The Local

I am one of the fortunate few who can hop on their mountain bike and ride to some nice single track right from home. No packing the car, no long journey, no realising that you have forgotten your helmet as you arrive at the trail head. It means that it is easy to sneak in a quick, short lap when the kids have gone to bed. And like any mountain bike trail, it also means that an adventure is just up the hill.

It’s no multi day epic, or 14 km flowing downhill up the road, but I think every ride I’ve done has given me something to think about, a smile from ear to ear and, more often than not, a glimpse of adventure.

There’s the corners that beg to be ridden fast, but can catch you out when you least expect it. The sustained climb that always hurts, the moments you look around and feel like you are in the middle of absolutely nowhere. There are the more specific moments, like the time I was doing a late afternoon lap, flying down the opening section, where I am beginning to know the trail really well, until I sweep around a corner where there should be a nice little jump. Jump as in singular. It wasn’t until I was mid air that I realised that the singular had turned most definitely plural, as someone had created a times three rollover, with the second mound being exactly where I was about to land from my singular jump. It ended badly.

I can’t forget the time I took Ricey for a night lap, and was nearly bowled over by 4 wombats. Well, I’m maintaining there were four, although Ricey did put it into my head that there was in fact only one, who seriously had it in for me and was just scooting to different areas of the track and lying in wait for me to come around the corner. At one point, one of the wombats (or was it ‘the one’?) flew out from the side of the track and slid along for a couple of metres in front of me. Unfortunately for the little bundle of wheel buckling fury, it slid onto and then off of, a small bridge I was about to cross. After landing in the shallow water it trundled up the embankment, perhaps moving to his next ambush point further along the track. I don’t do much night riding on certain sections of that track anymore.

No, it’s not epic, it’s not the stuff of magazine covers. 

But when I begin to pedal up that hill, it’s my adventure.