First mud

In regard to Mountain biking my chums and I have spent the last part of the summer and early autumn repeatedly riding the short, fun trails around our local spots, rather than mixing it up and getting out on longer cross country rides as well. We have very much neglected our riding fitness. This neglect shall be rectified soon.

Having agreed that we must get out and do some proper mileage, we chose to follow a route from a magazine, something I've never done before. Apart from having to stop to work out the different route sections, it was very enjoyable, partly because it was the first real mud of the season.

We did end up finishing a bit late, (well 4.30 is late this time of year) so a short cut and some twilight pedalling was the order of the errrrrr, evening. Not ideal, but then if you were never out at twilight, you'd never be able to appreciate sunsets like this.

You can see the beautiful sunset, but there were two other occurances I enjoyed very unexpectedly.

The first gave me another reason to appreciate the full suspension bike. On getting some air off a tree stump, I attempted to pull a small tabletop. The result of which was me loosing my footing on my pedals. If I were on a hardtail, I would have undoubtedly landed on my man jewels very hard, lost control and crashed dramatically down the chalk slope we were on. Luckily the compression of the rear suspension saved my jewels and the subsequent fall. Which was nice! One of those situations, where the positive comes from not experiencing something quite as negative as expected.

Another was riding at speed down a fairly wide bridal way, heading towards an open right hand corner in the trail. The camber and left and right tracks forced me to into the left hand gully and without even considering the changing surface, I found myself riding through what can only be described as slurry. All I could do was close my mouth and enjoy the smell for the next hour and a half.Sometimes you have to just laugh.