'Lizbeths most excellent biking weekend!

mad skills:
First off I'm going to say that if the fate of the world depended on my ability to wheelie off a wooden box, we would all be doomed.

The ingredients for a perfect rolling wheelie are as follows; set up, pause, powerstroke, wheelie!....Set up, pause, powerstroke, wheelie! Yeah, that didn't happen so much. There were plenty of other skills to learn though; like riding in a straight line. What a ridiculously hard thing to do! Ride up a skinny little plank without falling off. I did okay, wobbled quite a bit, but didn't fall off. I was very thankful that I did not have to give the teeter totter a go. I found riding up the plank hard enough, I certainly didn't want it to move!

The best lesson, by far, was manualing off the box. Done correctly, you ride over the box and land with both tires on the ground at the same time. What a rush! And of course there was bunnyhopping and track stands. Both of which I managed to do without too much stress, but only because I've been practicing them for an entire year.

'da camp:
The first day of camp we met at the Bicycle Trip early in the morning to eat bagels, meet the other girls and get assigned into our groups. The Bicycle Trip is a really cool bike store, with supa' cool bike guys who catered to our every whim! They gave us a nice shopping discount, helped dial in our bikes, loaned out gear to anyone who was interested in wearing pads, and then let us stay late and party at their shop after hours. They even cut up lemon slices to put in our camelbacks! I wish we had a shop like that in San Jose instead of "Perfor-Mart".

time for a ride:
After a morning spent perfecting our skills at the highschool track, we headed out to DeLaveaga Park to ride. Describing a mountain bike ride is as boring as making someone watch slides of your vacation to South Dakota. "We rode up a mountain, then we went down a mountain. There were rocks, and roots and drops, blah, blah, blah..." I could write paragraphs about the ride, starting with the half hour climb into the park...but I won't. I 'll just say that for me, it was one of the most technical trails that I've ever ridden (not counting Santa Teresa) with plenty of gnarly singletrack, and I was very pleased and somewhat amazed that I managed to ride it with some style. I'm not the best mountain biker in the world, but I'm not the worst either, as I sometimes suspect!

after ride bliss:
All I have to say is thank you, thank you Best Western for putting in jacuzzi jets in your bathtub. Can you imagine a whole day spent on a mountain bike, followed by a long hot soak in a jacuzzi? I seriously don't think that my weekend could have gotten any better!

There was so much to this weekend; fabulous coaches, cool bike shop, great riding, fun bike people. It was like a mini Sea Otter, without the sheep poop! But this is what matters the most; I went for a ride tonight at Alum Rock park and I hit both of my "mini" hills, plus another rocky, gnarly hill that I hadn't dared try before and cleared all three with ease. I went to camp for the weekend, and came back with some confidence and a new set of skills. Shw-eet!