Today Full Colour HD living starts … have a new bike and
fancy new pedals that keep your shoes stuck on them .. and have the shoes that
go with. Am not so sure about this being
stuck to my bike. What if I fall? What if I get hurt? Hmmm.
I’d spent an hour or so last night clinging on to my lounge
wall .. not ‘cause I was drunk or anything but practising cleating in and
uncleating. … a few adjustments to the
tension of these pedal (please don’t ask anything I have no idea – my BFF
Gerhard did the technical bits) made it a bit easier and I got the hang of it.
But now I was heading out to Northern Farms to ride with them .. this is where
the rubber hits the tarmac or perhaps the arm-shoulder-wrist-knee-all the above
would hit the dirt-grass or whatever other terrain I was like to fall on.
We left the carpark and all was well. This is quite an event, as we know several
people who’ve come unstuck so to speak in the carpark / driveways. So I was on a high. We rode down to the first
dam where we’ve seen the hippo before and I uncleated timeously like it was
something I was born to do. Oh what a feeling. What joy. My new bike is out of this world. Seriously I
have no words to describe how it feels to ride her. My best attempt is that she was made for me.
Riding this Ghost is fluid, like water gently flowing downstream, almost poetic
– it may not look like to the observers, but that’s the way it feels.
Not long thereafter I came crashing to reality. Literally. I had made it through the switchback forest without
a hitch, but coming to stop at the end of it I uncleated my right foot but for
some reason felt the need to go left and so fell. My first fall in cleats and
it wasn’t particularly graceful or spectacular. I managed to get up and after some examination
found nothing to prove I’d fallen. 
We ride on some more through all the usual terrain until we
come to my nemesis. I cant up this darn short sharp incline with root obstacle
at the top. There’s something about losing momentum riding over it combined
with the fact that I watch it for too long.
So I decide that I must give it a try – I’ve got a better, lighter bike
now. But as a precaution I won’t cleat
in – that way if I don’t make it I won’t fall. So I begin to pedal but I hear a
now familiar click, I’m cleated in. Oh ok. Well best I just pedal. Well I make to the top, over the root. Woo
hoo. BUT I look down when I reach the top and wobble and fall. Fortunately it’s
into a thick grass section. I’m beginning to giggle and soon laughing so much
that Grems has to stop taking photos (thank goodness) and come twist my foot
out and lift my bike off me.
We ride and ride and ride.
Grems leaves me for dust on the one downhill and I slowly make my way
down as the grader has come and messed up one of my favourite single tracks. At
the bottom I find Grems chatting away to two guys. Now everyone know that I talk a lot, but
there really is someone who can talk more than me. Get Grems started about
bikes or races or Swaziland and I promise you I can’t talk that much. The two
chaps eventually head off and we carry on as well.
We’re going up RollerCoaster and to my
surprise these two guys come flying down. Grems has stopped because someone
from work has phoned and I know I must just keep pedalling up and up and up –
he’ll catch me in no time. I get to the
top of Lower Rollercoaster and I wait. And wait and wait. I decide to set up a photoshoot of Hope and
take a couple of photos. Then I wait and wait and wait some more. Should I just
head on into the single track or wait. Hmm.
Then I see the white helmet and he arrives. He took the guys to the one
technical single track at Northern Farm as they’d missed it earlier. He’s so kind.
We ride through the last of the single track sections before
heading back to the carpark.
Full colour HD living has begun. And I’m loving it.
No comments:
Post a Comment