Hangtime and a Gnarly Bridge

Written 6/10/07

The past two days have been incredible; at least, as far as they relate to mountain biking. We were at my grandparents' on Saturday, so I had the opportunity to ride Memorial Park in Red Wing. I had an amazing time! Along with being able to ride trails that I have only ridden once (which is nice for a change), the day was home to several very important firsts. First first: I got real air for the first time on a mountain bike. Not incidental air that you might get while bouncing over roots while screaming down a hill, but actual air off of several different dirt kickers. Of course I didn't run at them at full speed, I worked up to it until I was airing off of them pretty decently. I did not overdo it either, I had a couple nice runs... and then I decided to move on before I got hurt.

The second first was nailing a pretty gnarly bridge (on my first try at that). The bridge begins with at a width of about 1.5 to 2 feet, and climbs to a height of about 4 feet. At the apex it hangs a 90 degree turn and starts to descend, but immediately after you clear the corner the bridge narrows to just the width of a single board. As I rode that day I hadn't really been thinking about the bridge (I had attempted it several times last year), and as I came up on to it I just thought to myself "I'm just going to go for it, and I'm going to nail it!" I unclipped my cleats and flipped my pedals over to the flat side just in case I needed to bail out. I rode up, I turned the corner, and I didn’t fall off the board on my way down. It was perfect! And a load of fun at that, but I still didn't go back for seconds.

There are two other things of note that happened that day. While I was ducking under a fallen tree that was leaning over the trail, I failed to notice the little limb that was jutting down from it, and it raked me all the way down my back as I rode underneath it. Holy crap did that hurt like a mother! I felt all over my back, but my hand came away with only sweat and no blood. Later when I took a shower at my grandparents', I made sure to check it out in the mirror: there was a long, red welt spanning the entire length of my back! It is still there today (and it looks pretty hardcore).

The only other item that bears mentioning is the swoopy turns section of trail. There is a rather steep-sided, narrow valley that has some singletrack built through it. You drop into it way high on one side, fly down through the bottom and then way up the other side around a tree, and then scream back down through the bottom and up the other side, back down up the other side, back down again, and back down once more to a little climb out of the gully. It is a total gas to ride, and the really neat thing about it is that the end of the valley butts right up against the road, so after you get down with the climb at the end you can hop right out onto the road and ride back to almost exactly the top of the gully without having to ride any of the singletrack before and after it. I spent probably about 15 to 20 minutes just riding that section of trail. It was just that fun!

Well, I have already written more than I intended to, but I might as well finish with today's ride. Today I showed up at Dean's to ride, and I asked him: "Well, what do you want to do?"

And he responded, "Are you up to riding out to Levis today?"

"Well, are we going to be riding at Levis when we get there?" I inquired.

"Ha ha," he laughed at me, "we'll see how you feel when you get there."

In the end we rode gravel roads all the way out to Levis, road four or five miles of singletrack there, and then rode ATV trails and gravel roads all the way home, for a total of about 40 miles. It was easily hands down the longest ride I've ever been on, but we didn't ride too hard, and I hadn't totally blown up at the end, which is good. But it was a really fun ride, I good time, and a great work out!