Ride no.: - 492, 27/28 August 2016 Hares:  Chris 'Sack of Shit' O, Tom 'Mother Trucker' I and Darren 'Agent Orange' B Location:-Suphanburi, U-thong, 27 Resort
Scribe:- She Whistles, He Comes I’ve got to hand it to Sack of Shit and Mother Trucker. They didn’t hold back with this one. It was all about extremes – extreme heat, extreme thorns, extreme sweat, extreme thirst… yeah, and they’re responsible for all of that, they are!!
The resort was very comfortable and for those of us who have grown weary of the questionable meat that appears at some of these rides, it was quite nice to see all the veggie options at the food line. So, after a nice lunch, we headed over to get the briefing on the ride. Expect close to 50 km, but don’t worry you can easily take a short cut from the water stop and shave off a good 15. That’s when I should have started worrying…

60 of us headed out from there, with a nice group of newbies including 3 new members. The trail was quite scenic, starting out with some gentle ups and downs, albeit with lots of rocks to navigate and a few… I mean an abundant… supply of thorns thrown in. I know they said they got rid of the thorns, but I think they actually trucked them in special for the ride. Changing tires under the scorching tropical sun makes you a bit loopy. But, anyway, my little group of newbie gals and I made it to the water stop only to discover we needed to change the same tires plus new ones again. Luckily Mother Trucker was happy to donate one of his extra tubes for the cause so that made us feel loved and upbeat again.
After a nice break at the water stop, we were happy to learn that it would be very easy to avoid the extra loop and take the short cut, Sack of Shit told us. It would be a lovely ride back – nothing technical and lots of nice fields without pushing ourselves too much. Maybe we’d even get there early enough to get the tuna. Sounds like a lovely afternoon, right…? RIGHT…? WRONG!!!

So, my newbie friend Kim (we lost our other newbie to take the road back, as she didn’t trust her tires at that point), and Flasher too headed out to the shortcut, cause we didn’t want to push ourselves too much on a nice Saturday afternoon.

We started heading up and had heard that there would be paper on the right for a bit as we shared a portion of the trail with the end of the longcut loop around the mountain. We started talking about Earth-like planets that circulate nearby stars and were having a great time thinking about the universe and that we were on the shortcut, and tuna sandwiches, etc. But we kept going up and there were lots of rocks now, and it was getting steeper, and isn’t it strange that the paper is on the right still. But, yeah, that’s what it sounded like we should expect at least for a bit… And, then – gosh, there’s really no paper to be seen! Long story short – we got a fabulous view out of the deal and a nice long ride back, which ended in the dark (good thing Flasher was flashing up ahead)– no tuna, not even a questionable ham slice or even a single beer. We heard the circle was a joyous event with lots of hoopla and not much notice of three missing souls looking for clumps of paper in the dark. Needless to say, we’ll do it again – this time, save us some tuna, okay?

"She Whistles, He Comes"