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Dirt Rag Articles
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In this third version of the Interstate Ride Guide, we follow Interstate 70 as it crosses the country from Maryland to Utah, going past some riding spots both level and mountainous, famous and little-known, epic and modest. Behind all of them, however, stands a community of mountain bikers that love and care for these trails, since they are their home.
With this edition we gave the riders a chance to go beyond a mere description of their home trails. What makes them home, after all, is more than mere proximity: it is sweat equity and memory of great experiences.
There's more than what you see here for this project—go to the Web Extras for this article at Dirtragmag.com for more stories, links and locations.
Maryland
Setting Off...
If you start your I-70 journey at the eastern terminus, the first mandatory stop is Patapsco Valley State Park. The park spans 32 miles along the river valley and has two primary biking areas. Known as Avalon and McKeldin, they are separated by less-developed areas of the park and each have their own network of trails that can keep you busy for a few hours. Most would argue the Avalon area is the #1 mountain bike destination in the Baltimore region.
In 2002 a group of us struck out on what we hoped would be a ground-breaking trip, one that would connect the Avalon and McKeldin riding areas by as much singletrack and dirt riding as possible. With prior field research (i.e. lots of riding) and a new park map that had just been published showing a huge network of "unmaintained trails," we were successful in joining the two areas together for what was later dubbed the Tour de Patapsco route, a 50-mile round trip connecting the two local jewels. Now the park management itself is working on making this a legitimate end-to-end trail dubbed the "Thru Trail" complete with sweet bench cut singletrack where there was once barely-existing slivers of eroded dirt. The "Thru Trail" is not complete yet but a lot of progress has been made. Anyone with a sense of adventure can purchase a topo map from the park, which touts "over 170 miles of trails." Then just pack a lunch and build your own adventure.
Patapsco itself is a huge success story. In the mid-90s some trails were in bad shape and the finger was being pointed at the two-wheeled trail users. Threats of closure were in the air. Mountain bikers rallied, fought to keep access and became a tour de force in trail advocacy and maintenance in the park. Local trail advocates have a great relationship with the park and a huge influence on trail projects. Just as important, the park staff understands and embraces IMBA trail building standards and has seen huge success in building and maintaining sustainable singletrack. –Joe Whitehair
Ohio
A Tale of Two Trails in Dayton
No. This is no fairy tale. This is for real. There are two, count them, two, mountain bike trails in the Dayton area. Both are equally fun but very different. And, they happen to be located about 30 minutes from each other so it's easy to do both trail systems in one day.
The first trail system lies outside of Yellow Springs, Ohio, at John Bryan State Park. It took five years of volunteer time to build the nine miles of multi-purpose trail on the gentle terrain in the woods where there had previously been no trails. You can find hikers and walkers early in the mornings and the occasional trail runner in the evenings, but mostly it's about mountain biking. The John Bryan trail system now hosts off-road time trials, XC races and an annual 6-hour mountain bike event. It's a great trail for beginners and a fun trail for advanced riders who like fast, flowing trail interspersed with log piles, creek crossings and boardwalks. On weekends there are families with kids as young as five years old playing in the skills park and on the trails. You can also find riders on an assortment of comfort bikes, cross bikes, rigid bikes, singlespeeds and twenty-niners. I've got a ton of sweat equity over the years in cutting the rose vines and yanking out the honeysuckle to make John Bryan one of the nicest-kept trails in the State.
John Bryan sound too easy to you? We've got another trail just for you. It's specifically for mountain biking. Based on the success of John Bryan, Five Rivers MetroParks in Dayton took the plunge and in one year built a stellar, IMBA-design based system of 8+ miles called the MetroParks Mountain Bike Area or MoMBA. It's located just north of Dayton at Huffman MetroPark. Five Rivers Outdoors, the outdoor recreation department of Five Rivers MetroParks, headed up the project and even brought in the IMBA Trail Care Crew to teach us older trail builders and the community at large a few new tricks. Where John Bryan was designed and built by volunteers using simple hand tools, MoMBA was designed professionally and the tread was carefully sculpted by tractor blade and finished by hand using specifically designed trail tools, like rhinos. Volunteers contributed many hours to armor creek crossings and to build MoMBA's bridges and boardwalks that span numerous ravines and gullies. It all worked. MoMBA is a raging success with its undulating terrain, tight switchbacks, rocky ridges and an area that looks like astronauts should be walking on it.
