Golden Prick

Got myself out the door on a toasty Arizona Morning, had to start of the week right with a ride. Headed for Gold Canyon for a Memorial Day ride. The sun was not up yet when I got there and man did it feel nice to not have that relentless sun beating me down at least for a little while. I had an idea in my head for loops. I was feeling pretty good as I sped into sun rise, things were going great, man and machine were in tune. It was noticeably hotter as the sun came out and I was wanting to beat it back down the horizon.
      After riding all the way out to the end of the park I made my way back and out to Gila Monster. Making a corner I carelessly caught a a low lying cholla. The feeling at first was oh I hit something and then I looked down and let out a pretty good awwww and maybe some profanities. I looked down at my leg and could see multiple pieces of cholla. Every movement hurt my leg as the needles went deeper and more dug in. If you don't know Cholla, let me just say they are extremely sharp, sharp enough you could not pick it up off the ground without in instantly sucking itself to you, it really is alive. So anyway here I am looking at the daunting task ahead of me and decide that two big rocks will be my caveman tweezers. I attack the first one, it took a lot of pressure and pushing and screaming to get the first one off. With one off it left needles behind but the meat of the cactus was off. On with the others, each on very painful as I am out screaming in the desert getting this crap off of me. I get careless and one single needle sucks onto a finger, that lead to 4 more punctures on my digits. Now here I am with cactus on my forging leg and tigers, I am so pissed now, cause this one on my fingers is far worse than my leg. You have to understand if you even think about taking these things off like 5 more needles just attached themselves. I painfully positioned my shoe sole between it and the ground and pull as hard as I can to release the needles. It was very painful as the skin on my fingers is tough and well it just sucked a lot believe me. Then relieved but still two more to go, some more grunting and off goes the last of them. Now just 10 or so needles to pull out, some struggled to come out, borderline needing pliers. This is an experience I never want to relive, sadly I like will, hopefully not to this extent. The rest of the ride was great, big ol miles and lots of fun.