For years I’ve talked about getting a mountain bike and never got any closer to owning one than talking and looking online. Generally this happened every winter and by spring I was happily riding on the road and mountain bikes had faded from my mind.

This time the talking led to shopping then test riding, and a good deal on two 2013 models – Jamis Nemesis. (Love the name).  The bikes are hardtails with 650b size wheels.

Today was the first ride on an actual trail; yesterday evening we rode in the woods behind our house just to get a feel for the bikes. Neither of us have ever done any mountain biking. The closest thing has been riding on dirt/gravel roads and trails. After today’s ride I now know that those rides were nothing like mountain biking.

Arcadia is known as a good trail for beginners but for this beginner it had some difficult spots and I had to walk the bike up and down the first two steep hills/descents. The trail is very narrow in some places, (about a foot across) and deep so a couple of times the pedal would catch in the dirt on the side and I had to push off with my foot to regain balance and get going again. There was also a lot of sand that initially I had to push the bike through but before long I was able to ride through. The steep hills and descents I got up and down – were exhilarating – and negotiating the twists and turns throughout the trail was challenging and a blast.

The only time I nearly went down was when I was coming off a descent, heading up a short incline and hit a tree root at a bad angle causing the front wheel to slide out. I caught myself with my outside leg so no harm no foul. I got bounced around some, but that was just part of the fun. When it was all over I felt like I had been on a roller coaster at an amusement park. Giddy and smiling most of the ride and at times laughing out loud.

A very good first ride.

Illustration by Laura Culhane. Text by Sarah Koppelkam

Reposted from www.greatest.com

Another "leaf" ride (in shorts no less!) before old man winter shows up.

Anyone else love riding through fallen leaves?

My website has been torturously slow to load – it has been for months and months. If you come here very often you probably know this.

I tried various things to speed it up, including contacting my webhosting provider Dreamhost, loading various plugins and asking my tech support guy aka husband for help (and he usually fixes everything).

All to no avail – until yesterday when I inadvertently fixed it. You know how it works: you’re looking for something else – completely unrelated – and then you stumble upon something you had given up on finding – or fixing in this case.

It’s so fast now, it’s like me on a bike….