So, which is my favorite? Both! I love John Bryan for its easy, fast and flowing feel and I love MoMBA for its "something out of the West" feel. And, yes, I have sweat equity in MoMBA out there in the big rocks of a couple of armored creek crossings.
Ever since I got involved in mountain biking at the ripe old age of 47, I've wanted to give back to the sport that I enjoy so much. So I've become a member of the National Mountain Bike Patrol, IMBA, the Friends of John Bryan State Park and work with the great group of folks that make up the Miami Valley Mountain Bike Association (MVMBA), a chapter of the Ohio Mountain Bike Association. Fortunately, I'm retired and get to ride when I want to. But it's not all fun and games. This is a sport that demands investment from its riders so I've spent the past six years working with MVMBA to donate thousands of hours to building and maintaining trail. And now we have two great trail systems in the Dayton area. I would say the future is looking bright. –Karen Wells-Hamilton
Indiana
Westwood
What is it about this place? This ribbon of dirt tucked in the woods surrounded by cornfields. Nothing near it. It near nothing. But this place has magic and history. It gives me calm and helps me forget all of the pressures, if only for a short while.
Westwood is an eternal "work in progress." There is no perfect trail, yet we head out weekend after weekend trying to achieve the unachievable. For five years and counting we have been building this trail. Starting slow. Fixing mistakes. Re-thinking lines. Deliberation of "around this tree or that tree?" Weekends upon weekends spent leaning over a Pulaski. Weekends spent building bridges. Nineteen and counting in this ten-mile loop. Nineteen damn bridges built one-by-one. As short as four feet. As long as 100 feet. A weekend of labor for a half a second of trail. There is irony in this. Working so hard to build trail that I am too tired to ride it. I am invested in this place with a currency of sweat and blood. I am protective of it but I want to share it. I want to introduce this place to everyone. I want to see the trailhead full of riders heading out and coming back. I want to see the dirty faces and the smiles and the exhaustion. Expand the tribe. Spread the word.
You wouldn't think much of Westwood if you saw it on paper. It is in central Indiana. "Manhole covers are elevation in Indiana." "You can see the curvature of the earth." All of the jokes describing this place and its topographic homogeneity, I've heard them all. But Westwood rewards the rider with ten miles of beautiful singletrack winding its way around the lake. A tight ribbon of trail that rewards the smooth line and punishes the rest.
There are no major climbs here but there is a surprising amount of elevation. How is that? It doesn't have large climbs looming around the turn. Those climbs that sear the memory of pain and fatigue in your brain. No, Westwood has none of that. Instead Westwood offers little climb after little climb in a constant and never-ending succession. This place is anything but flat but it isn't hilly.
I am proud of Westwood. I am proud when riders return from a ride and already are talking of when they are coming back. The smiles. The grins. The pain that accompanies a hard ride. The cuts. The scrapes. The blood. Yours now mixed with mine out there on the trail. I am proud. This ribbon of 18" of dirt meandering its way in a schizophrenic loop. The views of the lake you get from seemingly every turn of the trail. Those views that seem so natural and so surprising requiring all that work to get the trail there. It is worth every drop of sweat. All of those that have spent hours and hours working on this trail are proud. This place will outlast all of us. –Tim O'Donnell
Crossroads
I'm supposed to write about interstates and mountain bikes. Two seemingly incompatible things. I suppose the common thread is that one is a means to the other. The end? No. Mountain biking is the beginning. At least for me it is. So let's start there, or a bit before.
I-70 rolls right through Indianapolis. Kurt Vonnegut grew up in Indy. He summered in my hometown, Culver. My friend's family tore Vonnegut's family's house down to build a farmhouse. It's pretty and idyllic, just like Culver. But Kurt is odd. Odd and fun.
The man published books that included his own sketches of assholes. Some bike people I know did that. But they didn't publish a book. They just called the asshole their logo. Nice one, Kona. Don't believe me? Go see for yourself.
There are no mountains in Indiana. The south has hills. But up north is flat. Like a pancake. Literally. Sometimes after riding until I was dizzy, I'd fall over and think I could see the curvature of the earth. But it was interrupted by corn, or a trailer. Or a deer carcass.
