Or, Penny's birthday ride, v 2005.
Today's ride is the usual Wednesday at Beacon in the fall deal, but there
was a miscommunication and the email I sent to Tuffgirl at 6:30 am with
the time must have gone to Tasmania and stayed there. I had one of those
awkward conversations where I called her on the cell to say I was 5 minutes
late to the trailhead, and she was still waiting to know what time to meet!
Oops, not good since she lives 45 minutes away. Oh well, there will be other
days and I've got the newbie, and the kid from our bike club. He's fun to
have along, that's for sure but I still haven't figured out why a 25 year
old just out of college kid wants to hang with a bunch of 40-something women
for mountain biking! (no comments, Sorni!!)
So how to keep a regular ride fun and exciting when there are only so many
options? Ride different trails, or ride them back wards. There's only one
option up, the switchback trail, which is always a hoot and gets you good
and warm. Today, we go backwards on the ridge trail. This requires some
picking our way through logging trash which is unfortunate: there's a
section of private property up there and they are getting ready to carve it
up into view lots for mcmansions on 5 acre lots. But not yet... The fun of
this trail is that it works to ride it either way. The new girl, I've
written about here before, is just so game for whatever... we get to the
easy ride-down rocks, and I'm all " just follow me, everything is
rideable..." Oops, why do I always say that? It is true, but I forget what
it's like to have new rider filters in place. So she stops dead at the top
of one of them, and then gets all annoyed with herself for not just keeping
going.
The kid is choosing some of the trails today. So this straight up the
utility road ( mofo grunt of a hill) and then taking the trail that has not
one but two U shaped gullies on it. I've avoided this section for years,
HATE those things. I simply cannot grow the gonads to let 'er rip down, to
go fast enough to make it to the other side. One of them is really, really
steep and the new girl has the right idea: she just ride a nice little
contour line cross country though the undergrowth ;-)
Then the really fun part of the day begins. The three of us decide why the
heck not, and we explore sections of many of the mostly DH trail that the
usual XC loops ignore. This mean banked corners, dirt jumps that always have
go-rounds, rollable rocks, and the occasional "oh, [censored]" line which means
that if you aren't going to drop it you have to hike around. The new girl
is totally game. " Are you sure?" I don't want her to hate me for this day.
"I'm loving it" is the reply. The hierarchy is hilarious: the kid is jumping
off stuff, and then suggesting lines for me to try, and then I in turn
suggest lines to the new gal. What's blowing me away is she is so, bitten
by the bug. She does a really great rock roll down, first one ever, and we
are cheering for her. I regret not taking pix, and she says, "don't, I don't
want the hubby to see this, he'll flip". So, we know she's got it good. We
while away some time messing around like this, and then hit the trails so we
call can go home and "get something done" for the day.
Whee, happy birthday to me, I think I gave myself a new riding partner!!