Saturday, May 12, 2007

Mountain Rhinos

This morning, the bulk of the Flying Rhino mountain bike team (me, Brad and Brien) met up and rode the Poto. Brad and Brien took right off and were dropped me almost immediately (fortunately, they stopped to wait every 20 minutes or so). Part of the problem was that my legs just weren't ready to go at the beginning, and the other part of the problem is that Brad and Brien are a little bit faster than me just about everywhere (climbing, descending, cornering, etc), which adds up to being a lot faster overall.

Eventually, they slowed down a little bit so I was keeping up a bit better. The thing that would seem to make the most immediate difference is that I just need to stay off the brakes. I think that I have the physical skills to descend and corner faster than I usually do, but it's just a matter of developing the confidence to do it.

Anyway, we had a good time at the ride, I expect we'll set up another pretty soon. This was the first time I'd ridden the full Poto trail. It's really nice, and it's a treat to ride a trail that's nearly 20 miles long (no need to ride a bunch of loops to get a reasonable ride in!).
My drama, however, really didn't start until my drive home. I had just gotten into the construction zone on US23 when it occured to me that I didn't remember packing my helmet and gloves back into the car. A quick glance to the back of my car seemed to confirm it. I was really ticked off about leaving them behind, the gloves were a bit old so that wasn't a big deal, but the helmet was pretty new and I've been very happy about it. Still, the thought of driving through the construction, turning around and driving back to the trail and then driving back through the construction was too much. Especially if somebody had already picked it up. So, I came home. Because of the construction traffic, it took me about an hour and 45 minutes to get home. (Was this the end of my helmet?)


I was really stewing by the time I got home. Sarah offered to ride with me back to the trail and look for my helmet. I thought about it for a while and finally decided not to leave my helmet behind. We also brought a map so we could navigate around the construction on the way home. Once we got to the trailhead, I saw my helmet almost immediately, sitting right where I'd left it, in the grass just on the other side of the curb where I parked. So my helmet is back home on it's shelf, and I'm happy.

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