Indiana's good for things like that. The state motto is "The Crossroads of America." As a kid, I wanted to give the state a reason to rename the motto "more trails than any other place in the world." Like every other idealistic dreamer with more ideas than motivation and patience, I gave up and moved to a place with trails. I now live in a town with barely any trails at all. So it goes.
Then I met a guy who I should have met years ago. While I was busy packing my bags, he was making plans. Plans to get off the top of the list of IMBA's worst states for mountain biking.
There are no mountains in Indiana. But Alex lives in the south. And he has a vision. His vision is one worth sharing. One that unifies the state. One that recognizes that you don't need mountains to have a blast riding off-road. One that's raised a ton of money, and brought people together, and will eventually give some young kid a reason to say, "I like my state. I think I'll stay here. Maybe finally change the state motto to something more honorable."
Maybe Alex will do that, too. Nah, I bet he goes for another ride in Brown County State Park.
Hills, rocks, trees, roots. A place that reminds you why wheels turn. A place that reminds you that the grass isn't always greener two states over. Pooteeweet. –Michael Browne
Missouri/Kansas
What? Really?
Considered among the mountain bike "meccas" in North America—Moab, British Columbia, Fruita—the Kansas City area probably doesn't trigger a second thought. At least it didn't for me when I relocated here six years ago. Mistakenly thinking that Kansas City was full of flat cornfields and cows (which to some degree it is), I actually contemplated selling my mountain bike a few weeks before my move. But once I arrived, I was blown away with what I found. The topography of the area was the most striking; it was packed with technical climbs full of jagged rock slabs. I later learned that most of these elevated technical areas are the remnants of the Ozark Mountain range—an ancient range stretching from Kansas and Missouri through Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee—that dominated the area 300 million years ago. These ideal geographic conditions have fostered a thriving mountain bike culture in the Kansas City area. Interstate 70 runs right through the area, giving any road-tripping mountain biker on his or her way to Fruita or Moab access to more than ten high-quality trails.
Landahl Mountain Bike Trail is unquestionably the crown jewel of the Kansas-Missouri corridor. Part of the Landahl Park Reserve run by the state of Missouri, the trails in this system are serious enough that the boys over at Granny Gear have staged a 24-hour race there two years running. Kansas City has apparently arrived: The third "24 Hours of Landahl" runs this fall, September 20-21.
Offering something for everyone, Landahl consists of a 9.5-mile perimeter loop; another ten or so additional miles of trails are interspersed within that perimeter. Fast, flowing singletrack, like Will's Wanderer or Tasty Goodness, are big ring sort of trails. But riders also hit gnarly, technical, rock-root covered climbs and drops at Landahl, and there are even some big drops and insane downhill sections—Rim Job and Root Canal—for those who dare.
Landahl is a good 30 to 45 minutes east of K.C. in the town of Blue Springs, Missouri, and other trails closer to the metro do abound, so it's really the kind of place best reserved for day-long epics. Last year my Kansas Crew (plus one distinguished Missourian) held our first impromptu Labor Day epic. We packed lunches and coolers full of beverages. This ended up being one of those timeless days on the trail in which you are totally in the here and now, the kind in which you promise your wife you will be home by 4 and then call at 6:30 to tell her you're still riding. We rode that day from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.—stopping only occasionally for some food and hair of the dog (a practice that drew some greasy looks from our "more serious" Lycra-clad brethren). Sipping Boulevards (a tasty, local beer) in the trailhead parking lot, we all swore an oath: From that day on, Labor Day would be sacred, devoted to Landahl epics. If you're in the area this year, feel free to join us.
