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Joe Buckley's Journal
Our Buddy Alain
posted by at 04:15 PM on June 04, 2007
This past week a group of us here at the office did an after work ride in the Santa Cruz area. Now, it’s pretty common for a small group of us to squeeze in an after work ride once a week when the weather starts getting warmer and the sun sets later, but this ride in particular was memorable. Our friend Alain, a graphic designer for Specialized, has recently taken up cross country riding with extreme enthusiasm. Just a little background on Alain, he grew up racing BMX, and called us mtn bikers at the office “bird watchers” due to his perception of mtn bikers as a bunch of tree hugging feel good types. So, with his interest now piqued in riding, we invited him to go “bird watching’, or birdn’ for short.
The ride we did starts with a 45min to 1hour steady climb, which our buddy Alain handled just fine, even though he was ready to be done with it by the top. From there our course took us for a sweet flowey single track descent all the way back to where we started from. The trail isn’t super steep, so it makes you want to pedal as hard as you can, and often times you’re as tired on the descent as you are on the climb that proceeds it. At a couple points on the descent, there are forks in the trail, so it’s important to know which way to go, or you’ll end up spending a lot of time out there back tracking to the trail head. Our group got pretty strung out, so at each intersection, a couple of us would stop until one or two riders behind us got there and understood which way to go. Figuring this system would work just fine, the front of our group kept stopping, then proceeding when we saw the riders behind us, all the way until the bottom.
As is common with anyone’s post ride sessions, everyone stood around talking about how rad the descent was, what section was the coolest, how Cole pulled the sweet bar flick through the tight tree section, etc… And after about 10 minutes or so, Scott came down and told us that Alain had taken a wrong turn after Scott mistakenly told him the wrong way to go as Alain rushed by while Scott was fixing his flat. By the time Scott had his tire aired up and rolled to the next intersection, over 10 minutes had passed and Alain was long gone. So, by this time, the sun is setting, and as anyone who’s ever ridden in the Santa Cruz mountains knows, the big redwoods do an excellent job of sucking up the sun’s rays. Even when the sky is still blue at dusk, inside the forest it’s pitch black. So immediately we start worrying about Alain. Just a little bit more background on Alain, he doesn’t have much outdoor experience. And even for those that do, those woods are a freaky place to be at night, especially without a light….
Unfortunately for us, the intersection Alain took the wrong turn at was half way back up the mountain, so a group of four of us started pedaling back up hoping to keep Alain from having to spend a scary night in the woods by himself. On the bright side, Brian (Scott’s roommate) had a full on bike light, and Scott had a very small LED light to use for emergencies. So we spent 20-30 minutes climbing back up the descent calling Alain’s name out thinking he might be huddled beside the trail freaking out in the dark. We made it back to the intersection without any sign of him, and headed in the direction Alain went, and a few minutes later came to another fork. Luckily Brian knew a little about these trails, both of which he said would drop out back in town, but at least a few miles away from where we’d parked. So we split up, not being able to tell which route Alain had gone. Brian and Brandon went one way with the good light, Scott and I headed the other direction with his crappy LED light. Soon it was so dark in there that we couldn’t see well enough to ride the bikes, even with the light. It was so dark in fact that things in our peripheral started to look like menacing creatures, and we worried even more for poor old Alain, trying to think of what he must be going through sitting out here somewhere by himself, mountain lions lurking nearby, freaking out in the dark. Scott and I tried to make jokes to keep from panicking, but it didn’t help that much. After about 20 minutes of half walking our bikes down the trail, we saw what looked like a clothes line next to the trial with things hanging off of it, and started to wonder what the hell was nearby since there were no lights in the area. Scott and I spent the next 10-15 minutes negotiating a couple more forks in the trail, trying to discern what was the most beaten path with a pathetic little light. Eventually we started seeing homes with porch lights on, and then the trail dumped onto an old paved road right next to some type of Buddhist retreat or temple with these wild looking shrines lit up in the middle of the night. Needless to say, it was pretty weird to see this after wandering around in complete darkness.
At this point, Scott and I pointed our bikes downhill, and a mile or two later we found Brandon standing on the street corner we’d agreed to meet up at, with still no sign of Alain. Brian had gone to get his truck to take us back to where we’d parked our cars (about 4 miles away), but left his cell phone with Brandon, so I decided to check my voicemail to see if possibly someone had left a message about Alain. Keep in mind that it was now 10pm, four hours after we’d started the ride. To my surprise, I hear Alain’s voice on my phone telling me that he “had made it out alive and would see us at work tomorrow! Oh, and thanks for looking for him, it was scary out there”. As it turned out, he had gone down the same trail that we’d gone down, but got spooked after not seeing anyone (not that we could blame him), so by the time he popped out where the Buddhist area was, he knocked on the first door he saw with a sign of life. Not only did he get help figuring out where he was, but the person he talked to even gave him a ride back to the cars! So, he ended up getting back to the cars only about 5 minutes after our main group had gotten back!On one hand, we were stoked that he was ok, but then were a little bummed we’d been tromping around in all the poison oak and darkness looking for someone who was already back and changed. I guess that’s what we get for not being a little better organized, and certainly it could have ended up a lot worse. So it turned out to be a learning experience for everyone, and our buddy Alain will be around for another birdn’ session next week!
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Comments (1)
03:39 PM on June 07, 2007 UTC Alain Lanusse wrote:
i was setup. told to go the wrong way and left for dead. typical birdn hijinx... if it wasnt for my keen wilderness skills and vast knowledge of chuck norris movies i would have never found and coerced( with my jedi mind tricks) the buddast warriors to take me home under the cover of darkness. once back to civilization i learned of the search party sent out to 'represent' some sort of accidental misinformation on my trail ride. very effective. i almost bought it. so for all my birdn 'buddies' this ones for you...(insirt middle finger here)