Bike Adventure

As busy as things have been with the school groups coming in, I decided I wanted an adventure on my only day off this week.  So after church (and a load of laundry) I stuffed the bike into the back of my car and headed to the nearest trails.

I started out on the intermediate trail called "Gator Trail".  When the opportunity to switch over to the advanced trail came up I was like o.O

The advanced can't be too hard, can it?  I mean, copperheads aren't much more dangerous than gators, right?

So I read the warning and gave it a shot.

Needless to say, the sign was not adequate warning for the trail.  What the sign should have said was, "Turn around you idiot!  You don't really want to jump your bike off of our dirt ramps and careen uncontrollably downhill screaming like a little girl!  Lest we forget the times you will ride off the trail and hit trees.  Yes, go back now."

But once you commit to the trail, there is no going back.  They are one way trails because your bike can barely fit between the trees as is.  It started off fine, the occasional tree root/log to jump (the key is to stand when you land or else you will wish you had much better shocks than you do...), also the hills weren't too bad.  But about 10 mins into this trail I found that the downhills were getting a lot more down-y and the uphills were taking much more energy.  After one particular downhill that ended in a curb (and subsequently in me running off the trail) I started using the breaks more frequently.  UNTIL they crapped out.  Apparently my breaks were not ready for the insanity of the vertical descent that I thought impossible this side of Everest.

The problem with the descent is not so much the careening towards oblivion as much as it is the uphill on the other side.  I used to run 10k races and I have to say that mountain biking for an hour is the hardest exercise I have ever done.  I had to stop a few times to sip water, murder mosquitoes  and hold back the urge to puke.  The exercise was that intense   The funniest part was when I was ready to be done, and I saw the exit to the "Gator Trail" acting as a beacon at the bottom of a hill (cue angelic chorus!).  Too bad the breaks didn't work and I ended up passing right by it to endure another 20 mins on "Copperhead Trail".  :-P

Believe it or not, I had a lot of fun.  I will most likely return to this park (but perhaps not the same trail...haha)   I will most definitely look my breaks over before then as well.