After Friday mornings mishap I was without a road bike on Saturday.  I made a quick phone call Friday night and hopped on the Palos bandwagon with Mike and Jason.  It is great to be able to easily plan a 4 hour day with some great riders.  Mike and I decided to start our ride again with the new section of trail we learned about last week.  It was just as challenging as last week, but with a little familiarity, it was faster, smother and more stylish.  We did stop a couple times to let Jason try a section or two a couple times.  After that Mike and I raced down the street to the bullfrog parking lot.  The Trek and SRAM people were out doing a demo, so we stopped to chat a little and hooked Greg onto our train at the same time.  We rolled down some fire road, through some trail, across 104th, along the canal, up Willow Springs Road, back into the woods, crushed limestone, through the black out and back and one lap of the meltdown race before coming back into the parking lot.  Somewhere in there I bunny hopped a log pile and came down into the soft dirt a little crooked and wrapped myself up in my bike pretty good.  I also bent my rear derailer hanger.  That made two in two days!  Back in the parking lot though, the Trek guys hooked me up.  Bent some steel, made the proper adjustments and applied necessary lubrication.  The night before I had looked at the trail map and noticed that there is some trail Mike and I have not ridden before.  Greg had and we rolled back out of the parking lot to take a look.  Down the yellow trail and across 95th Street to the purple and Cemetery Hill.  From now on this will be the first trail I ride when we go out to Palos.  Like a run down BMX course, there are some bump jumps and hard corners.  Super fun.  All and all we put in probably 25 miles of trail, most of it only being ridden once.  It isn't Kettle, but with all this new trail, it is starting to be just as good.  A solid 3 1/2 hours.

Sunday, Julie had her wedding shower, which I was not allowed at, up in the western burbs of Milwaukee.  So I made the tough call and decided to meet, Mike, Dan, Tim, Holly, Tom and Kevin up at Kettle instead of riding my road bike.  In between, Sam at Rapid Transit bent my derailer hanger back, Marcus sold me a replacement rim and nipples and I relaced the wheel.  I led as Mike and I went out and rode a blue loop before everyone else showed up.  Then I led the train of Kevin, Mike and John from Hayes for another blue loop.  It was nice to ride with these guys.  We did not have a specific workout and were not trying to rip each others legs off, but we were all still riding strong and it made for a fast ride.  I took the right turn off of the blue loop onto the new green trail cutting the lap a little short.  Back in the parking lot after battling the mosquitoes during a flat change we decided on one full blue loop and maybe some connector.  Again I led the train and again it was a super fun ride.  Skipped the green and rode the entire blue.  At the Emma split, everyone went out on the connector as I headed back towards the car to pick up the girls from the party.  Put in more than three hours bringing myself to about seven hours of trail riding on the weekend.  I love my mountain bike, it was some quality time in the saddle.