Joe and Franks excellent adventure

I Know Frank probably wan't thrilled with the day overall but it will be an adventure he can tell for years to come! It was all my fault as i have been bugging him for two years to go on a ride with me to a place that i call absolute heaven for mountain dirtbiking....it's the major leagues for sure. i have posted on here about it in the past with breathtaking pictures. so here is my side of the story:

my alarm went off at 420 am, got up and hit the road to franks to pick him up by 530. we had a long drive of 3 1/2 hrs or so to meet up with 6 other guys that were also riding Gifford Pinchot national forest. the plan had changed the day before as we were to be lead by a couple of very experienced, top notch riders. they decided to go farther south that we originally planned into territory that i had ridden some of, but was not completely familiar with. we all hit the trail at 1030 am and within the first 2 miles my buddy got a flat, then after fixing that, 3-4 miles later i remembered there was a hidden tree stump coming up on the right....i tried to warn frank but he couldnt hear me. he hit it with his rt shoulder and it knocked him and bike off the trail and down into the bushes. he was sore and not happy, as well as a banged up bike. back on the trail and soon we come to mile after mile of steep trail that is carved out across rock cliffs that we were traversing. with 8 of us there was someone getting stuck or having some trouble here and there so we were not cruising at a super fast pace for much of the time. anyway, we finally made it to shark rock ( one of the toughest sections of trail anywhere) and were wondering where these guys were leading us. somewhere miles down the trail i managed to slide on a mud section that happened to be in a very narrow area with a steep almost vertical drop off on my rt....you guessed it, i flew right over this cliff and down 25 ft or so off the trail. i was ok but it took 4 of us to drag my bike back over to the trail and get it running again ( i was very lucky, right Frank?). well by now it was getting pretty late and we assumed that we were getting closer to the end back at the trucks, but nooooo....my buddies kept saying just a few miles more then we take the road back. sure, right, ummm....rob was leading us all over the place, supposedly heading back but who knew? we even came to a crazy section where we had to cross a raging creek that had the bridge washed out and all that we had was a foot wide plank dropped in the water on the rocks to walk the bikes over ( see the attached video of frank and dion walking his across!) yikes! anyway of course it soon got dark, and of course we were still out on the trail, and of course 2 of the 8 did not have headlights ( frank), and of course this is bigfoot country, so of course we started to get just a little bit worried. soon we reached the "road" in total darkness and leader rob says " another 7-8 miles and we're back"...of course it wasnt 7-8, it was 23 miles and we were all very cold, very tired,very low on fuel, and not real happy by the time we got back. we were very releived to be done and back on the road home,but hey it was 8 o'clock at night! about 1 1/2 hrs later on the drive back we finally got some dinner at a subway in a tiny hippy town along the way and by then it was 930pm and i had not eaten more than a couple candy bars in the previous 16 hours! i dropped frank off and finally got home at 1130 pm. kind of a long day. oh yeah, i had to get up at 7 am and work the next day too. all in all a crazy ,tough, fun adventure for sure. a tough ride around here in an average riding place is around 40-50 miles. we did 73 at THE toughest area around. sheesh!! i loved it though!