Gettin’ down and dirty

Saturday dawned at 10am. Not a bad effort considering Friday night had ended at about 5am, preceded by a suitably foolish amount of wine, beer and punk rock. It was meant to be a 9am rise, in order to shower and breakfast before hitting the mountain for the first time in way too many weeks. Naturally, that wasn’t to be the case. 10am, struggle out of bed, pop two hits of paracetamol out of the foil and jam them into my gob, hoping they stop the shakes that kicked in as soon as my toes hit the freezing floorboards. Wipe sleep from my eyes and do my best to figure out what exactly I need to jam into the camelbak to survive a ride down hill on dirt.

Lots
Skip breakfast. Make it into the shower (in hindsight, breakfast may have been a better priority) long enough to turn the hot tap on when the lift arrives. At this point, that’s the one thing keeping me keen. Well, that and the idea of hitting some singletrail with chunky black rubber under me.

A lift.

Up the big hill, the really big hill. This doesn’t happen very often. Most of the time we claw our way onto a fire trail and pedal until our legs burn, then we pedal a bit more, and finally (eventually) make it to the trail head. This time we’re ditching the leg power and we’re throwing the bikes in the back of a van, Henry Rollins style. Lucky, ’cause if that hadn’t been the case, the mountain may well have had a close encounter with my lack of breakfast.

Chigga meets Nic and I out the front and we head to the meet-up spot. I should probably mention that at this point, last night’s beer is definitely still hanging around and making things interesting. I don’t have a hangover…because I’m still drunk. Probably not the best way to start a ride, but who’s picking?

We head to the brewery (what a coincidence) and meet up with Campbell and Mischa (yeah, yet another guy called Mischa…that’s how we roll in Tasmania). Bikes go in the back of the van and we’re away.

The drive up is painless. We pass a few hapless souls who aren’t so lucky as to have a lift. Probably not feeling as woozy either, and no doubt enjoying stretching their legs, but today’s just not my day for climbing.

 

A few kilometres up the road and we hit the Springs carpark. Pile out and grab the bikes. At this point the shinguards go on. I need to make this clear. I don’t wear shinguards because I’m good at riding, or because I go hard and need the protection. I wear them because I suck and if I didn’t, I’d probably die from massive blood loss caused by my shin-eating pedals. I am a giant wuss and am probably not cut out for mountain biking, but that ain’t going to stop me.

On the ride down it becomes obvious that it’s been a little too long between dirt sessions. There’s been a lot of rain over the last few days and trails that were previously pretty rocky have turned into death traps. For me at least. The three lads who invited us along hurtle down the trails on full suspension bikes and in body armour. Nic and I, we take things a little slower.

That hangover’s finally kicked in and I’m beginning to realise that riding fixed may help the legs, but it does nothing for the puny match sticks that I use for arms. Never mind the thick mud on every corner that either swallows your tires of spits them sideways like a mouthful of warm beer. I’ve also come to the conclusion that the saying doesn’t go “It’s like riding a mountain bike down rocky trails, you never forget” for a reason. I hold on for dear life and pray.

Someone must be listening (I may have been muttering out loud), ’cause I made it down in one (sore) piece. No crashes, but at the speeds I was going, that probably wasn’t a risk anyway. No grip left in my hands and I feel like I’d never ridden a trail before in my life. I’m hoping that it was just an off day.

The other guys do a few rounds on some jumps while I use it as an excuse to take some snaps and grab some video. After that it’s back to the carpark and leaving the rest of the boys to head back up the mountain to collect the car. It’s a short ride home for us, so we bail and hit the asphalt, muddied but no doubt grinning like two sore, hungover and slightly adrenaline-crazed idiots.

Let’s hope it’s not quite as long until the next foray up the mountain. Let’s also hope the next on isn’t preceded by excessive drinking and lack of sleep. A bit of breakfast may help as well.

If you don’t believe me that it was a rough previous night and a rougher day, here’s what was for dinner. Never doubt the power of the local fish’n’chip shop to create fatty deposits in bodily crevasses you never new existed. Can you say brown?

What I want to know is where the find a sausage that big?