Freeride for dummies

2007 Oct

What’s riding for a dummy beginner like me?
It’s stopping sweaty in the middle of a wood, alone, in a cloudy and windy day, listening to the leaflets trapped by the streams screaming and calling for ancient monsters, and ride strongly, trying to fight the wind, trying to go faster than him.
It’s realizing that at the top of the trees under what I’ve run with my bike 10 minutes before live a bilion bees, flies, hornets and gadflies, praying they won’t attck me all together, for I’ve just disturbed them spreading stones and mud with my wheels.
It’s being anxious of breaking my own ass.
It’s cursing my feet for not grabbing the pedals in the right position at the right moment….they’ve never been so important before, they just smelled.
It’s cursing myself for having a milion human-shaped stones to climb wiht a bike…couldn’t I go shopping like every conventional rational biped?
It’s cursing my hands for not belonging to me anymore after a whole afternoon riding….I want them back!
It’s beseeching all my saints to reach safely and alive my car at the end of the day.
It’s mouth wide open when passed from 12 years-old boys riding 50 km/h down a wall of loose land.
It’s scratches everywhere, it’s heart frantically beating, it’s being constantly out of breath, it’s feeling wings when I can make a 5 cms jump, it’s meeting the smiles of all the other riders, so happy of having a clumsy girl among them, every now and then.
It’s feeling part of a secret magic world.
Gimme some more.

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