Yesterday, Sunday.

Today is Monday.
Yesterday was Sunday; the day before that was Saturday.

Those two days were.. good :)

Everything just went right and I had a good time.
(ok well admittedly, not everything went right: I didn’t really get any homework done that I planned.. I managed to make another fire though! Besides, homework is boring and I had more fun doing whatever I did instead of homework :P) But other than that, everything was just.. good :) hmmmm good isn’t the right word that I'm looking for.. ok what I mean to say is that I was thoroughly content the whole weekend and I didn’t worry about anything. Basically I had a little smile on my face the whole time. Hahaha :)

On Sunday I decided to be a crazy maniac and get up at 5:30am to drive up to Mt Neebo to have a wonderful breakfast in a small cafe. The breakfast was absolutely wonderful! I had pancakes with maple syrup and cream and banana and icecream with a chocolate milkshake. Mmmmmmm! Of course I didn’t finish it all because it was just so big that I couldn’t, but it still tasted delicious! I then got on my bike and rode down Mt Neebo to Gap Creek.

I would have to say, this was the best part of the whole weekend.
I can’t describe the feeling that you get when its just you and the bush and your bike. You just feel so peaceful. Of course, you need to concentrate to make it over log rollovers and stuff, put in a hard effort up the hills, judge when to change gears, make sure you have the exact right amount of each brake on, look ahead and think where you need to go and what you need to do, not go too fast, not go too slow, don’t run into the person in front of you, appreciate your beautiful surroundings, realise when you’re hungry and eat, watch out around the corners, see through the dust clouding your eyes from the person in front, and, most importantly, don’t fall off (well at least don’t hurt yourself when you do fall off)

I failed in this area, for the first time in my life, on Sunday.
Yes, I fell off my bike. For the first time since I started Mountain Bike Riding.
(not suprising really; I was going 35km/hr down a loose dirt hill corner.)

Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt me physically at all! Well not too much anyway. It didn’t really hurt my pride too much either, because falling off is part of mountain bike riding and if you haven’t fallen off “then you haven’t been going hard enough” as Brad said to me so many times yesterday. I did a pretty easy thing to do: I washed out on a corner going down a hill. I was probably going too fast and didn’t judge the corner properly, put my brakes on a bit too late and just sort of gracefully leaned over and ended up on the ground. This earned me a fairly bruised right knee (of which the bruise hasn’t actually shown up yet, but it will!) and a pretty reasonable sized lump on my left calf, that will probably also turn into a nice bruise. Also the general gravel scratches, but they don’t count because a) they don’t hurt and b) they didn’t bleed considerable amounts. As a result, my legs now look absolutely disgusting, with bruises everywhere because added to the big ones are the little ones which I always get from riding, plus the few small scratches and stuff that are part and parcel of riding in the bush. Its kinda not fair because my legs don’t look good at the best of times! Oh well.

The most hurtful thing to my pride was the fact that falling off seemed to kinda put me in shock. There were a few people behind me and of course they all stopped to make sure I was alright (one thing I love about bike riders is they are just so friendly and considerate! They always wait and always make you feel welcome). So when I first fell off I was a bit shaken, everyone caught up to me, but then for some reason my head just went funny and I almost fainted and had to sit down. How embarrassing! I dunno, maybe someone else wouldn’t find it embarrassing, and they would milk the situation for all it was worth. But I don’t like being helpless or people helping me because I look helpless. And I felt kinda weak, because I had a tiny fall off my bike and my body just couldn’t take it and I had to sit down. Other people have fallen off their bikes far more painfully than I did and they just get back up and ride another 200km! So I felt disappointed in myself because I wasn’t strong enough to do that.

But it was good for me to fall off at last, because I know now that the ground is actually quite soft! I'm pretty sure that both my big bruises are from my bike rather than the ground, because I hit the ground with my right side and I don’t have any sore bits there at all!

But there is something just so peaceful about riding in the bush; where going downhill is just as hard and painful as going uphill; where all you can here is your peddling and the trees and wildlife around you; where you wheels just eat up the kilometres and before you know it, you’ve done 20 of them. I just enjoy riding so much, a thousand times more than running or swimming. I should do it more often, maybe even enough to enter a race in!

Yes, I shall do that.
:)