October 31, 2004
Mountain Biking Wilder Ranch State Park
A few of the guys and I got together this weekend to mountain bike Wilder Ranch State Park, which is just north of Santa Cruz, off Hwy 1. I didn't fare as well as I had hoped, and that is putting it lightly. I brought my new bike, the red Specialized Stumpjumper hardtail bike, to test ride in the forests of the park, and in retrospect, I don't think that was such a good idea to break in a new bike on such a ride. I've ridden through the park a few times in the past, so it wasn't that I was unfamiliar with the trails. But something didn't feel right.
We met at Greg's house in Santa Clara to load all the bikes and drove on down to Santa Cruz. With one last equipment check in the parking lot, we headed off to the hills. We started at sea level, and climbed to our hearts content. We were pooped, about 200ft up.... dang! It was a bit chilly in the morning, but overall, the park is a great technical park to ride your bike in, or even to just hike.
My new bike held up pretty well, so what ended up happening was pretty much my fault. We had spent most of the day riding technical trails and deep swithcbacks that accummulated at the top of the mountain. Once there, it is a 3 mile downhill run back to the parking lot and this is where things can get real fast and crazy! Greg got a good jump on me and we've always kind of pushed each other towards our limits. He got maybe a quarter mile ahead of me, when I decided to shift into high gear and chase him down.
The funny thing was, I could feel the chain tension up, a sort of switching on the afterburners, and I caught him in a matter of minutes. I got so close, I could read the letters on his jersey. And then, the road started to turn twitchy! My fault was I didn't have time the night before to switch tires on the bike and I had actually been running on offroad slicks all day. I hadn't found a suitable set of tires for my new bike yet, so these slicks were a temporary solution since I had them in stock at home. But just at that moment, the trail broke right and I slammed on the brakes too late. The bike threw into sharp angle, and I could feel the oncoming rush that I wasn't going to pull off the turn.
The sand under the tires started to crunch and scratch, and then, first went the rear tire, the bike had unweighted itself. Next was the hit to the ground, when body, bike and ground meet, going 30mph! It was a long, painfull slide and I was still clipped in when I landed in the thick brush. I didn't know what I was doing when I was trying unbuckle and climb out of the brush at the same time. I tried to roll to one side, but I couldn't get the bike off! It seemed like an eternity, until I unclipped from the pedals and crawled out, just as the rest of the guys caught up and saw what happened. I'll say this, though, later on that night all the girls gave me plenty of attention and pity. HAHA-Ouch! ;P
Oh, and Happy Holloween!
Posted by Jimmy at October 31, 2004 09:53 AM