Ride Leader/Follower

I get a lot of people who seem to think, erroneously, that as ride leader, I am some form of expert. I get a lot of mechanical questions that I stumble through. I get a ton of trail questions which usually reveal that I have the as little or less knowlege than the person asking the question. And most people would assume that as a ride leader I should be one of the fittest people in the pack. Those who have been on one ride with us know that this is not the case.
Last night, we rode up Hog's Hollow and over to Corner Canyon. At the saddle/overlook we decided to head up Jacob's Ladder. Delightfully, I was the only one who had ever ridden it. I like taking people on a new trail and having them unanimously agree that it's a good one.
This photo proves my point about the fitness. The reason I am filming the majority of the riders reaching the top of Jacob's Ladder,...is because I was one of the last one's to reach it.

Before we turned around at the closed sign on BST, Sally headed back as she was low on water. Once the rest of us headed back, I was proven ignorant and slow again by falling off the back of the pack and when we returned to Ghost Falls, I couldn't tell which way they had gone. Noticing a cloud of dust heading down towards the silica pit, I headed that way wondering if they knew something I didn't. Once I reached the bottom, I realized I was alone. The smart thing would have been to just head up Clark's and meet up with everybody else at the top. Instead I tried to pick my way up to the "Not" Brock's Point trail.

Ever climbed the south fork of Ghost Fall's? It's a bitch. And not knowing if I was even going the right way, I had my bottom lip out in a full on pout. Just as I was about to cry, I heard somebody yell my name. Luckily I was just about 50 yards from the intersection with "Not" Brock's Point. And that's where they had waited. Jake asked if I needed a rest before we started and my pride said no. The result was a huffing,puffing painful climb up to the road.

But, I made it. Those whose computers had not been recently torn off by excessive trail overgrowth said that we covered about fifteen miles which was pretty good for a Wednesday evening ride.

At least these rides keep me humble.