Just the adventure I was looking for | Mountain Biking Calistoga

I gotta make some hay while the sun is still shining. I can see some blue up there breaking the clouds. The sun is coming out any second now. We had a pretty good dose of rain yesterday in northern California as well as really warm temperatures. 65 degrees and humid feels pretty amazing after it's been 40 degrees wet and damp. I'm out here at Oat Hill Mine in Calistoga one of the places in the Bay Area that actually holds up just fine in the wet. Let's see how I hold up. Breathe! On one hand I'd love if the fog blew off and the sun was shining but I also feel like dank, dark, damp is the perfect conditions to spot some wildlife. The goal today is to get a little lost. I've done the main line many many times out here. 2,000 foot climb, basically a road but it's really fun to go down. You know you climb up to the top, turn around, just go back down the same way. But I've been looking at trail forks. There's a couple of sidelines like this one coming down right here. I've seen these things forever but I've never actually tried them out. So today it may be good, it may be bad, but it will be an adventure. My dropper post has been sagging for quite a while now. I gotta get this thing fixed. Finally got my Schwalbe Radials. I got the new meat on the wheels. Should be a good testing ground for it. A lot of sharp angle rocks, bad traction, slippy. Great memories riding out here with my brother before I started my channel. Every weekend we'd go ride some spot. Crockett, Rockville, Skyline, Calistoga. That was our typical rotation. We never really got into Joaquin Miller in Oakland but every time I've ridden those trails it's fantastic. There's just a lot of hikers. Got the jacket in the bag just in case I get into the actual fog which is probably going to happen here pretty soon. Pain and pleasure. I really was born into a pretty spectacular place for mountain biking. Growing up in Fairfield and living in Crockett and Vallejo, it's a center point for so many good rides. Now I'm curious to see if I'll get high enough to get above the fog. I think it's possible. It's going to take a little bit. Blood is pumping. Heart racing. Sweat pouring. Breathe through my eyes. Good thing I'm loaded up with the best electrolyte drink mix in the business and the fine sponsor of today's video. It's Element. The Element thesis is out with sugar and in with salt. They believe that most people, especially active people that get out and sweat a lot, need more salt in their diet, not less, to feel good and perform their best. It took me so long to find that perfect electrolyte drink that had zero sugar, tasted great, didn't have a weird aftertaste, kept me fired up, but didn't have caffeine, and most of all, didn't mess with my stomach. Element checks every single box. The Element mission is to restore health through hydration. It has been unreal. Over the past three years, my number one cause of headaches has been bad hydration. I feel a headache coming on. I reach for Element. I down a whole bottle. It knocks it out. I don't have to reach for some painkiller to mask over the actual problem. Today's the day to give Element a try. Use my link, drinkelement.com slash BKXC. Order anything, and you're going to get a free eight-pack sample pack of the four most popular Element flavors. If you give it an honest try, I really, really think you're going to like it, but anything is possible, and Element has a fantastic refund policy. Send them an email if you don't like it. They'll give you your money back. You don't even have to send the product back, but I demand that you give the product to a friend, and then tell them about my link when they fall in love with it. You know I've been loving the Element sparkling water in a can. They've actually just come out with a little smaller version. I've seen it on the shelf at Target. Give it a try. A simple thing like getting your hydration dialed in can make all of the difference. Head on over to drinkelement.com slash BKXC. Get your hydration dialed in. It's nice to know that every moment of suffering is just a signal to your body to get stronger, and that if you're healthy, I guess even if you're unhealthy, eventually it'll be better. You will get stronger if everything falls into place. The problem is once you get it, you got to work on it. It's only for rent. How much would you pay if you could not ever lose your fitness? Everyone takes their fitness sabbatical. Spend a year or two working yourself into perfect athletic shape. Pop a pill and then you keep it the rest of your life. What's the price? A thousand bucks a month? A hundred grand? Maybe this was a little more recent fire. Spooky. I was listening to this podcast and they were talking about addiction, drugs, and alcohol, and how, you know, we all think that people do that stuff to escape, to make their lives better, but there is a different school of thought. Probably just one theorist, one scientist thinking that people actually do it