Downieville 2008, Brakes-Free

Downieville, and all the trails that lead to it, exert a force on me and all that know about the magic in the rocks & roots. So tall you can't ride over it, so wide you can't ride around it, it will eat your bicycle along with your body & soul; it ate mine. I write now as a shell of a human, the real me endlessly looping those trails, swimming those lakes & creeks, falling rain on mossy rocks, that's me, sunshine leaping across distant peaks.

I arrived in town late last Saturday, after the last shuttle for the day had left, so against the setting sun I raced for Packer Saddle along Fire Road 93 up from Union Flat campground on Highway 49. No matter how hard I raced though, the sun set too fast and I could not lose an ever-growing highly infuriating cloud of gnats. The daylight factor meant that, after climbing from 2,835' to 6,719' I had to ride down the dark fire road instead of bombing the blessed single-tracks. That route presented itself as the only non-suicidal option available given the lights I had with me. It was a long, cold, stressful descent marked by one true fall and one quick unintentional dismount. You see, I could only see the drop-off edge of the trail with my teeny-tiny light, and that only intermittently. The miles past slowly, and I cursed my over-eagerness to just ride rather than pay attention to small details like night and day, warm and cold. I wore only a short-sleeved jersey with no under-shirt, brought no jacket with me, and ran out of food. The running out of food part was particularly smart, since that left me to dine on a tin of mango-flavored Altoid sours and a sack of low-sodium sunflower seeds, in the shell after I rolled into town at 9:45PM, drove 5-miles to my campground, and set up my tent. I awoke to a sore stomach, but happy to know that I had a reservation on the 10:30 AM shuttle to Packer Saddle (7,200'). The thought that I should have my brakes checked/adjusted crossed my mind a couple of times, but 10:30 arrived in no time, so up I went. My rear brakes went out on Sunrise Trail, the first 1/2-mile stretch of single track. I spent awhile trying to fix them, but ended up stripping the little bolt/nut that holds the cable in place, so that was done. Did not take long to decide to limp down with only my lovely 8" front rotor helping me control my velocity on these near-vertical piles of loose baby-head sized cobbles that pass for trails here. The front brake did wonderfully for a few miles, and then I had wee crash that ended up hosing my front brakes completely. I worked on them for some time before sitting down to whimper and snivel, realizing that, with more than 3,000' of wickedly technical trail left to descend, my vehicle could only be ridden by a madman, so I laughed at the water in the corners of my eyes, said hello to the tree friends gathered all around, told my racing heart to calm down, and hopped on my fast fast bicycle. I had already navigated all of Big Boulder Trail at that point, which is the longest way down the mountain from Packer Saddle, and so was near the top of Third Divide. I had to call on my ancient experience as a pre-teen, riding BMX bikes with no brakes - you just stand on the rear wheel with your right foot. Three problems with that: 1) the rear suspension allowed my extremely sharp seat post to gouge my ankle if I bounced my ass on the seat at all, which happened a lot, 2) if you don't pay attention to your left foot, and just let it rest at the bottom of it's range it hits rocks & roots that cause your left ankle to bang your frame (ouch), so you must ride with your foot & pedal half-way up a good part of the time, 3) a rear brake alone is not sufficient to control your speed on the steep parts, so you must be ready to bail off at any time. The ride harrowed me, hurt me, taught me lessons about many things far beyond bicycle mechanics and innovative trail riding methods. It convinced me that these brakes are history; time to move on to hydraulic disc brakes from mechanical disc brakes, seriously. They're Laurent's anyway, long-term loaned to me when he & Quintan built this bike up for me a few year ago.

Pain and cold and hassles aside, Downieville still loves me. When I fall and those big fir roots and stout granite rocks reach up and pound the blood out me, it's with such deep love that I don't even mind it a bit. It's like the mountain she's massaging me, in a very rough way. I could be happy forever with her. The trails demand such utter and devoted attention to avoid death or dismemberment that riding them becomes a meditation, an inevitable concentration spurning speech without action in rocky red dust. Age, gender, & race lose meaning rapidly, along with all those other labels that once defined me, confining boxes that never met Saddleback Mountain, or felt the Milky Way grind their bones to gleaming white, the better to dance you with.

