A family takes two teens, Jonah and Austin, on an 18-mile mountain bike trail they'd planned for a month. Jonah gets sick early on, then a broken derailleur forces a bike swap mid-ride, but they push through anyway. All four finish in about 4.5 hours, passing Pilot Rock and learning why you check your bike before you go.
Chapters
Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Who's this? Waylon. Bye-bye. You're sitting up. I will, I'll get to you.
Bye.
Gotta get the mom first.
Bye.
You were really excited to say that. Bye. Bye. You being so loud? Your friend's here. All right, today's a very special day. Big day for Jonah and Austin. They're gonna complete and finish the race we set out to do one month ago. Ready to beat this thing?
Ready.
You got the banana?
You got the banana.
You ready?
I got two more in my pack.
You ready to beat this?
Yeah.
This is a trail you've never seen, either one of you. It's 17 miles uphill and 3 miles down.
Sounds about right. All right, that's not for me.
This isn't for me. We are, uh, having to drop a truck where we're gonna end. Everybody get in the other truck to drive to where we started. When we get done, we got get in that first truck and go pick up the other one. Hope that's not too much driving. 1 hour later, we are at our pickup spot. It's gonna take an hour and 45 minutes to stage the trucks, another hour and 45 minutes to pick them up. 3 hours and— is that 5? 3 and a half hours just staging. Oh my gosh, that means stretch after this. We don't have to do any more staging when we come out and ride, do our practice runs. We're practicing, we're prepping, we're getting ready for the next year's 100. We're all gonna finish it in one shot. This is us prepping almost a year in advance. Boy, his bike has been— new derailleur. How's this for an hour and 45 minutes of staging? You should do the math for you or not, but that's 3 and a half hours in the— this trail we finished 2 weeks ago. We finished that for Austin on the big trip. Jonah got sick at this point. What's going on?
I just feel really sick and I threw up all of my food last night.
Did you throw up a lot?
Yes.
We bailed out, went and camped out, but we were supposed to keep going, and that's what we're gonna do today so that Jonah and Austin can finish. That's the goal. This is an 18-mile— it took us 6 hours last time. We're gonna have to do this in 5. To get home in time for dinner because of all the driving. What do you think? Can we do it? Yeah. Can we do it, Austin? How you feeling?
Good.
Good.
Okay, right now these are strong.
These are good.
Hey, you, you, you might have an edge on us because we all have a cold.
No, we're just, we're just even.
Okay. All right, all right. So we're gonna have to be breathing out of our mouths. Oh my gosh, really? Flat tire at the start.
It's just this spot.
What happened?
Tires just got a hole.
You didn't pump these up this morning?
I did, and it just did not.
It's flat by the time we get here. Thankfully there was another mountain biker here who gave us his spare tube. We didn't realize these were 26 inches. Ours are 29 inches. That's the derailleur. Yeah, that's half of it.
Yeah, no, it's three-quarters.
Don't tell me we just drove It looks like the rest of it's about to break off soon.
The thing is trying, and then Dean's about 10 miles up.
Try it on something rugged. I mean, maybe it's— whoa, what was that? Come up here. We could go that way, but we're going downhill for a little bit on gravel. Yeah, see if you can pedal up that trail right there.
Is this even a mountain bike trail? No. Oh gosh, what?
It's what?
Different.
I got it.
Thing is, gentlemen, we won't get to ride again for another month. I don't know much about—
it's already making noises.
That's like—
that's so steep.
I can't—
no, don't do it if you're scared.
I can't put my seat down.
You maybe should. Oh, you can't do it before you go get to it.
What if— just thinking out loud— what if we go do just a simple trail somewhere just to get some biking in instead of doing this whole 20.
Yeah, the bike is working actually great now that that piece is gone.
Hey, do you guys rent mountain bikes? Do you have something available today? So wait, but what happens if— well, I don't think the rest of it is going to break off.
No, I don't think it is, but if it does break off, it's literally just staying there.
Can you check it and see if it's loose? It would just rub and that would not last long. This is why we need that derailleur and chains class. We could probably replace that. Little plastic teeth that are broken, right?
Right. I mean, you know, that's one of those— it's hard, hard to say. Um, Laurel Pilot is pretty rowdy.
Yeah.
Um, it's also pretty long, so like, yeah, it would kind of stink.
Yeah.
Um, tell you what, let me make a quick phone call.
I'll call you right back.
All right.
