Mountain Bike

Monday nights are my nights off. I can go wherever I want. Unfortunately that often doesn’t amount to much. But this week it actually meant getting outside and having some fun.

I finally got to go ride the West Branch State Park Mountain Bike Trail. It was a blast even if I am not quite up to that skill level yet.

All winter long it is maintained by CAMBA – the Cleveland Area Mountain Bike Association.

They put in bridges and other challenges along the trail. I even met two of the officers that night, Brian Lennon, president, and Mike Ryba, Treasurer. Unfortunately I can’t remember the names of the other people they were riding with, not even the one from Puerto Rico, but they were all really nice people. All winter long their members maintain the trails.

I tried out the camera on my new phone and got some quarter decent shots (they definately weren’t half decent) while it was still light. However, the exposure time must be really high when it gets dim. You can see that as the envening goes on, the shots get blurier. When taking pictures in twilight with the phone, I will have to stabalize it. Holding it by hand just isn’t sufficient (plus chances are mid-workout I wasn’t all that stable anyway…)

The CAMBA web site has a great map of the park, but it’s a 2.5mb 1 page PDF. I mananged to convert it to a 45K JPEG that hasn’t lost much detail. This is a little handier to keep on PDAs and what not…

I even got myself a couple of badges… This all was mostly from one very tall root near the beginning of the trail. It was an up hill section that I’d started in the wrong gear and the root required about a foot worth of travel to get up and over it, though the root itself was probably just under 6 inches high. Anyway, I decided to push it and try it anyway. The result was I was slumped against the tree with only my front wheel making it over. The scrape was from sliding backwards down the bark as I got my footing…(Kneeing actually I guess)

I’m proud of the skinned knee… I probably haven’t skinned my knee falling from a bicycle in 20 years… Boy that makes me sound old…. Anyway, it meant I was pushing limits again, which is what living is all about and when you stop doing that, that’s in large part why people grow old… I had a few more bumps and bruises. For instance my right arm is scraped simply because there wasn’t enough room for me to get through between the trees that were there… All part of the fun and I’m smilin’ as I type…