A day made for bicycling

Submitted by Mark EWERS on Sat, 12/16/2006 - 8:17pm
Mark EWERS's picture

We're getting Christmas early around here. I don't know what the official high temperature was, but you didn't need anything covering arms and legs today. Not by a long shot. We had a gorgeous day for cycling here, and you know I went out to take advantage of it.

I'd heard the local trails were in great shape so I loaded up my Karate Monkey for some single speeding. In all I got in nearly 2 hours of quality trail time.

That's 2 hours of virtually non-stop riding. Steady climbing and as fast as I dare descending. When I'm riding alone the only times I stop are to let riders I meet get by, to say hello to people out walking - and there were quite a few of them out there today, and when I crash. Crashing is a full stop. Sometimes it's a slide, tumble, scrape, then stop; but there's always a stop at the end.

Today was no exception, except today there was no slide or tumble or scrape. I just fell over. See, I was just finishing my first climb of the day. I was thinking it might be my last because my legs felt crusty in the extreme. I hadn't yet fully warmed up I guess. I just hadn't yet gotten comfortable riding. But there I was at the top of the first climb, breathing hard and sweating.

And there they were, a group of 5 or 6 MTB'ers regrouping at the top of the climb. I popped out of the woods. I said hello and saw a couple of them move a bit to let me pass by. I adjusted my line to where they weren't, and suddenly my bike just stopped. The front wheel pitched right and down I went right in front of all of them.

To make matters worse I didn't have anything clever to say. Not that any of them would have laughed anyway. That wouldn't be polite I suppose. I really wanted to put them at ease though. They probably thought I was embarrassed at falling down going less than 1 mile-per.

But I wasn't embarrassed, not at all. This sort of thing happens to me all the time. The more I ride the less I crash; but when I do crash I do it standing still or when going very slow. It's a good argument for staying in motion.