Sunday morning, Jason surprised me. “Hey babe, we’re going on a mountainbike ride!” He’d arranged the whole thing; Marc was going to watch the boys, and Dave was going to take us to this new, cool trail. “Easy stuff!” he assured me. Bless his heart, he sees that I’m spending ridiculous amounts of time in front of the computer lately, pulling long days for work, doing boat foo, writing projects, taxes… it’s hard on a body, and I really seriously need exercise. So he set it up. Great man.
I checked it out online before we left. Here’s what I read:
Description: This is a good one to take your friends who are new to mountain biking on, or to get in a quick after-work ride. Even though this is a good beginner trail, there is still some fun to be had for the hardcore riders. Not much to else to say, except this is about the only legal (public) singletrack in Marin.
Sounds right up my alley. Doable, in a pleasant, no-biggie kind of way. I’m in.
Then, we got there. And parked, next to this mountain. Yes, I mean mountain. It went up… and up… and up… Assuming that must be a different trail, we geared up, I followed Dave and Jason…yep… straight up the freaking mountain. I was ready to die at the end of the first switchback. This was the first time I’d been on dirt on this bike, and the first time I’d had any aerobic exercise of any kind in over two months. I finally gave up on biking (in lowest, low “granny” gear, mind you), and just walked, holding my bike, because it was faster than trying to ride. I still kept having to pull off the trail to let the gearheads whizz past me, and it was pretty humiliating. But I kept on, because really, how much of this could there be?
A lot. A whole lot. I’d walk, stop, wheeze, drink some water, walk some more. Took me an hour and a half to get to the top of a trail that said the whole thing only took an hour. I feel, at this point, totally hopeless.
“Oh, it’s OK!” Dave effuses at me, “The rest is downhill!”
I should have known at that point that with Dave, it’s about what he doesn’t say, not what he does. It was all downhill from there. Steeply. On rocks. On a trail with a cliff on one side. I rode my brakes like a total weiner, and just hoped and hoped I wouldn’t die or biff spectacularly.
Ever heard of the Law of Attraction? It says that what you focus on, you bring to you. So of course, on one of the steepest, gnarliest little bits, my front tire hit a slippery patch I wasn’t prepared for, I biffed it, and went straight down the cliff, with a ladylike little squeal. Poor Dave had been hanging back to keep an eye on me, and came rushing to my aid. Luckily, I’d had the foresight to land in a bunch of oak tuff, and though I was scratched up, I had only landed on two or three rocks, and none under my head, so that was fabulous. I climbed back on the bike, determined to keep going.
The next few miles were, if at all possible, more slippery and more rocky. Some mud patches. And by this time, the Hardcore Crowd was out, and it seems that they lived to pass me by at mach speed, and then grin lazily from convenient rest spots along the way, while I huffed and puffed and whined my way along behind Jason and Dave, who annoyingly enough, seemed to be having a fabulous time. Every so often, Jason would circle back, and say something encouraging, like “Wow, Babe, your whole back is covered with little bits of oak tree still,” and “hey, those bruises on your legs are wicked! Gotta get some arnica on those when we get home!” I guess my face must have said it all, because eventually he fell still, and said, “um, how about Persian food when we’re done?”
Capital survival instincts, my man has. Persian is my favorite food in the world, and there’s a good restaurant about two miles from where the godforsaken hideous miserable trail they’ve drug me out on ends. I can survive anything, if someone promises me garlic torshi and Persian dolma at the end. Dave mumbled something about a brewery, and Jason, thinking I couldn’t see behind me (mommy eyes, back of head, you know the story), was making “cut! cut! shut up!” motions frantically behind me, and Dave mumbled to a stop. I think he was disappointed, but hey, this was survival we were talking.
I kept riding. Eventually, I relaxed enough to enjoy the scenery, the smells, and even the exercise. So that must have been the point at which the endorphins kicked in. Because suddenly, it was all OK. Even the blood dripping from the gash in my leg.
So naturally, that was the point at which Dave, riding in front of me, snapped his front brake cable. Pow!
I started giggling, cause what else are you going to do? Clearly, this was some Marin version of the Bataan death march, and no one had told us. I pulled over to watch Dave try some guerrilla bike repair with duct tape, tweezers, and some old chewing gum. Casually, I flicked a tick off my sock, and mused on the pleasures of the Great Outdoors. Dave decided that he could do OK with no front brakes, and so off we went.
The rest of the trip was pretty much without incident. The trail leveled out, smoothed off, and became more crowded with foot traffic. People were jogging, with their dogs. Y’know, people. Not sadistic gearheads.
Upon arriving home, I looked again, at this site, which more reasonably said:
This ride starts at Performance bike store in Montecito shopping center, San Rafael. It has a distance of 15.2 miles and involves steep climbs with an elevation gain of over 1800 feet.
Aha! So I’m not crazy; there are two trails by the same name, one is a pleasant, flat, sunny, level version of the monster ride I went on. And lunch? Lunch was fantastic. Maybe not worth the ride I took to get there, but still… I did it, and that’s saying something.