Matt is an avid mountain biker. He went out on Sunday to the New England Mountain Bike club’s Red Tail Trail in North Conway NH and rode it. He showed me a video of it that he made with his helmet-cam, and it was obvious that I wanted no part of that trail.
I did want to try the trail off the north end of our association road, though. It leads over to the next road along the lake. Matt had found it several weeks ago, but I had never gone out there.
I tracked down my bicycling shoes — they have special cleats on the soles to clip onto the pedals — and we set off.
That trail is a piece of cake. I had no trouble riding the whole length, which is pretty short anyway. The trail we took coming back goes through a lot more woods but is still smooth and easy, except for one fallen tree which is too high for even Matt to jump. So far so good.
I had never tried to mountain bike the trails we cut around our property, though. This seemed like a good time, since I already had my biking shoes on and Matt was there to coach me.
All I can say is, I’m much better than I used to be at getting my shoes unclipped from the pedals. I jumped one small log and avoided a lot of rocks, but I had to stop many times to walk the bike over trees and rocks. It’ll be a long time, if ever, before I can just ride around that trail.
It didn’t help my confidence that a few days after I tried our trail a good friend of ours in Newton cracked a couple of ribs and punctured her lung while bicycling on a path in a local park.