Today was my offical first real mountain bike day. I chose the Terrace Trail in Kananaskis, a fun singletrack with plenty of rocks, roots, and drop-offs to the side of the trail. Within the first half hour I rode through a frozen puddle of all puddles (about 20m long and 6 inches deep) without getting stuck. I rode over trees (nicely cushioned due to the shocks), got the first mud on my bike, and first scrape on my leg. I was told that my bike had officially been christened. All I was missing was the mud on my face. Have I been welcomed into the realm of actual mountain biking? Wow.
We ran into this class of twenty 17-year-old boys, a few of them got stuck along the side of a trail by a tree, then I came along, rode right over it, and one of the boys said to the other, "see, we should have done it like that". Talk about a feel good moment for a newbie mountain biker :-D. My trick for the day was to let an experienced biker ride in front of me all day, and by mimicking moves I learned things like when it's best to stand up and when it's best to change gears. In any case, we had talked to the other guys earlier, they were from Moose Jaw and camping at Pocaterra as part of their grade 11 phys ed class, so I made a snarky remark saying that riding here isn't as flat as it's there. One of them did not seem amused, though one of the guys in our group who's from Saskatchewan thought it was hysterical (or maybe my group was just being nice to me).
But wow, I love my bike, I love the suspension, and I love being able to ride over rocks and roots with ease.
Also, in keeping with challenging myself to try new things, I went GPS-less for a day. I brought it along, but then threw it in my pack, thinking I don't always need to be right on top of my stats. Except now I don't have a track to play with in Google Earth...
No comments:
Post a Comment