If Landahl is this area's crown jewel, then the BuRP (Blue River Parkway) trail is K.C. mountain biking's bread and butter. This trail is located right in the heart of Kansas City, Missouri, just 15 minutes from downtown and easily reachable from the surrounding suburbs. Most area mountain bikers cut their teeth on BuRP. More than twelve miles of trails makes it a perfect spot for a Sunday afternoon semi-epic or for a few hours of stress relief after work (followed by some beers at the Sandtrap Bar near the trailhead). In terms of terrain, this trail has everything Landahl has, just on a smaller scale. There are nice fast and flowing sections (the Bo Ho Ca, Ridge Line and Basement Trails) and some pretty hairy technical stuff that is just as hard as Landahl (the Highline, Little Moab and Wagon Trails). Everything at BuRP is well-marked and maintained, thanks to the people at Earth Riders (a K.C. area mountain bike club), but it can be easy to get lost. A couple major roads intersect various trails, which makes the trail system feel somewhat fragmented. I myself have ridden here at least 60 times, and I still get lost. But since this is the most popular trail in the area because of its proximity to K.C., I inevitably run into other riders who point me in the right direction. Bottom line: If you are on business in the K.C. area and have a few hours to kill, ride BuRP.
The Quebeçois have a saying this fifth-generation, ten-percent French Canadian-American likes to loosely paraphrase: "Your neighbor's wife might be more beautiful, but there is a certain something in your own wife's eyes that compels you." That's how I feel about the Kill Creek mountain bike trails in De Soto, Kansas, just a short, 15-mile jaunt off I-70 on Highway K10. There are only five or six miles of trails in this county park, so a day-long epic could become a bit repetitive. It's also the sort of trail that might frustrate beginners; 60% of it is brutally technical. Though my crew and I are by no means pros, most of us have at least five years of riding under our belts, yet there are still a few sections of Kill Creek that compel us to dismount and walk. Still, I've had some of my most memorable rides here.
The trail system begins at the parking lot near Shelter #1 and starts with a fun and flowing, three-quarter-mile descent to the creek. From there, the trail turns into a three- to four-mile loop of technical, rocky climbs, tricky rooted sections, and log obstacles—all of which culminates in a 100-yard-long rock garden that is probably an old dried up creek bed. Riding this finale gives the kind of sheer childhood joy that only the swing set could provide. There is nothing like hitting this trail after work to unload all the day's frustrations, though—since it is a bit of a hike from K.C. and more advanced—I'd only hit it if you're confident in your technical skills and if you have the time to enjoy it. (Or if you're a masochist who enjoys endo-ing face-plant style into a pillow of rocks.)
More information on Landahl, BuRP, and Kill Creek is available at www.earthriders.com. This site gives directions, trail maps and condition reports for each of these as well as several other local trails. Of course, if you want a more personal tour, feel free to give me and the Kansas Crew a shout out. We're always looking for new riding buds. –Mick Swanson
Colorado
Always Ride
You learn the tricks pretty quickly. In my job as a demo driver for Yeti, second priority is learning where to go for an easy access ride. (First priority: Keep the beer cooler full.) Easy access, meaning easy to pull the rig in, quick access to the trail from the interstate, a satisfying but not too epic ride...you know...easy. The I-70 corridor has a wealth of options. The obvious choice is the Fruita area, with the plethora of desert trail goodness that lurks just beyond the Mack exit, but when it is rideable, I head for Minturn, Exit 171. The Meadow Mountain Loop.
Last November I was spinning back to the Front Range after a four-day demo out in Fruita and spent the first stretch debating on whether or not to try for a ride. I was torn between steaming back home in a diligent fashion, or trying for one last high country ride. I drove right by the exit, in fact. Spent the next two exits drumming my fingers on the steering wheel and looking at the mountainside in the rearview mirror. The old adage ran through my head like a stock ticker: "always ride...always ride...". So I dove off the Interstate and turned around. I ended up swiping a ride right out of the clattery beak of winter. I rode the jeep road up and spun the highway out of my system. It was a funny sort of day out there. Quiet, quiet. With occasional groups of wildlife moving around in excited little clusters. A couple of magpies bustled and fussed over me, followed by several crows. The woods had that aimless feel of the last day of school. Up top at the line shack I could tell I had some postholing in front of me. The first section of singletrack had a healthy layer of snow on top of it. The easy had become epic. Well, sort of epic. Semi-hemi-demi-epic. But as always, it paid off. After losing about 700ft. of elevation, the trail cleared out and turned into flowy, loamy Colorado singletrack. One last taste before it all went under for the winter. –Anthony Sloan
On a Ride, On a Rock...