to make their lives harder, to get a challenge, to try to overcome. You drink for the hangover because it's the hard work. It's the suffering that you actually deserve because you're not good enough. If your life's too easy, you will find a way to make it harder one way or another. And that's why mountain biking is so great. You make your life harder, but you get something out of it. You get some highs, you get some lows. It is literally the best thing in the world. That's why it's so hard to understand surfing. It's the most conditions dependent. I get skiing and snowboarding a little bit, but even those, man, you get 10 good days a year. What's surfing? Four good days a year. Mountain biking you pretty much have every day of the year. Get something out of it. Fishing, oh man, a lot of hobbies that just you have one day, one story to talk about. Oh yeah, we're going to get above the fog. I guarantee it. What a nice little lonely day, though. A couple hikers along the way. I've been doing the New York Times crossword puzzle every day with a little bit of Google help. But man, it's funny how they'll keep using the same words over and over. Ebert, IOU. It's its own little language. But man, it's one of those things. You walk away, you come back to it a couple hours later, and all of a sudden you're like, boom, boom, boom. Your brain just subconsciously always working. I didn't want to turn the auto check on, but I had one letter wrong. So I took a screenshot. I fed it to Google's Gemini AI. Couldn't figure it out. Kept telling me the wrong thing. And then I gave it to ChatGPT. It thought for four minutes, and then it finally had the right answer. And today is the worst version of that AI that there will ever be. Ah, next topic. I know no one wants to talk about it or think about it. Almost pooped my pants recently. Okay, tough stuff. I almost pooped my pants again. That was horrible. Over the bars going uphill. That was like, almost felt like I was going to pop. Like I pushed a bunch of blood to my head. Oh yeah, sun's coming. The wagon ruts are big right here. Left side, right side. No suspension back there. Imagine you're coming up and somebody else is coming down. You back up. No, you back up. Don't slip. Oh yeah. Which way, which way? Oh no, still got it. Oh, didn't dab. Good day sunshine. Being alive rules. Come on. Oh no. Not breaking your ankle rules too. Oh, it's just so much more magical. You're in the darkness for so long and then you emerge. Wow. Wow, the grass is greener. Come on. Almost got pigeonholed again. Dang, this is good. Couldn't recreate this if you wanted to. Easy. Lightweight. Oh, not so easy. Oh, I want to get off and walk. Let's push through. Oh yeah, the hellscape. Ah. The story has just begun. Made it through the shortest day of the year. On the other side, nothing but smooth sailing from here on out. Oh man, perfect amount of butt kicking climb. Almost at the top here. Okay, I think I got some nasty climbing before the nasty descending. Oh, full sun. I guess I better get used to it because this is what it's going to be. Death defying, slippery, greasy. It's going to be nasty. Grip test. It's actually pretty grippy. Yeah. Oh yeah. Easy. No problem. Nothing to be scared about. Okay, let's get in the groove. That might have been the trail on the left. This might be it. Yeah. Oh no. Wagon wheel ruts all the way down. Yeah. Oh, nice gap jump into the brightness. Usually it's into the darkness. Okay, there's a left line and a right line. Oh. Easy, easy. Let loose. Yeah. Wow. What an amazing area. Man, been coming out here all this time. Never knew all these little monuments were out here. Amazing. Oh yeah. Nice. I think that's the last I'll see of the sun for a month. Unless I take a plane ride. Now I'm getting lost. I kind of see something ahead. Nope. Oh yeah, this is kind of a trail. Oh wow. Straight down. Oh yeah. Oh, misty mountain. A little too worried about the lens. Yeah. Chickened out. It's so cool. A true adventure. That's all I was hoping for. It's funny, there's all these other trails coming in off the left side. Oh man, I should have had some of those muck ender wipes in my car. I did bring a change of clothes, but that's not going to help with the mud caked in my leg hair. Oh yeah. Oh cool. Hold on. Into the tree. Brake burner. Skinny track. Oh, was that poison oak? I did so good. I was reading about the North American badger. They are around in Northern California. I've never seen one. Anywhere there's ground squirrels, they like to eat ground squirrels. I think Trailforks might censor my ride log because I rode on some sensitive trails. So you're going to have to just get Trailforks out and kind of piece it together. Go out for an adventure. Oh man, this is like, you ride this 10 times, maybe you'll build your confidence up. I could use a little more confidence. Man, another perfect day on the mountain bike. Can't believe it. It has been a hell of a run. I'm a very lucky man. Thanks for watching you guys. I'll see you on the trail.