Beer Can Scramble. Endos, Black Panthers, and photos not taken.

After a couple years of riding there every Tuesday, there's not much at Turkey Creek that's scary any more.  Not even the bridges at night.  Not even when the bushes rustle and the trees groan and the Walking Dead come alive in my head.

So Tuesday when my pedal was grabbed by a vine just as I got onto the bridge, I wasn't even a little bit scared to put a foot down and detangle.  I even got out the phone and took a picture, since I was right there. 

Then in a whoosh of wind, a branch went CRACK.  Suddenly it seemed like a good idea to stop goofing around and catch up to the group.     

I've been planning to talk about it anyway, but last week was a banner week at the Beer Can Scramble. 

Any Tuesday there's a spectacular endo, well, it's special.  

Although we didn't get to witness the actual air time, Kurt and I did pull up to witness some hang time.  Gobbler's rear wheel hanging from a palmetto.  And Gobbler.  On the ground, hanging from a pedal.

Ah, the moral dilemma of the smartphone. 

What do you do when you come upon your friend hanging upside down from his bike?  As long as he's alive and kickin', it's pretty funny.  To you, anyway.  And, you know darned well it will be to him too.  Eventually.

So.  Do you take a picture and then help him up?  Or do you help him up and wish like heck you had a picture?

As it turns out I was not quick enough to do either.  

Kurt got there ahead of me, so the way I saw it, the helping part was his job.  My job was to get the phone out of the Bento as fast as I could and get snappin'. 

Fortunately Gobbler was fine and hopped up quickly.   Which was a good thing, since Kurt was too busy laughing to do his job.  But not so good for the ever elusive photo op.

 

 

 

 

But then, I miss photo ops all the time.

Like this one.

The guys were all stopped at this little intersection, so I thought I'd grab my phone and get a shot.  When I looked up?  The last tail light had just gone round the bend. 

However the most spectacular missed shot that night was nothing so common as a group photo, or even a cool bike-in-a-tree endo. 

Most of my shots look like the one above.  That empty moment after all the action is over.

So, when I came around a bend in the trail and surprised 2 black panthers... 

There was no chance of being camera-ready.  They looked up, saw me riding straight at them, turned tail, loped about 15 feet down the trail ahead of me, then leaped into the underbrush, one to each side of the singletrack.

The guys came around the bend within seconds and didn't see a thing, except me, stopped - brakes!!! -  in the middle of the trail, one foot down on each side of the bike.

Oh my god!  Did you guys see that? 

Overlaid with the lingering vision of two long, ropey black tails disappearing into the bushes, random thoughts piled up in my head.
   
Thought #1.  Uh oh.  Was leaping to each side of the trail a defensive strategy or a hunting maneuver?  I think of Pepper, who weighs maybe 10 pounds.  When she gets hot under her little kitty-collar she can do some mighty nasty damage.  I really didn't want to think about what a wild cat, 5 times her size, could do.  But I was thinking about it just the same.
    
Thought #2.   Wow!   Proof!   (At least to myself.)  So that pair of black panthers I saw loping down the trail at the Econ 16 years ago were not escapees from some Orlando zoo, but probably Florida natives after all.  

Thought #3.  Why on earth did we get SUPs for Christmas instead of go-pros?

Back at Kurt's we had our beers and rehashed the endo.  Later, Popeye is polite, of course, on hearing my story over a bowl of slow cooker chili.  Endos are always entertaining.  But I can tell, when it comes to black panthers, true belief is a little tough for him.  

The next day, a gentle ribbing about saber toothed tigers in an email from Kurt reminds me to do a Google search for "black panthers in Florida".

Black panthers don't exist, by the way.  Not officially.  Kind of like  the way Bigfoot doesn't exist.  In a few seconds you can find dozens of reported sightings, though.  And a few photos too.  Like these, taken (not by me) in 2013 in the Everglades.

    

Yup, that's pretty much the type of cat I saw both times. 

Only darker.  

I do concede that yes, it is the time of year where the Beer Can Scramble starts out in the twilight.  So yes, a tan Florida Panther could have looked darker, even dark brown (as the big cat experts are quick to point out).  

But that certainly does not explain the two I surprised in almost exactly the same way, at the Econ, at high noon, on a sunny day.   Sleek.  Shiny.  Lean.  Muscular. Very close range, less than fifteen feet away.  And absolutely jet-black. 

Especially memorable in both cases, were the long black tails as they turned and loped down the trail ahead of me.  The only difference was, the Econ panthers were taller - top of my thigh.  The ones at Turkey Creek a little smaller - mid thigh.  Although that's not surprising.  Everything at the Econ is bigger.  (You should see the gators.)

But.  I digress.

The subject was supposed to be the Beer Can Scramble.  The Tuesday night mountain bike ride with beer at the end. 

At the beginning, we each threw a beer (or two) into a cooler.  At the end of the ride, we'd drag the cooler down the short dirt track to the one picnic table.  The rule was last guy in gets last choice. 

We soon learned a few things about this new scramble. 

The first thing was - be nice about the beer you bring.  The beer you get could be your own.   

I also learned that there was no particular hurry - not for me anyway.  My sissy wheat beers were plenty safe, since the other riders all turned out to be IPA aficionados.

But the biggest lesson of all was (duh) never stand still in a swamp.  Something will try to eat you. 

Sitting on top of the picnic table could get your feet up and away from the fire ants, but there was just no escaping the millions of mosquitoes.     

After the first or second session of incessant slapping, the whole idea of a Turkey Creek ride at night was going south, and fast. Without the beer enticement, the guys would likely have found good reasons to do other things on Tuesdays.  I would have still ridden, but alone, beerless, and feeling sorry for myself.

It was Kurt who saved the Scramble.  He lives on the other side of the creek from the trailhead, and very prudently has a screened pool deck.  By offering his deck for the end of the ride, he saved the day. And the ride.

I usually just write BCS on the park sign in sheet now, confident they know who we are.  Rain, cold, dark of night or summer storm.  If it's a Tuesday, there's a ride.  

I look back at my journal.

Last Tuesday there was a huge storm brewing, but we talked ourselves into going anyway.  We stepped back onto Kurt's covered deck just as all hell broke loose.  Hah!  The beers of small triumphs (and good timing) are sweet.   

The week before that - the endo and the panther sighting. 

The week before that was a spectacular full moon. 

So many Tuesday's, so many missed photos!  But photos mean stopping, and most rides are just too much fun to stop. 

So, when you look at the ones I did take, try to use your imagination.  

Or better yet, show up at 6, and see for yourself.  

Because it'll probably be awhile before I get that go-pro.