“mountain” biking …

Today’s travel post is about what my husband did to me on Sunday.

Some personal background:

At age 6 at the start of June I went on a long bike ride one Sunday morning with my mum. They had just regraveled the paved road at the end of our street. We rode to the end of it (about a ½ mile from home, remember i was six!) and were on our way back when a car went by (i lived in the rural part of my “village” (it’s not even incorporated)) and as I was not used to cars and it was going “fast” (at most 15mph) I freaked out, ran over a bottle cap and proceeded to flip off my bike and skid quite a ways on my knee. I rode home with mum with tears and lots of blood. I still have the scar and think that there is gravel in there. Also this was in the days before required helmets for children.
So, a few lessons:
1) I’m scared of cars. 2) I fall off my bike a lot. 3) I learned to ride on a dirt road and can’t ride in a straight line to save my life.

Further:
In high school I ran 4 years x 3 seasons of Varsity cross country and track. I LOVE cross country. We would often practice in some real trails near school. I loved this. The branches, the thorns, the roots, the mud… love love love. My coach would sometimes bring his mountain bike to keep up with the fast kids (not me) the middle kids (sometimes me) and the slow ones (often me, but i could run for hours, albeit at a very slow pace).
Lessons:
I love trail running. I have endurance but generally not speed. [ask me about my Penn Relays 4×100 some day..]

Where does this lead?

Our afikomen gifts to each other three years ago were new bikes. Eli bought a mountain bike. I got my first totally new and not just to me bike which has a step through frame and what I’ll call because I am too late in writing this to look it up “cross” tires. Not real mountain bike tires.. [I have a real mountain bike at mum’s house]. ANYWAY…

I’m trying really hard to be more active these days. My heart and health need it. I’m still about the same weight I was in high school but cardiovascularly I am very very out of shape. Not good. Not with my family history.

E knows I do not like riding with traffic. We went to Prospect Park last week, but it is “old” to him and he wanted something different. He has been talking about mountain biking for years. I’ve done some mild forms of it and generally don’t like it (I’d rather run) but decided I was game. Sunday morning we loaded the bikes up and headed off to Harriman State Park in(on?) Bear Mountain. They had a 4.5 mile Bike loop which sounded good to us. RIGHT. I’m sure to normal bikers it’s mild. Also we only had the “map” they provided. No mileage indicators, not really well to scale (imho). The first part of the loop is mostly up and covered in roots which is not fun if you can’t ride straight and your tires keep slipping. After that the trail smooths out to super duper mild and there is an option for a loop which makes it the 4.5 mile. So I let E lead and we took off for this loop. After a few minutes I called that I didn’t see any bike loop trail markers and was wondering if we had missed the turn. E said no and we plowed ahead. And kept plowing ahead. Up and Down. And then I realize we’re on a hiking trail given the markers I was seeing [E didn’t believe me]. According to my New York Walk Book (7th ed), we ended up on the “Red Cross Trail” and while quite pretty and a fun trail to walk I do not suggest taking a bike along with you on it. After about a mile and a half (I’m guessing) I made him turn around and we went back. Pushing the bikes because it was just unrideable to us (especially me). Turns out the turn is practically a few feet from the first turn off and we never saw it. *sigh*. After that we rode the rest of the trail (which is mild) and then DASHED back to Brooklyn for the wedding which I think went well even though we were quite late because they *gasped* started on time (if you’ve ever been to a jewish wedding you’ll be as shocked as we were to walk up and discover the chuppah had already happened, I think we were only 30 minutes late.. we weren’t the only ones either). [photopress:nibicardboard.jpg,thumb,alignright] I still am never totally appropriately dressed and will always stick out like a sore thumb but I’m me and if people don’t like it tough luck. If you made it this far thanks! This is a picture of what nibi did to her sand box while we were at the wedding… well, she did half of this Sunday. She finished it last night. It was a normal shoe box which we filled with litter because she loves to dig. She can’t wait to escape her cage when she wakes up lately and has no desire to go back in. She also has taken to jumping out of her ball if we open it and walk her to the cage. A change in mood. I wonder why. Teen angst? We play with her a lot. I think maybe she doesn’t like her new wheel. I have no idea though. She seems overall healthy enough. She eats, she sleeps, she poos, she no longer nibbles on us!

I cast on E’s argyles today because he bought a pair last Friday. I’m not making arrrgyles much as I’d like to. Maybe next pair. ;) I know I will definitely be reviewing all the tutorials online for this one. ;)

• Category: travel