New bike! New injury! (Not a coincidence)

To be fair, the injury is nothing more than some abrasions on my left arm.

It seems I have developed a weird and unwelcome tradition where each summer I find some way to hurt myself. In 2015 I hurt my hip on the first run of vacation. In 2016 I snagged a foot on a tree root and went down hard on a gravel path, with appropriate lacerations and cuts down the right side of my body.

And today I kind of tipped over on my new bike and fell off a ramp into some bramble. I got a long but shallow scratch on my otherwise sexy left calf and about a 10 cm swath of abrasions on my lower left arm. On the plus side, my new gloves kept my hands in pristine condition!

But let me back up a bit.

For awhile I’ve been thinking about getting a bike again–my last was stolen from Tim’s garage by a safety-conscious thief (he took the helmet, too). I rode that one to work and really, it was okay for urban riding but even going over a curb made it feel like the frame would bend like a pretzel. After a suggestion from Jeff, I perused the selection of bikes at MEC and settled on a Ghost Kato, which sounds cool, of nothing else. There was a choice between 26 and 27.5″ tires but it became obvious quickly that 26″ is passe–you know, “Grandpa tires,” while 27.5″ is sexy and happening.

I’ll include a picture of my bike soon but here’s a generic shot for now:

Ghost Kato 27.5"

I picked up a bunch of other things to take advantage of the 10%-off-with-purchase-of-bike deal:

  • stylish black helmet which I look dorky in, anyway
  • fingerless gloves
  • padded undies because I’ve been on bikes without padding for my butt and my butt was very cross with me after
  • water bottle and holder
  • a small kit bag for holding repair doodads (it goes behind and under the seat)

After a few adjustments and a couple loops around the guest parking at the condo, we headed out and up SFU, then rode down two trails. The first was wide but very much a downhill thing. I used the brakes a lot and found out they worked well. I only had one brief moment near the beginning where I hot a patch of loose gravel and felt the tires start to slide, but I maintained control.

Then we moved onto the second trail, which Jeff described as not as steep but more narrow. This seemed like a fair trade-off to me, so we ventured onto Dead Moped.

I almost immediately ran into trouble because although not steep, it was still downhill and very twisty and turny, requiring a degree of coordination that only existed in my imagination. I tried to channel my imagination into reality but the bike was firmly on the side of reality. I muddled along and then got to a point where somehow I was in the lead (I’m still not sure how that happened) and was navigating one of those narrow plank bridges, which are sometimes directly on the ground and other times elevated about a foot or so off of it. They look like this (this is actually taken from Dead Moped):

I went to the handy trailforks.com website, which has several nice photos and videos of the trail. I found one video and managed to grab a blurry still which you may gander at below:

Just past that tree on the left, where the bridge turns to the right…I turned to the left. I didn’t plan it that way, but somehow my combination of speed, balance (and lack thereof), and inexperience combined to where I could not correct quite enough. I very nearly stayed on the bridge, but in the end my balance shifted a little too much to the left and gravity took over. I had a moment to consider if I could put out my left leg to somehow brace myself but this bridge is elevated and my legs are not freakishly long, so I just toppled over onto my side.

A guy came up, seemingly out of nowhere and asked if I was okay. He offered a hand to help me up. I thanked him and said I was okay (except for proving what a noob I am when it comes to two-wheeled transportation). While it may be true that you never forget how to ride a bike, I can verify that it is quite possible to forget how to ride a bike well.

And here’s the damage, nothing a little Polysporin can’t fix:

Pretty minor, especially compared to actually embedding gravel into my hand last summer.

I walked my bike the rest of the way out of the trail (it wasn’t that far), not willing to risk finding another way to separate myself unexpectedly from the bike.

The ride along the rest of the route home (a little under 7 km) went without incident.

Overall, it was actually pretty fun, if terrifying from time to time. I’m flattered that Jeff (who rides these trails with the ease that most people would walk them) thought I could manage it. I later learned that Dead Moped is rated Blue–intermediate difficulty. At this point I’m probably best to stick to whatever color they use for “can barely stay upright on a bicycle.” But I’ll improve.

And maybe wear more padding.

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