Mountain Biking Mama
Not long ago, I was persuaded by my 16 year old son to join him mountain biking in Memorial Park. I thought, 'Sure, why not? I mean how hard could it be? It's not like we live in the Alps, I mean Houston is as flat as an armadillo on I-10 in rush hour traffic. The park is in the middle of the city, not in the wilderness.' I envisioned Starbucks kiosks strategically positioned every 100 yards, perhaps a couple of boutique stores, you know. Plus, I relished the idea of spending buddy time with Erik in a settiing other than homeschool. Time to switch from tyrannical mom to sporting buddy. It didn't enter my mind that the trails might be challenging to my 51 year old body. I should have known when things started out badly that the whole idea was a perilous and foolhardy one when my tire valve busted when Erik was pumping it up with air. So we had to load up all the bikes, head for the nearest bike shop and get it repaired. But we were thrilled to hop on our bikes and explore about 45 minutes later. Seemed easy at first. But then the dreaded roots started popping up--evil serpents silcked so repetitively by wheel rims that they were as slippery as ice. Every glancing blow would make my front wheel veer off in every crazy direction except the right one. Later on, the hills appeared--hills so steep and rutty I spent more time hiking than biking, panting and shoving my bike uphill in all sorts of ungraceful and contorted body positions. Gravity, as always, was my mortal enemy. The streams looked like class 5 rapids. The logs were like 300 foot high tightropes with no net underneath. But trees, yep, hard to avoid in a forest, were my true nemesis. The rude things wouldn't step aside when they saw me careening out of control down the rutty paths with a wide eyed stare of panic emblazoned across my paralyzed expression. One was particulary stubborn, refusing to yield. I had to choose between colliding face first into its massive trunk or plummeting down a cliff. Reluctantly, I chose the latter. Any witnessed would have seen a huge cloud of dust swirling around a tangled mass of limbs, chrome, and spandex. Not pretty. My squeals for help made it an even scarier sight. When I hit bottom, I called for Erik, but made my way up on my own before he got to me. My leg was bleeding and my pride was battered. I was covered with bruises. But I soldiered on and biked some more so he wouldn't be disappointed in our outing. As the day progressed, so did my story. By nightfall, I had plummeted off a huge precipice barely escaping the open, yet snapping jaws of 100 crocodiles in the torrential rapids below. My cuts became gory gashes and my bruise count skyrocketted. Hey, we gotta get what mileage we can, right. I can't wait to go again and collected more war stories to inflate.