Seeing Red at Bonelli

Raging Waters, hadn’t opened that morning yet

This past Friday, I got a chance to ride with a few of the guys at Bonelli. Our group consisted of 3 26″ full suspension bikes and two 29ers in the form of a SS rigid and my Niner Jet 9. The three twenty-sixers decided to color coordinate by wearing red jerseys. As a 29er fan, I was seeing red.

Red=26″ bikes. The 29er riders didn’t get the memo

We did a fun lap around Bonelli for about 9 miles taking an unknown side trail along the way. The bad part of the side trail was that it lead to nowhere but it did have a a pretty cool view of Raging Waters which is a local water park that is right next to Bonelli. Raging Waters was still empty at the time we rode by and saw it, around 9-ish, but as we were exiting out of the park and riding back to the cars, there was already a size-able line to get in.

The cool waters and fun slides looked pretty good by the time we got to the top of the hill to soak up this view

After our first lap around Bonelli, a few of us went back and did our favorite singletrack section again. This singletrack section is only one mile long and about one mile from the trailhead so throwing it back in after a lap around Bonelli is an easy decision adding a measly 4 miles to the ride. The singletrack is fun because it has short climbs and descents with babyhead sized loose rocks to make things a challenge and its singletrack, so of course its fun.

All in all, a good morning ride with good friends. We did learn a lesson about letting out air from your fork: use the shock pump to release the air. Full Squish Randall decided to depress the pin inside the schrader valve and mistakenly let out too much air. Over the next few miles he proceeded to complain about how the handling on his bike was really weird and that he felt like the bike wanted him to go OTB. Turns out his one tiny tap on the pin let out pretty much all of the air from his fork. Lesson learned.

Fixing FS Randall’s fork as he had accidentally let out all the air