Day 4: At least I didn't shit my pants; Part 2.

When we were about twelve or so miles away from the hut Sean stopped at the end of an intersection with a drive through a pasture. There happened to be a man sitting in a big white Dodge truck. The man saw us and got out of his massive dually He was in his fifties or sixties, with a rather big gut. He wore a friendly expresion, a cowboy hat, and a .45 caliber pistol on his hip. He leaned up against a signpost at the end of the drive and asked, "You guys headed to the Graham's place?", refering to the Graham Ranch Hut to which we were headed. We confirmed his suspicion and he continued to converse with us for a bit. He reassured us that pretty soon we would pass two cattle guards, and after the second one the road was almost all downhill. For those who are unaware, cattle guards are neat gates for containing cattle, which are hinged from the bottom such that you drive over them when they are open.
We thanked the cowboy and started up the hill in front of us. The rain had stopped about ten minutes prior to our meeting the kindly old cowboy, and the sky was partly clear. The rain, however had already fouled the chain on our bikes several times that day, requiring that we stop and clean and lube them every once in a while. Most of the times the symptom alerting you to the necessity of a cleaning was a clicking noise from a stuck link as it passed throigh the rear derailler. This wasn't really the case with my bike though. My bike preffered to suck the chain up and jam it between the chainring and the chainstay. This typically results in having to pedal backward half a rotation or so, until the chain rights itself, or to immediately dismount to avoid toppling over with your feet still in the pedals. At this instance I did not have the alertness to dismount in time and fell over, landing with the point of the seat jammed directly into my already battle weary rectum.

To be continued...