for the weekend, so he headed home after breakfast.

We hit the trails after breakfast and rode till about 2:00 p.m.  We did get a little 6 mile road ride down to the shuttle from the top of the mountain, which was fun and quite controversial between Matt and I (Let’s just say he is not a road biker like me).  We had another great day of riding with no carnage and no bike break downs.  We also met up with another really cool dude named Tim, who rode with us during the day.  It was a pleasure to get to meet him.

To say the least we had an epic trip with some good eating and great biking!  I can’t wait till we get to head back!  Check out the only photos we took below in the Mountain Bike Park: 

Peace out and pray for rain!