Today Anna and I decided to go on a mountain bike ride in the local MacDonald Research Forest which is known locally for it's sick mountain bike trails. The forest is a research forest for OSU and the trails are very well maintained and easy to ride (except for the hills and switchbacks). Mac heard me talking about the ride and asked if he could tag along which of course was great, more the merrier. We headed up in my truck around 4:30 to Chip Ross park where we unloaded our bikes and headed up the trail --- Snap... 100 feet from the truck my chain snapped... this sucked... no let me say that again... this really sucked because it took all 3 of us helping with my Alien bike tool to re-assemble my chain (now two links short) back together.. resulting in my ability to only utilize a quarter of my gears successfully on the entire ride. Mac and Anna have great cross-country bikes while my bike is a heavy (40lbs) freeride bike meant mostly for downhill and jumps, which combined with my crappy chain that kept popping slowed me down. That and the fact that for the past 2 weeks I hadn't really done much excersize except for the small hike with Kenny in Glacier National Park... so yes, I was out of shape. The trail was beautiful and the switchbacks took a lot of the difficulty out of the 1000 foot ascent to the top of Dimple Hill at 1495 feet. On the way up we passed a pear tree where I grabbed a few to much on, and lots of blackberry bushes. Mac and Anna took off ahead of me leaving me in the dust... man was I going slow... what was going on?
At the top we got a great view over the valley and Corvallis below. There were enormous blackberry bushes everywhere which we took the time to snack on for a bit. We relaxed for a little 
bit on top ( I saw a wierd looking snake when I went to take a piss) and then bombed down the trail we had come up. I went first because I'm used to downhilling and could go a little bit faster with my full suspension - this time it was my turn to lead :). But as soon as we hit a hill again my legs were spinning while Mac and Anna toasted me again.... At one point while I was ahead I saw a cool dip onto a logging road that crosses the trail so I decided to jump it... bad idea. The dip turned into a bump on the other side and I didn't clear it... I slid with my bike still attached to my foot at the pedal across sharp gravel directly beneath a beautiful blonde on her bike coming up the trail... Why do I always seem to smear myself against the ground in front of beautiful girls... it's my curse... I did the same thing when I shattered my knee while in Boston skiing in front of a beautiful girl named Rachel, and I broke my collarbone infront of a beautiful girl named Lindsay... why why why why why? haha. Anyway, Mac caught up and got a glimpse of the shit show on the ground and chuckled. I picked myself up and continued to ride down, bleeding from the leg, hip, arm and back and shoulder. A good bit of road rash always makes for a good ride. When I got to the bottom I noticed something about my bike finally... the back hydraulic brakes were clamped tight on my wheel to the point that I couldn't even spin the wheel with a great bit of effort... no wonder I was so slow... my damn back brakes were somehow locked out... time to bring it to the bike shop. I dropped the two of them off and had a relaxing night at home with McKenzie painfully licking my road rash throughout the evening :)
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