When I ran my "Thursday Wheeling" plan by the boss
, I was informed that one of our kids had a baseball game and both had open house that night, so wheeling got pushed to Friday.
We waited for the morning commute to clear out and then headed down. We made good time through all the normal choke points on 680 and 101. Paid our fees and got the combo for the gate. Got to the gate and wouldn't you know it but someone left the combo lock undone and used a KEYED lock on the gate. Waited around for 15 min or so for a ranger to come up and unlock it.
Gate open and we got out on the trails. We started out going up Blue Oak and Chaparel Trail to the top, then moved across to check out five fingers (which was closed unfortunately). Next we went up Bonanza Gulch a ways till my brothers truck had traction issues and we stopped for him to air down.
Let me start by explaining that we work together and the office was closed Thurs - Mon to give us all a five day weekend for Memorial Day (yeah, cool company), but an urgent / multiple VIP / short notice project (why do those always go together) had come up on Wed afternoon and fallen in our lap, requireing him to come into the office for 2-3 hours on the first day of the holiday.
So anyway, as he was letting air out of his tires, I asked him how it went at the office Thursday.
He looks at me like I'm crazy and says, "I dind't go in yesterday. "
"Oh" says me, "I saw an email from you saying you were going in on Thursday afternoon to wrap up XYZ project."
He stops what he's doing and just stares at me for 5-10 seconds without saying anything. Then he says "Well, I guess I'm done wheeling for the day."
He'd gotten distracted while running some errands on Thursday morning and had forgotten to go into the office to finish up that afternoon. Of course, one of the VIP's needed the work done by Saturday, so my bro decided to bag our trip and head into the office. I didn't feel right staying behind to wheel without him, so we caravaned back home.
Five hours of driving for 30 minutes of wheeling isn't the way I'd ideally like to do it, but I was glad to get some dirt on the tires and see how it climbs. As it turned out, I was very pleased with how it handled and climbed. Some of the spots got a little steep, but I didn't have to use the lockers at any point. Can't wait to get back out in a few more weeks and put it through some more strenuous stuff.
Dwarf
