31. Ride with the Laguna Rads

Although my intentions were to ride with the Laguna Rads on a Wednesday night sprint ride in Laguna, this was a great way to get to know a couple of the guys and ride a new trail out above Rancho Mirage and Palm desert.
The Rads are the original mountain bikers from Laguna Beach. One of the guys, Turbo, built most of the trails I love to ride and some I've never heard of. They meet every Wednesday night during daylights savings and do sprint rides through Laguna and Aliso. I still need to do this.
So this ride we did in the desert was sweet. 6000 ft of decending with 2000 ft of climbing. Normally wouldn't be too hard except it was 90 degrees and we had the best mountain biker in the world setting the pace, Brian Lopes. I think I had my heart rate up to 200 bpm at one point. The ride was sweet, beneath the rocky, dry peaks of Idyllwild mountains with awesome views of the Coachella valley. We had a big group of 11 guys, one of them was even the personal chef for Phil Mickelson, I thought that was pretty cool. The trail was mostly swoopy single track, not too technical but it had some fun ups and downs like a rollercoaster with rocky switchbacks and some steep rocky shoots that my bike handled like a dream, even with a broken seatpost. One of the local guys we rode with basically had only one finger on his left hand. He had both brakes on the right side and was able to grip the left side with just one finger. He freaking ripped, and was basically one handed!! The views were amazing and the ride was really fun, even though a couple of the leaders were going too fast and turned on the wrong trail for a couple miles. The last part was the best as we dropped down a steep technical rock section that had everyone on their toes, except Lopes who was about a mile ahead of us.
Just about everyone ran out of water on this 30 mile whopper in the 90 degree sun, so we were all thirsty beyond all sense. I drank 3 delicious beers like they were water as we chilled on the grass of our tour guide's Mike's house. The best part of the trip, believe it or not was the dinner. Mike turns out to be the owner of Wally's Desert Turtle Restaurant, literally the best restaurant in the Palm Springs area. I had the rack of lamb with herb potatoes and vegetables and it should have cost me a lot more than it did! The whole group was stoked and another cool tidbit, Mike is a big wave surfer that tows into monster waves in Baja. in addition to being a ripping mountain biker at age 57. This dude is my hero. The whole experience was pretty awesome, and the trail is definitely a spot i'd like to revisit... next time in Janruary.