That's exactly what we're thinking. 18-mile ride. Half of it, you know, we're halfway in. We come back to this truck if we break down. The other half, we're going down there. So worst case, we're walking 9 miles. The other case is, hey, we get 2 miles up here, it's not so bad to just walk back.
You can literally do like 9 miles in 2 hours.
Austin's saying he'd rather risk it than go rent another bike. Going through all the gears?
Yeah.
Oh, how'd it feel when you put weight on it? Should I fulfill it? I should probably fill it. Hey there.
Hey, I do have a guy that can meet you.
Oh, he can meet us?
Yeah, well, at the shop.
I'm sorry.
Oh, okay. How soon would we have to turn it back in?
Uh, you could turn it in at 5 o'clock if you want to.
Okay, trying to think if we'll be done by then.
No way.
I don't think we'd be done by then. It's probably gonna take us 5 or 6 hours, so we're not gonna rent the bike because it's One, $105. Two, you have to have it in by 5. That's what happened. We checked this before we left.
This bike, it has like—
there's so many things.
You want to go on the trail?
Yes.
I'll walk if I have to.
Well, we all walk if you have to. We're gonna have to outvote Austin if we go. I don't know if we want to do that.
That's fine.
I mean, if we're going or not, like, let's just make a decision and get to the trail and just feel it on the trail for a little bit. See how everybody feels. Okay, let's do it. But Austin's right. One thing that we could do, we could, if we wanted to do an alternate route, see if we could go explore some of the back 50 miles. We could ride it up a little bit. What I'm saying is, let's go in up to 5 miles and say, well, how do we feel? How's the bike doing? Does that sound good to everybody? Because Austin will be cursing us if it breaks down because he told us. For the record, he told us. He told us. We've already done this section. It's just the gravel road. If we break down and we have to walk back, we don't want to come up this gravel road. So we're going to get him to the proper trail. Lesson learned. Figure out what a bike check is and do a complete bike check before we leave. All right, we're calling it.
No, no, no.
What happened? It just came off. What happened?
It just came off.
Oh, it's off of it. Oh look, this is broken. We're done. What? We can't even do a practice ride. See, this is completely broken in half. Josiah, here's the only other option. This bike is not rideable even for a practice ride. The only other option is to text Mom and see if Ashley or Annie can come get you. How bummed would you be if that happened? Not really that bummed. Not really that bummed? Okay, you've done this. He's done this trail. He finished it.
Okay, you're having problems with your bike.
Well, guess what? His derailleur is broke. The arm on it is broken in half.
Oh my gosh, Austin.
So it's not happening. It's not like—
oh yeah, it's messed up.
Oh God. Oh, it's jacked.
Look at me.
Something happened.
Oh, oh yeah, you broke it.
So Josiah was volunteering to give Jonah his bike, so now I'm gonna volunteer to give you my bike so you and Jonah can go do this trail. Wait, no, it'd be fun. Do we have— no, do we have two bikes if we do that? Yes, because yours— we have two good bikes, yours and mine. You and Jonah, we'll go pick you up. Jonah, you ready to go? Yep. You just got the— you should be able to go in and get that. You should be able to go get that back since you've got that just brand new. So y'all are done? Y'all are done? You're gonna get to your car and then just come home? You don't even need us out here. What do you want to do, Austin? You want to wait? You want to try it with Jonah?
You don't want to do it all day. Don't feel pressure from me.
If you have no problems, it shouldn't take you more than 6 hours max because that's how long it took us on third day of biking. And Sam was, yeah, pretty slow. Vlog on your phone. It's gonna make it more interesting.
This is a movie for sure.
This is crazy.
Remember we kept riding back and forth, back and forth, trying to find the trail?
No, no, this wasn't that one. This wasn't this road, but it was this location. It was this location.
So I'm saying this place is just cursed. And then we forgot our tube on day of the event.
Yep. And now two bikes, not one bike.
This, this bike broke down, your bike broke down, and it was just fixed.
Brand new, brand new parts.
So it don't matter how good you inspect it, you're getting at the trailhead and it broke down. Well, at least it happened right at the trailhead, Austin. Yeah, and not 12 miles in. Okay, I'm proud of you boys. It's not a problem. They're— it's not like they're going alone. Two people ride all about all the time. People go by themselves all the time. Austin's got the spot in case like they have an emergency. There's satellite communication. You've got a physical map. I've texted you the written out instructions on how to do this trail, Link This Trail.
This is a true adult moment for me. Yeah, I'm the—
oh, you're the—
I'm supposed to be the responsible adult here.
