Mountain Bike Ride
Sorry I missed Yesterday guys, I've changed over to a new laptop & it took me a while to get it set up the way I wanted it and get it running smoothly.
Today I went for a MTB ride with a group af young guys. They all have MTB's worth $2500 and upwards (one guy had a $6000 down hill special) and I was riding my daughters dual suspension K-Mart $109 piece of crap that weighs almost twice as much as the bikes they were riding. That's a picture of the bike from the K-Mart catalogue above, except the one I was riding has more purple highlights than pink like the one in the picture. It's much more manly than the one with pink highlights in the picture.
They all had a good laugh when I got a purple MTB out of my car and put the front wheel on with a spanner. They all have quick release everything on their bikes and I was there with a bike using technology from last millenium and a girls bike at that.
We met near the base of Mt Sugarloaf which is on the fringe of the outer suburbs of Newcastle. Most of the guys hadn't been there before but I've ridden that mountain hundreds if not thousands of times before in the past when I used to live close.
We started out at about 9.30 and rode for about 3 1/2 hours with a few small breaks for drinks and snacks and we covered about 58 km which doesn't seem like much but on dirt trails and steep mountainous terrain it turned out to be quite a good ride.
I haven't had a good ride on a MTB for almost twenty years but I did quite well and even showed the young guys up a few times. There were a few really steep technical uphill and down sections where I was able to pull away from the guys and then on a flat tar road on the way home I had a bit of duel with one of the guys who races cross country MTB's and we were pretty well even pegged.
So even though they all had a good laugh at me when I got the bike out of the car no-one was laughing when we got back and I'm quite sure I earned a bit of respect. I'm sure they weren't expecting a guy in his 50's to give them a run for their money on girls bike weighing twice as much as theirs did. I haven't had a serious MTB ride for well over 20 years but as they say "it's like riding a bike" once you have the skills you just never really forget them.
I had that much fun today that I've decided to start putting some money away to buy a decent bike that won't draw a round of laughter whenever I show up with it. I won't be a pro cyclist again any time soon but I can still give the young guys a good run for their money.
The challenge is 
Matt's 100 rep challenge
