Mountain Biking

Although I have been riding bikes for a while – this has to be the ultimate fun in biking.  I remember as a kid riding my green “Huffy” with the banana seat and the big mag tire in the back (you laugh, because you probably had one too, right?) and jumping that thing over anything that was standing still. 

For instance, on the playground at school (elementary) there was this hill that descended at a steep angle, then dropped another 10 feet and then continued its slow descent. Get the picture?  Now imagine if someone were to put a big mound of dirt right before the drop off right before the drop off making it ever so longer and steeper.  You also have a ramp (sort of) made out of the dirt. Whats a kid to do once the see something like this?

Jumping…

With not so much as a dare, but rather a declaration of touching the sun once I got that high, I started at the top of the hill and pedaled my little feet (who knew I could pedal so fast?) until I reached the earthen ramp and proceeded upon a trajectory that would hopefully take me not only into “Huffy” glory, but into the next county.  From up there (meaning, lets say from the top of the hill was about 50 ft above sea level, these are approximations so back off all you scientist, and if there were no drop off, you would glide right into sea level like an angel. Right? So now with the drop off being there and this mountain of dirt at the end, my take off would have at least given me a height above the ground after the ramp of about at least 25 ft in the air….)

I believe I could see my house.

I thought I saw my mom driving back from her job in downtown…

I thought I was going so fast that time was standing still…

I thought that planes were flying rather low that day….

my thoughts ranged from the mundane to the extreme…so within that 2.5 seconds that I had in the air, I felt that there was alot going through my mind….or, maybe not.

Houston, we have a problem…

A great poet once said, “What goes up, must come down…” or was that Cyndi Lauper? Anyway, the principle remains.  I was coming down and it seemed, with no speed brake, no padding, no cushions or one of those stunt man blowup mattress to land on – this one was going to hurt. My mountaintop experience was about to be cut short…and the other thing I was thinking about was that – this was a boys bike…know where I am going with this?  The bar between the seat and the handle bars was in a unique position to do some real damage within the next 25 milliseconds….well, there was no time to react.
I landed.
I hurt.
I cried ( I was young enough too, its okay.)

I didn’t like my bike for a couple of days afterward.

Fast forward to today (sorry about the brief interlude, I get distracted easily – look something shiny!) So I am ready to go on one of the more recent trips that we have taken to the mountains onto a trail called “Hall Ranch” (could easily have been aliased as “Hell Ranch”).  I digress…Tim comes over at 7am and wants to get started.  My usual breakfast of toast and coffee and plenty of water is what I started with that morning and would soon regret not putting more proteins into my diet that morning.  We drive over to Lyons, CO where the trailhead starts.  When we arrive, it looks typical.  Lotsa mountains, dirt trail, trailhead signs, etc…I was hurrying to get my stuff together before Tim arrived, so I managed to forget some things as I had thought about it.  Things like: helmet, gloves, sunglasses, prayer.  I did have my water! Duh! I ask, “hey what kind of trail is this?” Meaning, “Am I going to die?” But we are guys and no wusses are allowed.  He says, “Not sure, but its ‘rideable’.” “Rideable?”

For brevities sake, here is what trailcentral.com’s summary of this trail:“The first half of the ride, involves riding some technically tricky areas. Besides being technical, it also has a fairly steep pitch to it. Do you want the bottom line? Here it is… Prepare to work! Few riders manage to get to the top of the first section without faltering several times. Just remember that this is rideable…The first section is “kick-your-ass” tough because of it’s technical and steep nature…Once the ride is over, your legs will be screaming, and your mind will have the satisfaction of a ride well done. “

What a relief, I thought we were going to be making scones for an hour an a half!  The ride did start off rather like normal, traversing fields, climbing at steeper angles, losing my breath, heart racing like crazy…you know, the typical stuff.  And then it took a turn for the worse. The trail got steeper and rockier.  No, not just rocks.  These were the size of small VW bugs.

Somehow, there are people that manage to ride over these rocks….on bikes…..sitting down….in clips! GRrrrr! Needless to say, and not to bore you to tears with the tedium of the whole trail…., I had to walk most of the trail with my bike.  Fortunately, it was an awesome day outside, nice and cool, so the hike was great (what was not so great was having to walk the bike with me the rest of the way to the top.)  There were of course people passing me by on their bikes (I have words for them, but this is a family blog!) 

Finally, I managed to make it to the top and jumped back on the bike to ride the rest of the 10ft to the post that marks the top portion of the ride. Tim looks at me and says, “we don’t have to do the rest of the ride, its just a big downhill that you have to ride back up and then up to where we are and down to the trailhead once again…lets just go back to the trailhead now” 

Excuse me!?  I am already wasted from the hike/bike/walk/climb up and now you want to just turn around?!  Okay!

The ride back down was, well…not so different.  Remember those big rocks (V-dubs) that I had to walk up – yeah, those.  I had to walk back down those, downhill,…with a bike…tired…needing rest, coffee and a scone and a hug. More walking until I got to that portion of the ride where the trail got back to normal for people like me (which was about 20 ft away from the trailhead) Ahhh….I climbed back on the bike, rode to the car, stripped off my front tire, threw my bike in and jumped into the front seat and managed the fetal position as best as I could.   As we drove home, I was thankful that I didn’t bust my tater on some big rocks and saw what the hard stuff looked like…so, I sat there thinking…”that was fun!”