Bouncing Off of Rocks

I had forgotten how nice dual suspension really is until yesterday. Contemplating what bike to ride for the bigMichaux 40-miler, I opted to take the dual sus out for a practice run and by George, there's nothing like a little extra cush when putting on the miles in rocks. My old, tired, flabby ass really enjoyed the extra little softness. I think this baby doll will be the bike for 40 and 50 miles of rocks (Rattling Creek is a 50-miler). The 12-hours of the Farm will be hard tail time. While riding this bike, I was thinking of the ultimate bike for rocks -- titanium, 29 inches with tubeless tires, and dual suspension. I'm sure some of you bike weenies know of just the bike that fits that bill -- please tell me! Would it happen to be IF? Another company?

And the ride in Weiser on Saturday? I screwed up the day before and planted 400 onions, 100 strawberry plants, 40 broccoli plants, and prepped the potato patch. When I woke up, my wrists would hardly bend. Needless to say, at mile marker 25 on the bike, I could hardly hold onto the handlebars anymore and had to call it quits. Now if I wouldn't have been rock hopping for 20 miles, maybe, just maybe, I could have gone longer and further. But fate has its way and my wrists said knock it off after playing in rocks for 3 hours. But have no fear, all the major digging and planting is now done -- so next weekend will definitely be the 30+ miles -- the required 75% of the destination race - the final long ride before May 3 (I'm planning to cut the long ride in half the weekend before the 40-miler to "save" myself for May 3).