Greased Melon

Last Wednesday I bought a mountain bike. I’d been wanting to try it out for a little while now and one came up for not a lot of money, so I pounced. Now I have two bikes stuffed behind the couch in the apartment. Ironically, when I was coming back to work after picking the bike up, my car started a hideous noise and I ended up getting my rear brakes replaced the next day at great expense. My car is jealous.

On Saturday, I took the bike out with some of the guys from Earthriders down at Blue River Park. I’ll get the embarrassing part over first: I fell four times (twice over the bars) and have some pretty cool scratches on my legs, including one that was all bloody when I got back to the lot (it looked worse then it was). At the time I wasn’t really thinking it was fun or not fun–I was too busy paying attention to rocks and roots sticking out of the ground down 10 foot long declines that dropped about 10 feet. But now that it’s all over I’m thinking I want to go again. One of the guys–Frank–was really cool and showed a couple of us around the trails. So nice not to have to worry about which trail I was on–big thanks.

I’m going to St Louis for the Midnight Ramble (15,000 people on bikes riding around Downtown at midnight!) this weekend, otherwise I’d go find some bunny slopes to hop around on. Hopefully the weekend after that I can get out to Lawrence to ride the levee trail and pick up a keg of Copperhead Pale Ale at Freestate. Hopefully.