I’ve been very homesick lately. But the ideas rolling around my head haven’t been for any particular people or food….but for the delicious mountain bike trails in North Georgia, Eastern Tennessee, and Western North Carolina
It’s been over a year and half since I’ve been on my mountain bike. I finally got sick of feeling as healthy as Keith Richards looks (ironically, he’s probably in pretty good shape). But the problem is that using my car to drive up into the mountains strands Lisa and Madeline. But this weekend was different. They went on a Girl Scout camping trip where they spent the night next to a dilapidated section of the Great Wall. This freed me up to do whatever I desired.
So this morning I dusted off my bike, packed some gear and headed to the same trail system at Fragrant Hills that I rode the first (and last) time here. Getting there took about 30 minutes and I was successful remembering the location of the obscure trailhead.
The trail is rocky and technical as it climbs up precipitously close to areas of sheer drop offs. It’s so rocky that I would be better off with “all-mountain” bike (longer travel, bigger tires, and disk brakes) instead of my lightweight XC racer.
Being off the bike for a year has it’s consequences. Leg strength, endurance, technical skills and general confidence suffered. On the climb up, I used an abnormal amount of discretion when it came to tricky sections and walked some of them. After all, my goal was to get my heart pumping and get the trail “feel” back…not chase adrenaline-pumping thrills.
Watching the clock, I decided to start my decent after about an hour of painful climbing. This is a great trail for descending but I still rode conservatively. I reached a left-inside switchback and while doing the left turn, I hung my front wheel on a big rock and started to fall towards the downside of the hill…not the direction you want to fall. I clipped out one foot and was nearly successful stopping myself but the ground crumbled and I kept going over the ledge. As I was rotating over the steep ledge towards a pit of sharp boulders my “Risk Bucket” blog entry came to mind because it looked like I was in for a potential trip to the hospital.
As an action-sports participant, you learn to be cautiously optimistic in the first few minutes after a wreck. You may think you are just sore only to find something broken later. Visibly, I was pretty messy. My elbow had a bleeding raspberry along with cuts on my shin, knees and hip. The area above my sacrum (lower spine) took a major scraping blow and that reminded me how dangerous even a low-speed tip-over could be.
After my 30-second “system-check”, I untangled myself from between my bike and the boulders pulled myself back up onto the trail. Still not ruling out serious injury, I started checking my bike and my thinking about an exit strategy. The bike looked fine except for the seat which broke cleanly off. I jury-riggged it back onto the post, then held it in place by pinching it between my thighs and slowly descended about 2 miles back to the car.
On the way out of the village, I bought a couple drinks from a local merchant and soon started to feel certain that I didn’t have any serious injury. As more hours passed, I’m certain that my arm isn’t fractured and more optimistic that my back is just banged up rather than “really” injured.
Despite the soreness in my legs competing with the pains from the fall, I felt the energetic fatigue that I haven’t felt since moving to China. My homesickness is cured and a third year here isn’t so scary after all.