Mountain Biking (Trail) 2:11:00 [3]
A fun, sunny morning of single track in Albion Hills with 'Bent, Suze and Eric. I met Suze at STORM The Trent a few weeks ago. She beat both 'Bent and me on the paddle, and she is a strong biker. I only finished ahead of her because the navigation section went better for me - phew! I've given her some info on orienteering clinics though, so she'll probably crush me next year.
We met Eric in the woods today and invited him to ride with us. He turned out to be a patient of 'Bent's, our teammate Angus' violin teacher, guitar teacher to Rocky's son and former harmonica teacher to Crash. (I think I got all that right.) Small world!
One minor note of excitement occurred when the other riders heard me yell and crash onto the forest floor while simultaneously yanking my helmet from my head. A wasp or bee had smacked into my temple through my helmet, and suddenly I felt fire on my scalp. My only thought was to get the helmet off, since I couldn't brush off the insect. What a great idea to remove my helmet during my fall to the ground! It feels OK now, so hopefully I interrupted it partway through the act of stinging me - and luckily I didn't land on my head!
We are going to start doing Wed. morning group bike rides in Albion Hills. I'll contact folks who are most likely to be able to arrange their schedule around it, but for people reading this, we will meet outside the Albion Hills Chalet at 8:45 a.m. for at least the next few weeks to see how it goes. We'll probably ride about 2 hours, and we'll figure out ways to accommodate different speeds.