Downieville Deathtile Loves Me

Let me start by saying "It was a different time, it was the sixties." But, um, really it was the last few weeks. The infinite and limitless true nature of the universe has once again been presenting itself to me, in a very becoming way. One might even call it fecund. If you can imagine it, it exists, and my imagination runneth wild through the densest of thickets, just, whatever you do, oh please don't throw me in that old briar patch.

Some vacations rule my memories with exceptional vigor, like lighthouses along an dark and moonless coast. Those excursions include my first time to Yosemite when I was five, a trip to Mendocino with friends when I was a teenager, my honeymoon in French Polynesia at age 27, my first trip to Burning Man at 31, and...... Downieville, Downieville, Downieville. I could just sit here repeating "Downieville" in a thousand different voices, all night, and every day. Arrived home late last night after spending an amazing 48 hours in the loving vibrations people call the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Historically a mining town, Downieville once had a population of 20,000 and was briefly the capitol of California. It now gets 80% of its annual revenue from mountain biking. The legendary trails called me for years, in the form of tales of fun and serious injuries from a group I ride with mid-week. Of course, now that I've gone, I can't believe I didn't join them every trip since before I was born, stupid parents I guess. Don't worry, they never read this nonsense. The town sits at the confluence of the Yuba and Downie rivers, at 2,835' (930m), a great place to swim after a ride, right there by the old gallows. A shuttle leaves every hour on the hour, and for the paltry sum of $20, takes bikes and riders to Packer Saddle, which floats at 7,100' (2,336m). Magnaminous genii, or perhaps genies, have spent many an hour constructing and maintaining some of the finest (and I do mean sexy) single-track trails the world has ever seen, which connect Packer Saddle to Downieville, with many routes to choose from. Disneyland eat your heart out. Skydiving is weak. Burning Man is OK, but my every third wish is for another run through the alpine gauntlet of perilous angles, with a snowmelt stream skinny dip thrown in somewhere along the way. Aches and cramps wrack my body to point that I could barely operate a car last night, and I'm not good for a whole lot of anything, but nevertheless doubt I'd be able to refuse a shuttle leaving for Packer Saddle in 30 minutes, if I were still in Downieville. 

Part of it is the mountains. I love that color of sky, thin dusty pine air, endless varieties of flowers, alpine meadows green beyond belief, element ravaged trees, roaring emerald pools cascading into louder roaring emerald pools, pouring around islands full of yellow flowers, drunk with mountain love, talking loud, saying sweet nothing. The mountains rock, regardless of your mode of transportation, but try it on a full-suspension mountain bike and the rocks and trees want to eat you alive while feeding you bliss. There's a section called Baby Heads, where all the rocks approximate baby heads. They stare pitilessly at you when you eat shit. Plenty of narrow off-camber sections with drop-offs to certain manglement, where occasionally one's rear tire will spit out a rock to the chasm side, which one can hear chatter down the rocks in the distance behind, tink, tink, tinnnnnk, which gives me what I imagine would be the same effect as shoving a spike full of andrenachrome directly into my already racing heart. To prevent excessive erosion, and perhaps dangerous riding conditions, the trailbuilders have placed weird looking concrete tiles all along the path in certain very steep sections, commonly known as Downieville Deathtiles (they can be a little slippery, although they never sent me down, but would be hell icy). And get this, you share the trail with motorcycles! That's right, roaring, heavy, dusty, momentum machines blasting up what you're riding down, a complete eye-opener. Don't think it's all downhill. Many a brutal climb went on, and on, especially on the Big Boulder trail, many parts of which I had to hike the bike up. Like Greg the bike mechanic's shirt read - "Another Shitty Day in Downieville". By the way, the mountain eats bicycles for lunch, so everyone gets to know the wealthy bike mechanics well.

I stuck my head under a waterfall, sat on one of those islands in the middle of the rapids to get that mega-stereo effect, raced at breakneck speed along the trees, pushed my luck, used my helmet, used my pads, had some visions. Some part of me will live there always now, and it here with me. After jiving with a place that well, every time I go back I will be coming home, tears in my eyes serious, I nub it, til death do us part, om, peace, amen, allah-o-akbar, happy Indepenence Day, anarchy forever, spiritual revolution in my glassy eyes, lightning bolt beer bottle Johnny Cash jukebox Ghostriders in the Sky, yippy yi yay, yippy yi yo.