The End of Gnomerlcy

The frontier chill crept in to where he slept and enveloped the Outlaw, pressing down on him with the finality of his Last Day. On the nightstand sat a weathered, leather bound Bible, its tissue thin pages ruffled open to John 14:27. It read, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid."

The grizzled old Pastor knew exactly which verse to leave. That was the easy part, he'd sent many a condemned man to the gallows pole; ushered many a soul to its Earthly end...

...ok so, once again, that was over dramatic. I wasn't exactly a dead man walking, but it was the last day of the Gnome Fest and that's a bummer too. Maybe not as much as being executed, but I'm not splitting hairs with you.

We made sure to get up and get moving early enough to break camp and hit the Mounds one more time. There were a couple of short stretches of trail we hadn't hit yet and we were motivated to do 'em all.

Melissa headed out early on her second ladies only ride. She discovered that although she's only been riding a short time, she can already hang with the ladies of Gnome Fest.



I should probably mention now that Melissa dubbed herself as unofficially, officially in charge of our mini-fire making. She demonstrated her prowess by executing the rare and difficult double handed lighter fire starting technique.



Melissa's Estrogen Ride left the boys to do our thing. We again headed out on Dump, Snodgrass and Prime Cut mostly to show Matt he was incorrect in his claim they were "boring". We hit Porky Point and Upper Glen this time along with Toad Raod and Northface again.



We found the lookout.



We staged some epicness.



We treed some porkypines. Yep, real live pinchusions. I didn't even know they lived in the Midwest, let alone Wisconsion.



We rode the Plummer's Crack in the opposite direction this time (my idea). This way meant hitting a very long, fairly steep climb before getting to the Crack. Remember, it looks like this:

Coming through the very narrow part I rubbed the rock a bit with my hand. Once I got it straightened out I thought the best thing to do would be to give it a power stroke on the peddle. Well, I wasn't straightened out enough or I was too wobbly from 2 days of riding plus a long climb. Whatever the reason I quickly realized I wasn't going to stay on the nice little bridge. I bailed out, basically setting my bike off the side while coming down lightly (as can be expected) on the bridge. I landed a little further down from where Corey is standing contemplating my failure. I was most worried about getting my fingers cobbled up in the wooden slats, but I escaped with just a little tweeking of the digits. Whew! That was Type 2 fun for sure.



Unfortunately it was a long drive back to reality and we needed to get on the road. I thoroughly enjoyed the laid back atmosphere, crazy events, unique characters and above all the miles of great trails. I would be remiss to not make Gnome Fest a priority in future Festing plans.