Monday, October 31, 2011

"The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling...

... but in rising again after you fall." - Vince Lombardi
 October 29th, 8:30am Wompatuck State Park --It's mountain bike time!!!  Saturday morning, planned a ride with Little T, Markie M. from work and a gang of his riding buds.  We had 8 total riders: myself(Jowderballs), Little T, Markie M, Mark #2, Crazy Chris and his open toed biking sandals, Big George, Patrick the kind of Newbie, and one last guy whose name escapes me, my bad.

So we meet up at 8:30am and it was a balmy 40degrees.  Most people over dressed, I tend to under dress, knowing how hot I get once I start exerting myself.  I figure 10 minutes of cold is way better than 2 hrs of hot and uncomfortable.  So off we head into the woods, Chris and Little T in the lead.  They took off like two wheeled rockets and like a dumb ass, I took off after them.  I stuck with them for about 5 minutes and then thought to myself "what the hell am I doing? If I keep this up, my ride will be 1/2 an hour and hardly worth the trouble of getting up at 7am on a Saturday.  Once we all caught up with each other, we kind of drifted into 3 groups.  Mark #2, Chris and Little T leading the way.  Myself, Mark from work, a guy to be named later at a medium pace, and george and Patrick pulling up the rear.

It was a great ride as we blasted through a section that has a lot of small rolling hills and sharp turns.  Pretty kick ass.  We banged out about 13.5 miles in roughly 2 hours.  Splashed through puddles and took some trails in the reverse direction of what I am used to.  I made it down the short steep that my buddy Jeff took a header down last week.  Shortly after that I went down pretty hard though.  I went down a short, steep, narrow downhill and when I got to the bottom I tried to pedal out.  As I tried to pedal, my chain fall off so my feet were just spinning.  I knew I was in trouble so I tried to unclip my right foot and of course I couldn't.  I basically went straight down but luckily, I had turned my handle bars so I landed chest first right on the end of one.  I had a similar incident last year that left the mark below.  Now I have one on the other side!
 Smashed my thumb pretty good but all in all, nothing too severe.  I landed on my back, sat up, took inventory of myself and my bike, hopped up and rode on to catch up with everyone else.  That's really all you can do right?  Myself and Patrick wound up at the back of the pack when he crashed in a puddle that was about a foot deep.  He hit a rock that was under the water and fell over and smashed his knee pretty good, got soaked and did I mention it was 40 degrees and riding in wet clothes isn't all that fun?  We then proceeded to get lost on the way back to the lot so we were out a little longer than everyone else and by the time we hit the parking lot we were just in time to say good bye to everyone. 

The ride was great!  Filled with everything you could want.  Thrills, spills, and literal chills!  Little T had a good time during her first ride with this crew.  The rest of the day was a halloween party for the Tukka Bear at her doggy daycare place.  Need to get some pics of her in her butterfly costume downloaded and then out for some drinks with Mac the knife, Jackaay and some other folks who were on a nice little pub crawl that day!  Tomorrow I'll finish off the weekend with the Cape Cod Marathon relay and a dissappointing Pats game.  I will leave you with this nice little video from my ride in Rutland a coouple weeks ago.  The was a long rock bed I made it about halfway across before I lost my momentum.  I think it pops up sideways and I'm not sure how to rotate it.  See you next time.

2 comments:

  1. was she laying on her side?

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  2. Looks like it... not sure why that pulled up that way. -Jowderballs

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