{"id":204,"date":"2008-09-06T16:31:50","date_gmt":"2008-09-06T23:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/?p=204"},"modified":"2013-12-14T12:13:37","modified_gmt":"2013-12-14T17:13:37","slug":"barely-have-energy-to-type","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/barely-have-energy-to-type\/","title":{"rendered":"Barely… have energy… to type…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the new bike was 99% ready to go I made a post to the ODSC forum<\/a> saying hi to everyone. I got some positive messages: the most interesting being from “Joe” offering to let me come out with his regular group of guys on a beginners ride. How could I say no?<\/p>\n

I took Friday afternoon off work to drive to Royal Distributing<\/a> in Barrie to get some pieces I was missing: I also picked up a new helmet, filter oil, and knee pads. Then spent Friday evening fixing things up. Saturday morning at 8:00am I was off to Joes to get a ride to Ganaraska<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Here’s a pic unloading the bikes (Derek in the black truck just backing in), another with Joe ready to go and Derek putting on his gear on the tailgate, and finally all 3 bikes parked during a rest+gas break:<\/p>\n

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The forecast called for the rain to end at 7am last I checked… but instead it rained until at least noon. I hadn’t been on dirt trails since last fall: so I was very rusty… and between the constant blur of rain on my goggles and my glasses fogging up I could see very little. More than once I had to stop just to wipe everything down so I could see enough to continue. But it was incredibly fun! <\/p>\n

It got a bit less fun when I botched riding through a rut and laid the bike down sideways off a very small corner… widening the trail by a few feet where the bike mowed down the saplings. I wasn’t hurt: but had trouble starting the bike again. I kicked and kicked and kicked (and swore to fix the battery since I’m supposed to have electric start) and kicked and kicked… to no avail. Eventually Joe came back looking for me and started the bike in about 2 kicks (and a cloud of black smoke coming out of the exhaust). It had flooded when it fell over: teaching me the lesson that if you fall off and are unhurt… pick up the bike ASAP!<\/p>\n

We looped back to the starting area for a break and to top off the tanks: then headed out again. I was tired, and soon made another mistake: went on the outside of a corner and tapped a tree with my handlebars, and fell over. Got back up and was fine until we were _almost_ done for the day: somehow came out of a rut heading at 45% angle towards the bush… on a trail wide enough to drive a car on… and laid down the front and slid into the bush… fast enough that when the front end hit a tree and stopped dead… I got a mini-toss over the bike and went rolling into the brush.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t hurt at all in any of those spills: I was armored head-to-toe… but you’re a bit scared after… breathing heavy… then you have to pick up the bike fast so it doesn’t flood (bikes aren’t light)… then kick the snot out of it to start it (again, no electic start for me: curse the dead battery)… then fight the urge to drive fast to catch up to others… because you know you’re even more tired now and you’ll just end up in the weeds again \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

That being said, I had a blast! I would do it all again in a heartbeat!<\/p>\n

Back where we started I threw all my extra gear into my packsack, lashed it to the rack, bolted on the GPS, and headed back to Toronto. Here I am topping off the tank:<\/p>\n

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And 2 hours later, after a short stop at Walmart to buy some earplugs… I was safe at home… bike covered in mud… so tired I was ready to fall over as soon as I set foot in the door. This picture is for Nicoli Garner, who thought my other Facebook pic of the bike was too clean \ud83d\ude42 …<\/p>\n

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Can’t wait to go again!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the new bike was 99% ready to go I made a post to the ODSC forum saying hi to everyone. I got some positive messages: the most interesting being from “Joe” offering to let me come out with his Continue reading Barely… have energy… to type…<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ptY4v-3i","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1018,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/1018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}