To some people, Sedona mountain bike festival marks the dawn of the riding season.
While the snow melts around the country, people come from all over to ride this beautiful
desert landscape.
And this year Sedona Mountain Bike Festival marks the end of a long lapse in travel for
me.
This is the first time since Sea Otter that Eric and I will be attending a big event to
meet the public, ride with fans, and do some instagram storying on behalf of diamondback.
After checking in and stopping by the festival to pick up Eric’s bike, we headed out to
a trail that I’ve never ridden before: Hangover.
According to Eric Hangover is scenic, exposed, and pretty technical in some places.
But I’m ready for just about anything with spare tubes, sealant, plugs, multi-tools,
lights, hand sanitizer, riding shorts, extra grips, chains, pumps, camera batteries, and—derailleur
hangers.
Well as it turns out, I didn’t bring an extra derailleur hanger.
I wasted a lot of time getting things sorted after that impact.
I’d get things working, and need to stop again.
But eventually we were back on track, and it was clear that hangover trail deserved
its reputation.
It was fun, challenging, and really scenic.
It also lives up to its name.
So we took our time, soaked in the iconic features, and made sure to get instagram stories
along the way since that was kind of our job on this ride.
Although it was getting dark out, we had packed lights with the intention of continuing into
the night.
Between the two of us, we were able to rig up two headlamps for Eric, and one pretty
bright handlebar light for me.
That wasn’t ideal for this trail, but we took it slow, scoped everything out, and decided
to have fun anyway.
Eric had ridden hangover—like 5 years ago, so although he didn’t remember any specific
lines he did know there was a sustained rock roll coming up.
So we decided to scope it out instead of, you know, riding it blind with auxiliary headlamps.
We
were
both kind of sleep deprived and needed to host a group ride the following morning.
So it was time to get back to the hotel, and get some much needed rest.
Except for one thing.
My Panasonic GH5 was nowhere to be found.
I checked all my pockets, but that thing’s pretty big.
But we were pretty sure of where it was since the last time we used it was during the whole
light debacle.
But rather than search for my camera in the dark, we decided to go back, swap my derailleur
hanger, and return at the crack of dawn after some actual sleep.
Since we knew exactly where the camera would be, I wasn’t too stressed out about it.
So this was a great excuse to ride Hangover for fun, without stopping for clips or stories.
We were getting close to where we knew
the camera would be.
We figured the camera fell out of my pack further down the trail, or that some hiker
is the proud owner of a GH5.
Between the camera, the lens, the audio transmitter, and the SD card I had in it, over $2500 was
on the line, plus all the irreplaceable footage on the SD hard.
A glance to the right did nothing to reassure either of us.
But what are you gonna do?
I basically assume that all my camera gear will meet its demise in service to this YouTube
channel, and we still had our GoPros and phones to get footage with.
Plus, we still needed to get back to the venue to lead our group ride, and we were determined
to do it in good spirits.
Seeing in full daylight what we had ridden the night before was pretty interesting.
It’s actually less scary when you can’t see it.
On the way back to the car, we stopped along the trail where I had washed out the night
before.
After all that, we found the camera face up seemingly undamaged, but the lens had clearly
broken off its mount.
So we continued the search.
The lens was toast.
It had a torn ribbon cable and was making rattling noises, but I had my wide angle with
me and was curious as to whether the camera itself was still okay.
What I really meant to say is, the memories on this SD card are impossible to replace.
We had to get back to the venue for our group ride so we hightailed it down the Jeep road
to save time.
And in the end, we made it.
With the recovered GH5 and my spare lens we were able to film an entire game of BIKE between
Eric and I which will be live on his channel in a few weeks.
We were also able to shoot a video for our second channel, Berm Peak Express.
Check the description so you can subscribe and see those videos when they go live.
Thanks to everyone who visited us at Sedona mountain bike festival, thanks to all who
attended our ride.
Also, thanks Sedona for all your awesome trails.
Thanks for riding with me today and I’ll see you next time.