You're the old man now for sure. What is better for you, to go in the front? Do you feel more pushed and motivated when somebody's behind you on your tail, or do you feel more motivated when somebody's in front of you and you're trying to catch them?
I feel— well, probably feel more motivated when they're behind me pushing me. Okay, but then I also feel like stressed out because then I'm like, okay, why are you pushing?
He's going to bust your balls today.
We'll see how our relationship is coming out of this.
This and Josiah's take it to the next level and y'all just be bickering. We'll be separating y'all's fights all the time, arguments.
When we get back, me and him are gonna have to sit under the table and talk it out.
Uh-huh. I asked a friend of mine once who's— who gets along with his siblings, what was the secret. His mom would literally have them sit under the kitchen table and she made them work it out between themselves. I thought that was brilliant. We'll see when they're back if we need— they need to sit under the table.
Give me a lot of that.
Oh, give him something, Austin. Hey, he beats us all, Austin. He's young, 16.
Yeah, see, I'm out here with the fastest guy.
I got hip replacement, the bionic hip's the secret.
That'll get rid of some weight.
Take all that weight.
Oh man, Austin.
So then what's in your pack? Just water? And then you got some snacks in this?
Two bananas.
Monkey never crap because a monkey every day bananas.
And an apple. I got two apples, I think.
Do you really?
Yeah.
Okay, well eat them early on.
This is fun.
This is the They've never been on this trail. You gotta vlog this. Y'all have never seen this trail. Josiah and I have done it. This is 18 miles, so it's about 10 miles, 15 miles up and 3 miles down. Oh my gosh, is it actually— so I will say this, it's 6 miles of Laurel Mountain, pretty gradual single track climb, and then it's like Pilot Rock connect— it's like Laurel Mountain connectors, Pilot Rock connectors, and that's kind of up and down, uh, gets pretty technical. And then you get to Pilot Rock, it's an amazing view. That's where you're going to want to take a snack, get rested before a crazy downhill and then you get on double track for like 5 miles. You remember it's just kind of up and down, kind of in the bottom of the hill, and then, and then you come to a 3-mile dirt road. It's like 8 miles of double track. You go here and you turn right. Let's go with them, Tour de France style. All right, gear down. Yeah, we went that way, but you got to go right. Holy cow, welcome to the jungle.
You already fall?
Yeah, here we go.
It gets—
oh yeah, it's like this for about 6 miles. So nice. Oh my gosh, I'm already—
it gets better.
You all say that a lot.
All right boys, go make men of you. What do you think, you got this?
Yeah, Jonah will be on his tail the whole part.
No bike troubles. No physical troubles. It's a good pair.
The slowest person and the fastest.
That's right. You and I already did it, so we gave up our ride today happily so that they could get it done.
1.3 miles in and my bike's tire— tire's coming up. This happened last time.
You're partying too much on it.
I guess so. How far are we in? 7 miles? So we're here at the view and, uh, there's not much of a view, huh?
No, it isn't.
Our view is blocked by all the trees, but we're taking a snack break.
Hey guys, we're back. Failed expedition.
Hey there.
Hey, are your man and Jenna gonna have a— well, yeah, bonding experience. Experience today. I heard, uh, Austin's bike broke. Yeah, brand new derailleur going down the hill. That didn't even get started.
No way.
Well, the boys are hard at the trail. They're like 5, 6 miles in right now. We're trying out their new sauce, Mom's recipe. I swear there's sweetener in there. It's so sweet and good. Back— the sauce is killer. Yeah, Lily said I should it ended up there. You would win. So it tastes this good when we open up a can in January? Wow, that'll get me excited about tomatoes.
You got it. Oh, that's a, that's a risky route right there. Try one more time. Just go like around the edge. So the guys did this last time on that trail.
One more shot.
Give me one more shot. What?
Come on, I did it earlier, we just didn't get it on camera.
There we go. Oh yeah.
Oh, look who's back! Back again. Okay, so tell us about it. You did it in 4 and a half hours.
It felt good. Yeah, I mean, this guy was pushing me the whole time.
Was he literally pushing you? You were in front?
Well, there's multiple times he actually ran into me, so yeah.
Okay, he is a pusher. You guys did it in 4 and a half hours. It took us 6.
Y'all were like exhausted. We went into it fresh.
We did— oh, we did have a couple problems.
Yeah, same thing that happened to me last time.
You Really? I hope you enjoy that cauliflower rice, tofu, and tempeh. Lily, thank you for making them Mexican. And that's a beautiful day, beautiful sunset. Happy day.
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