After being hazed all day my roommate and I got up to go on a 3 hour bike ride through a national forest, a trip we had signed up for online during the first week of the program. We were really looking forward to this!
The pictures from previous trips were amazing and it required no previous mountain biking experience, which was good because neither of us had ever mountain biked. We met up with the group and took the train about 30 minutes outside the city. When we got there we divided into 2 groups. My guide was danish, of course, and spoke almost no English. He started talking about the bikes and how to use the breaks and the gears. I didn't really understand because of the language barrier but I felt like I had a good enough understanding to make it on some trails. I did have a bright pink speed bike when i was 8, and I've taken some spin classes at my gym so I felt pretty prepared.
And I think i would have been had there been anything (i mean anything) that resembled a trail. Some gravel? maybe some semi-leveled dirt? Anything?! We were legitimately off roading. No trails, steep climbs, tree branches hitting your face having to maneuver roots, rocks, and mud. For something that required no previous experience, there were times that i honestly thought i was going to hit a tree and die. As we're flying over logs and down cliffs trying to avoid trees and rocks, I'm desperately trying to remember my spin instructors rules on gears. Was it high numbers going up hill and low numbers otherwise or low numbers going up hill and high numbers going down hill? I always remembered Dave, my spin instructor, saying "the higher the number the higher the hill", and that we always had to stand up when going up hills. Well I knew from minute 2 that standing up in real life was never going to happen but tried to stick to his higher gear rule. Fortunately, it only took me a few hills to realize that I did not want to be in a higher gear when I'm going up hill in real life, because that made it impossible to climb the hill. Yeah so it was far jump from my "pedal-backwards-to-break-bike"at home and this 3 hr nightmare. With that being said when my eyes weren't directly on the ground in front of me, view and the scenery was incredible. Unfortunately, for obvious reasons, I have almost no pictures to show you. :( All in all it was an experience that I'm really happys over.
The pictures from previous trips were amazing and it required no previous mountain biking experience, which was good because neither of us had ever mountain biked. We met up with the group and took the train about 30 minutes outside the city. When we got there we divided into 2 groups. My guide was danish, of course, and spoke almost no English. He started talking about the bikes and how to use the breaks and the gears. I didn't really understand because of the language barrier but I felt like I had a good enough understanding to make it on some trails. I did have a bright pink speed bike when i was 8, and I've taken some spin classes at my gym so I felt pretty prepared.
And I think i would have been had there been anything (i mean anything) that resembled a trail. Some gravel? maybe some semi-leveled dirt? Anything?! We were legitimately off roading. No trails, steep climbs, tree branches hitting your face having to maneuver roots, rocks, and mud. For something that required no previous experience, there were times that i honestly thought i was going to hit a tree and die. As we're flying over logs and down cliffs trying to avoid trees and rocks, I'm desperately trying to remember my spin instructors rules on gears. Was it high numbers going up hill and low numbers otherwise or low numbers going up hill and high numbers going down hill? I always remembered Dave, my spin instructor, saying "the higher the number the higher the hill", and that we always had to stand up when going up hills. Well I knew from minute 2 that standing up in real life was never going to happen but tried to stick to his higher gear rule. Fortunately, it only took me a few hills to realize that I did not want to be in a higher gear when I'm going up hill in real life, because that made it impossible to climb the hill. Yeah so it was far jump from my "pedal-backwards-to-break-bike"at home and this 3 hr nightmare. With that being said when my eyes weren't directly on the ground in front of me, view and the scenery was incredible. Unfortunately, for obvious reasons, I have almost no pictures to show you. :( All in all it was an experience that I'm really happys over.
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