It was April, 1997, the second Fruita Fat Tire Fest. Local riders rallied to support the new festival and humor out-of-towners with local lore and semi-secret rides, and maybe even some geology and history of our area. It was one of the beginning years of the massive cycling movement that has since exploded here in the Grand Valley.
I loaded my '79 Land Cruiser with my Moots YBB and drove down from my home in Glade Park, high above the Colorado National Monument at 7800ft., my favorite coffee mug in hand—all dented and stickered, leaving my toddler and husband-at-the-time at home for the day, and headed over the Monument toward Fruita to guide some rides for the day and assist with the Festival. It had rained that night, leaving the freshest, most crisp sensation in the air—I remember the smell of sage well. As I descended the west side of the Monument, coffee mug stationed in my favorite cup holder (a roll of duct tape), the Valley below was gray with clouds, wet, and chilly—but so alive! It was the quintessential springtime-in-the-desert morning. And I'll never forget it as long as I live.
I parked my Cruiser around the corner from Over the Edge Sports in Fruita, left my bike in the back, and hopped out to check in with the shop. As I rounded the corner I stopped to say "Hi" to a group of guys, kvetching about the weather and seemingly unrideable sloppy, sticky trails. One person in particular struck me as a mountain bike purist—his bright blue eyes sparkled with life, and I knew instantly that we would become kindred pals. Turns out, he was the president of COPMOBA (the Colorado Plateau Mountain Bike and Trail Association, the small group that develops and maintains these trails and advocates for their existence), and indeed represented the essence of mountain biking and the spirit of the trail—and was, to me, a keeper of all things important in life. He lit up when he spoke of his daughter and the joy being a Dad brought to his life...of geology...of the outdoors...and of living; all things I, too, relished. We hopped in his 4-Runner, drove to Rabbit Valley, jumped around in the squishy, dense sand, and gave it a thumbs-up for the day. The trails would rejoice that morning and day and weekend with riders from all over the nation.
Fast-forward eleven years...a few relationships later, a brain cyst, two children for me, one for Chris... Chris and I now share a straw bale home together with our three kids. It sits perched at the edge of the Tabegauche/Lunch Loop trail network, at the base of the Monument. We ride from the house, trail run and hike from the house, listen to the coyotes, watch the quail and look back on our lives—as symbolic and important each of our paths has been, they brought us together under one roof, at the edge of the trail.
Now Chris and I both serve on the COPMOBA board—he, once again, as president. The trail inspired my business Mountain Sprouts and our mission to get kids and families outdoors. It is the trail where we excitedly meet the obvious out-of-towner with the usual "where you from?", introduce ourselves and, more often than not, have them over to our home for a few beers and whatever's on the grill that night. We each have our trailside rocks where we have much-needed "come to Jesus" moments. We've each taught our kids and friend's kids on these same trails to navigate the dirt, rocks and roots that make mountain biking so much fun, and inspire a lifetime love of the outdoors. We've each bled and cried and thrashed and laughed and hi-fived and hugged friends out there.
And just recently, eleven years to the day of that introductory Fat Tire Fest, we became engaged...on a ride, on a rock, overlooking what we now affectionately call "Little Surprise Canyon"...and one of these days, we'll elope there, too.
Who knows what paths are ahead, but the trail remains a constant thread in our lives—weaving what was, is, and one day, will be. –Jen Taylor
Crank
crank, crank, breathe, crank, crank
breathe again, set a good pace
leave them in the dust
–Bill Harris
Utah
White Rim Blues
The White Rim trail of Canyonlands National Park is a mostly dirt road loop of one hundred miles along a dramatic shelf of pale stone beneath the more accessible Island in the Sky plateau, but above the maze-like terrain created by the Green and Colorado Rivers. It is typically ridden in a few, heavily inebriated days of camping with cyclists enjoying twenty to forty mile rides each day between designated campsites as trucks shuttle camping gear, food, and water. Before dawn on a crisp spring morning in 2002, two friends and I planned to mount our bikes and ride the entire trail in a single day, unsupported.
