Blackrock Round 2

Stayed 2 nights at Lily's folks house in N. Bend, OR.  Rallied in around 2:30 AM after deciding to take our time in Ashland (Brewery for dinner....yum, and checking out the fire dancing going on in the town square....complete w/ a DJ bumping it at around 8/10.  Pretty wild scene and cool vibe in Ashland.......lots of parks, public parking.....just a well though out green town).  Slept in to 10:30 when the neighbor started banging on the door.....excited to see someone I guess.  We hung out and played house, complete w/ lawn mowing and weed whipping.  Then we drank some ESB's and watched the Cavs whoop up on Atlanta (again)....3-0 good guys.  The next day we get all loaded up and the van won't start....of course.  I lost my cool and gave the van a good round-house kick to the gut.  Then I realized I was probably being watched by the whole neighborhood.  Finally she started and we roared off to Black Rock, taking the mellow way.....101 along the Oregon coast.  Tons of beaches and neat little nooks along the way.  We got to BR at around 4:30 and raged a couple of laps.  We climbed up then split up.....I rode Granny's Kitchen.....logride to wallride and cheese grater, to Granny's doubles.  Couldn't get the right flow for 2 doubles on the trail.  The first is a short gap but super vert and a hip.  I knew I could hit that one, but then it set you up for a 20+' hip double that had more case marks on it than just about any other jump I've seen in years.  The first time I thought I had enough speed I washed my back tire in some slick mud mid-berm.  Undeterred I rallied back up for another couple goes, but something in the back of my head wouldn't let me pull the trigger.  No worries.  I raged the ET Booter and ended up between Basic Training (BT) and the Brake Check Jumps.  I climbed back up to the top and ran into a couple dudes getting safe.  Nice.  They peeled and did Bonzai.  I of course had to charge down Grannies.  The top of that trail is rad.  Some rock tech, a couple drops, and a gap followed by the huge wallride (starts w/ a downhill logride....soooo rad).  There was a trail building day the day before and they surely put in some cool new features on Bonzai DH.  Nothing monstrous but super cool.  I also heard they're building another huge wallride and some jumps deep in the woods somewhere.  From Grannies I pushed back up from the roadgap and charged Sunday Stroll to Brake Check.  There were a couple of trees down and I couldn't understand why they weren't chopped out the day before?!!  Nothing like hitting 15' jumps then skidding to a stop when there's a tree on the next takeoff/landing.  I went across the street and nailed the skinny feature 2nd go.  I kept on Stickter Gnar which basically side-hilled for a while xc style before dumping me out at BT (tons of logrides and skinnies to practice on).  I ran into a father son group that was going out for a night ride (way under gunned if you ask me) and we rapped for a bit (waiting for Lily).  They split and I went up and sessioned the drop to stepdown move called "Showtime" because Cam McCaul did a backflip off the stepdown in a flick this past year.  Probably one of my favorite moves at Blackrock.  I decided to head to the car since it was almost dark, even though there was no Lily yet.  I started to get a little worried when she wasn't there and it was rapidly getting dark.  Just at the point of rescue initiation she comes out of the woods.  She had been practicing drops and took a good ol' face plant.  Banged up but not too bad (she's tough!!) we loaded up the bikes and headed for some much deserved food.  We ended up crashing at my friend Ariel's house (OU girl) in Portland.  She had 3 dogs and a small kitten that we had the pleasure of sleeping with (kinda).  It took the nastiest dump in the middle of the night and we had a hard time getting back to sleep/fending it off the bed.  I think I slept.......maybe!!