Cross & Black Diamond Riders

Saturday:
After being out late Friday night, Saturday morning came way too quickly. We had to be up in Philly by 9am, but we had two stops along the way to get James and Tom. That meant getting up around 6:30am, ugh! But I got up, got all my stuff together and made my way to the car. Sitting in the Park and Ride waiting for James I told Marc, "If James doesn't come; we're going home and back to bed". He agreed. James did show, so we went up to meet up with Tom. I was still very sleepy, trying my hardest to wake up and prepare myself for riding shortly. At Tom's we traded up who was riding with whom and I rode with Tom. Within about a minute of hitting the highway I found myself wide awake. Tom dives a VW R32 and fast. I swear he secretly likes to see the fear on my face. We missed one of the exits, but no problem, he slammed on the brakes, backed up on the highway and then proceeded to catch up with Marc by going about a 100. I’m wide awake as we pull into Belmont. We get dressed and go over and meet up with the rest of the group. They're splitting up into 2 groups, beginner and advanced. They ask the beginners to raise their hands and I leave mine down. I don't know why I left mine down. I haven't raced cross in about 6 years and have only two practices under my belt so far and they were on a mountain bike.So anyway, we slit up. We start going around working on dismounts. Luckily they didn't have any barriers and had put flags where we were supposed to be pretending there were barriers. As I approached the first time, on my new bike, riding it for the first time, and also not having done a dismount off a cross bike in about 6 years, I rode clean through the flags. If an actual barrier had been there I would have busted my ass. Slowly after doing it a zillion more times and some helpful tips from some Rolf and Kelly they got a little better. The highlight of my day was finally after many years and a million tries I managed to hop back on my bike without doing a double hop. It’s not consistent, but hey it’s a start. In the end I was very sore and bruised from many attempts gone array but overall it was a good day.

Sunday:
I wanted to do something easy. I was sore from the weeks activities and just wanted something short and laidback. I was thinking of a nice road ride, no real hills, easy pace, nothing knocking me around. Well, that didn’t end up being the case. Amy ended up being point on getting the ride together and we ended up riding mtb’s at Fair Hill. Les led the ride. My nice easy ride turned into one of climb after climb. On the decents Roger started singing "Black Diamond Rider". Soon we all were chiming in as we went down one decent after another. Les took us back via the Skip a Trail. Later I learned why it was named this. It’s called the Skip a Trail, because everyone skips it due to it’s long nasty rocky climb that we all had to walk. After making it back, we were all hungry and so we went and got giant babies head burritos from Picnic in town. Today I rest.