mountain biking

So, after these past two weeks of stress and s*** hitting the fan constantly it was time to do something different. How about mountain biking? Now I'm not talking about gravel roads, rolling hills and gentle singletrack through the trees I'm talking about, "hey, let's start at that cliff, work our way over there, then drop down and ride over a ton of boulders." Yeah, it was an epic ride but that wasn't even the start of it. On top of all of this, it's my first real mountain ride and I'm riding a borrowed S-Works Enduro SL. I figure, if you're going to do it, may as well do it right and a bike worth $8k seemed like a good way to go about that.

When we met this morning we got all the bikes and gear loaded up, hopped in the car, and...nothing. The car wouldn't start. Now, the car had been driven and working 10 minutes before this. After 45 minutes and two phone calls to parents we decided it was a sign that we should probably be studying instead of riding bikes. As we're pushing the car to a parking spot Stephen decides to try one last time. Now, everything in drivers ed tells you it's damn near impossible to roll-start a car but somehow we managed to do it without even trying. Whatever, let's load up the bikes and head out.

I'm not going to say the drive was uneventful but it wasn't anything unusual. It's the Gorge,

it's winter. It rained, froze, and at one point we had the wheels turned 45 degrees to the left and we kept going straight. There were a ton of wrecks and a bunch of state troopers out but they were all in the west-bound lane.

When we got out of the car and started unloading the bikes at the trailhead we noticed a 1/2" coat of ice on everything that was facing the direction of travel.

Forks, tires, handlebars, housings, everything. It looked pretty neat but was a sign we were in for a chilly ride.

After ripping through the trees, slipping on snow and leaves we made our way out into the open. Now you have to be familiar with the Gorge and the huge, open slopes on either side of the river to fully appreciate what we did. The first lap we ripped down these open roads that for all practical purposes, went straight down hill. Beside the fact that I stopped feeling my toes 30 seconds in to the ride it was awesome. The view was spectacular and was exactly what I needed.

After shuttling bikes back to the top of the hill we all decided to race the car to the bottom of the hill. It takes the road; we take the trails. We lost, but only barely. At a fork in the road Chris says, "ok, we can go that way which is more downhilly and get raped by rocks, or we can rip that trail at Mach 8...f*** it, I'm going Mach 8." And that we did; we absolutely tore it up.

At the bottom of the hill we found a frozen lake. And guess what guys (especially engineers) do in this situation. "Hey, let's throw rocks on it!" This of course escalated into finding the biggest rock we possibly could and trying to roll it in. We failed but in our minds it worked.

Overall, awesome day. Aside from the speedometer, tachometer and ABS giving out on the way back it was uneventful. They came back eventually so no big deal. What started off as another let down turned into a fun day.

Now to go study for those finals. Oh yeah, Bikes: 3; People: 1