You know, I had this master plan to keep a hand written journal which I would scan, and post, thereby adding a bit of a handmade feel to the entry covering the 'Big Jonny Didnt Die' week on the Umpqua River in Oregon, but I lost steam so Im just gonna lay this on you in as few words as possible. First off, our friends Simon and Josh guide for this company called Western Spirit that runs guided and fully supported bike trips, and we sweet talked the powers that be into including us all on this adventure. Along with the previously mentioned array of dirts, there was a group of independently arriving folks all of whom were unknown to one another and who were about to ether embark on a week long trip of complete misery, or find that getting totally banjaxed the night before and then riding your face off the whole next day was actually a pretty fun routine.
In our midst, we had Tracy 1 and Tracy 2, English Leigh, and Peter from Marin.

Highlights (for me anyhow) included;

An endless array of swimming holes, which I did my damnedest to jump into at every opportunity. Can you see me? I almost cased a rock at the bottom of this one and Simon scolded me.

As the title of this post expresses, we did in fact put away 362 cans of beer, all of which I was very proud of until my dad told me two days ago that on a recent fishing trip to Canada, he and three of his friends, in five days, put away an astonishing 700 cans of beer.
...I am my fathers son.

Anyhow, everybody on the trip absolutely killed it, and rode stronger and more cohesively than any group of perfectly drunken perfect strangers ought to.

The food was amazing. Fresh baked brownies from the dutch oven, organic chicken sausage lasagna, curry chicken... The menu was pretty extensive, but before the trip began, JMacs step-dad laid some fresh Moose meat on him which Simon and Josh prepared in several different ways over the course of the week. At the end of every day all you had to do was eat, drink, sleep and prepare for the next days adventure. Or sometimes you might just want to ride a plastic bin down a hill....

There was a bit of everything on this trip..For example, we had fern groves,

we had an Englishmen in a rock garden,

there was an occasional occurrence of desperate-times-call-for-desperate-measures bike maintenence,

we had fire jumping,

there were some hot springs,

we had flat tracking through piles of vomit,

late one night, following a series of whippets, we arrived at the natural conclusion that a fart lighting competition was in order.

Anyhow- to continue, we had some bruises that looked like cats,

we had some sweet sleeping accommodations,

and we had some vistas that reminded us just exactly where our place in the universe is.

Finally, I have to reiterate that the trails through this slice of heaven are utterly world class. Some are buffed beyond description, some are rocky, some are rooty- in one instance there was actually a creek running down the trail which we had to navigate, but in every instance, they absolutely defined perfection.

I have to thank the folks who went on this trip, Western Spirit, El Corpo for defending me in my absence, Cheever for wearing knee-high sheers for this photo op, and you dear reader, for sitting through this.

Well now leave you with a sucinct description as only Geno could deliver.