Saturday saw Mike I riding at Nields road. There are some pretty fun trails there, and some insane stunts. We went up the steep fireroad to start, then off towards the Black Sabbath stunts. Some of them were torn down a while ago, allegedly by some drunk partying teens who needed some firewood. Anyway, there are some left there, but I keep chickening out on this one jump. Grrr. I am closer than ever to launching it though.

click for the pictures or read on.

We continued on and did the full loop, taking pictures along the way when the weather permitted. It was overcast out, so some of the shots have a bright background, and a black foreground. Some of them look pretty cool that way. I did a bunch of jumps and drops that I normally do. I need to take my forks in to get overhauled. I think they are low on oil, and as a result they were bottoming out quite easily. Not good.

Near the end of our ride, when we were starting a short downhill section, I went to pedal, and got the horrible feeling of a stick in the derailleur. Instantly I stopped pedalling and jammed on the brakes. I couldn’t see any sticks, but on closer inspection I found some wood had jammed itself in two links of my chain, between the two sides. Very strange. We had to take a couple minutes to dig that out, and then we were on our merry way.

As we arrived at the parking area, some other guy in a pickup arrived. He turned around, backed around a ditch, and up into the bush a little. I thought he was going to be unloading a bike or even a motor bike, but no, he sat there watching us. I quickly realized we had caught this guy trying to illegally dump garbage! We played it up for him. We goofed around on our bikes in front of him, and kept looking over at him. I memorized his plate number. He tried to fake us out by opening his hood and looking at his engine. Right. He backed up off the road because he is having engine troubles! This after driving way up to the end of a road in the middle of nowhere. Dingbat. Mike and I went to his car, and started getting changed. I kept looking over at the guy, and he was sitting there watching us. Finally he started his truck and drove off. I snapped a quick pic as he drove away.

Besides the dumper I had a good ride. Endurance wise I felt great. Technical wise I felt fine. I just chickened out on a few stunts!