My friends and I broke camp with little fanfare, got back in our car and headed to the starting point near the Island in the Sky visitors' center, just beyond where the Shafer trail climbs its way back onto the plateau. The plan happily bouncing around in my head as we were making good time in the crisp, cool early morning hours was to head counterclockwise around the loop in order to get the (boring, less scenic) section of paved and improved road out of the way early. Then down off the plateau at Horsethief basin, past the sand and trudgery of Hardscrabble before climbing onto the rim. Then yada yada yada, you know, some riding, triumphantly cresting the arduous Murphy Hogback summit at great speeds, then a coast back to the middle ring-easy Shafer trail climb. The hardest part would be the final half-mile of road before downing some cold drinks at the truck, one hundred mountain bike miles the wiser. Water replenishment was to be taken care of by the stash at White Crack, filtering from the Green and the Colorado Rivers, and from supported groups along the way if need be. The birds sang, we rode, and the sun streaked brilliantly as it rose higher into the sky.
While we were resting and filtering the silty waters of the Green River something occurred to me: "Why hadn't we passed any groups along the way?" By this point in the ride we should have seen a few supported trips stirring in the passed campsites. Their absence was strange for this time of year when the weather is usually perfect for outdoor partying. The answer became clear to me after we began the surprisingly long climb out of Sandy Bottom toward the rim: they had checked the weather report and it was grim.
You see the sun had come up, the birds had gone into hiding, and we had started on our journey with Thursday's weather guiding our plans. Deserts are not to be trifled with, this we knew, but we were still caught unaware by the sudden twist in the weather outlook. Our expected high of 80°F had somehow risen to 105°. The calm, partly cloudy skies were replaced with skin-scorching heliocentric clarity and record winds. Dust storms were likely. This was, of course, reported on Friday as we headed obliviously south. –Bryon White
| Exclusive Dirt Rag Web-Only Extras For I-70 Ride Guide | Read the full, unedited version of Byron Wright's story White Rim Blues here.
Below is some additional information on mountain biking in Maryland, courtesy of Joe Whitehair:
Don't think you are done with Maryland yet, the I-70 fun has just started. Just west of the city of Frederick, the Catoctin ridge forms the easternmost portion of the Appalachian mountain range, the oldest mountains in the world. If this isn't enough to get the a mountain biker salivating, then consider that just a few minutes off of the highway there is a trifecta of mountain bike trails, Gambrill State Park, the Frederick Watershed and Greenbrier State Park, that make this area worth a stop.
For a stranger in a strange land Gambrill State Park is a best bet with its well-marked trails and kiosk map to keep you from getting turned around. The yellow loop, maintained by local trail advocacy group M.O.R.E. (the Mid-Atlantic Off Road Enthusiasts,) will raise your heart rate to the max on some of the steep climbs and keep you on your toes with rock-filled descents. Bonus points for this being one of the most rain-resistant trails in the area due to its high rock content.
The blue trail offers even steeper terrain and will take you into one of the most beautiful valleys in the park. The price you pay on the climb out of the valley is worth the views though. It's a linear trail that will lead you into the adjoining Frederick Watershed where there are many more trails (but generally unmarked) and much more terrain. Don't expect to find the good stuff without some local knowledge though. Keep on the lookout for bears, rattlesnakes and hunters (in season). And pack everything you need including plenty of water since there is nowhere to resupply. Spare tubes are a must as the rocks in the area love to eat tires and tubes for lunch. This area is for the more adventurous: unmarked trails, easy to get lost and little traffic to find you.
Just up the road is Greenbrier State Park which hosts an annual spring race that serves as the Maryland State Championship as well as an Olympic Qualifier points race. The trails here are on the wider side but have plenty of rocks to keep you honest, climbs to keep you working and downhills that you can rip. Finish off the day with a swim in their big lake before you hop back in the car and swing back onto I-70. |
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| Comment from Joe Whitehair on 2009-05-05 |
| There is now a route guide available for the Tour de Patapsco mentioned in the Maryland section of the I-70 ride guide. It can be found at http//www.singlespeedoutlaw.com/main/articles/tourdepatapsco.shtml |
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| Comment from Lockwood on 2009-05-04 |
| I like I-70. |
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| Comment from Charlie B. Wild on 2008-09-16 |
| I have rode Westwood and helped build it with several great friends. Great article so very true. Also rode Colorado and Utah. It doesn't matter where you ride as long you ejoy the ride for THE RIDE MAKES THE MEMORY WHEN IT IS SHARED. |
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