After a 5+ hour car ride home from Trexlertown, my vision is shaking back and forth in a dizzying manner -- In experience I haven't had in a while. I'm not sure what causes it, but it sure is hard to type. The room is spinning slightly and I can't really look at the screen (or anything really), not to mention the rocking back and forth feeling. Odd. Regardless, I feel I may have been somewhat saved this weekend. After a great hike through the woods exploring new (to me) trails on Thursday, I took the same zest for adventure back into the woods on Friday with my mountain bike and my riding pal, Amy. We've both been getting a lot better since we've been riding twice a week, so I thought we'd mix it up a little bit by riding some new single track we saw, as we saw it, making left-right decisions at forks in the trail by what looked the more spectactular. I went down one impressive little descent, Amy conquered another. After about two, two and a half hours of riding, we found ourselves by The Rock, where Evan and I used to sit and enjoy the moderate calm of a Frick evening, or take friends who were visiting from out of town and wanted an alternative to bars or junk food. We eyed the two steep options for descending down and decided to take the long way around instead.
"Just so you know, I'm totally down for riding around, but when we find ourselves here again, I think we could probably ride this. Look at this line here. Or this one," I said to Amy as she placed her bike in the opposite direction.
She came around to my side and gave it a good look.
"Like right here," I tripoded down to a lower point on the trail, "if you can get here and go down this way..." I shifted my weight back and changed my mind." "Actually this feels pretty sketchy trying to start at this grade." I walked down like a baby, like I have been prone to do many a time on steep parts like this.
At the base of the trail, I waited for Amy who was still poised at the top of the hill. I got out my phone to take a picture but when I did, it looked like she was getting off her bike. With a slight sigh of relief, I began returning a text message I saw while I waited for her to carry her bike down like I did. Then I heard a big scream and saw her flying through the air. Her helmet broke, her saddle's bent, she's alive and walking now but has a splitting headache and can't quite piece together what made her fall or what she first hit when she landed. First big crash I think ever for her, and definitely the expected big crash of the season, and not too much worse for the wear. I'm just waiting for mine, I've had plenty of road rash crashes, plenty of scabs, but if there's a crash left in me it's gonna be a doozy.
Later that night, I called Amy to make sure she was okay as I packed the car with Rachel, Eric, and Soupie to head to Trexlertown to race the Nittany Lion Cross race. I was a bit bummed on it since earlier in the week when it became clear we would definitely be staying in a hotel rather than camping (possibly my favorite part of cyclocross season), and it would be a $100/night hotel rather than a $40 one (so $25+tax each rather than $10+tax). As a chronically unemployed and unhireable person, that's a lot of money tacked onto the $28/person drive and the race fees. But I sucked it up. It's not my race, not my season. Not yet, anyway. I also wasn't sure how I was going to fare on the course, because it wasn't jungle cross, which is apparently my sport, and was a pretty roadie-friendly course. I was also falsely under the impression that they were going to be racing the elite women along with the beginners, which I found out wasn't true on the car ride down, which got me a bit more relaxed about the event. Once I saw that yellow tape as we pulled in to park, my blood started pumping a little and I started feeling the good party vibes of the day. I told Rachel I wasn't excited, but I sort of was. How could you not be? I am a human being, after all, not a monster.
After a bunch of fumbling with the registration people who were classically disorganized, I filled out my USA Cycling day pass only to be told it would be $50 for me to race for a day.
"Uhhh.......uhh.....I don't have that much money," I murmured, recounting the $35 in my hands I'd been reluctantly prepared to hand over. "Can you hold on to my license form?"
I rode back to the car, eyes tearing up as I suddenly realized how much I did, in fact, want to race, now that I couldn't (and I mean, come on, I really couldn't spend $50 on a race I would have maybe come in with the top half of the field, maybe; that's money that could go to a plane ticket somewhere, or writing contest entry fees, or manuscript reading fees, or groceries for the week, or anything at all besides a 45-minute bike ride through some grass). Soupie tried to give me more money to pay my way into the race, but I couldn't take it. So I drank a soda and rode my bike around and tried to lift my spirits, and by the time the women's field was lined up, I was excited for Rachel and not feeling too bad about myself.
Everyone crashed or mechanicalled. Nobody did well (Rachel actually finished in good standing, but she had a pretty major crash and is pretty bruised up). The field was dry and dusty and as people rode, the grass tore up under their tires. It was also the first official race of the year, with a lot more people racing than last weekend, and no one seemed to remember how to ride their bikes. The women were having a hard time climbing up the first punchy little hill, and guys were having a hard time turning after descending the same punchy little hill. Everyone was turning wide and taking down course tape, tripping over the barriers, and having a hard time keeping their lines. Probably for the best that I stayed on the side lines drinking a beer at the beer tent and cheering on my friends, counting the seconds between them and the wheel they were chasing.
Today, we were gonna go mountain biking but it's a bit wet outside from the rain last night. The Steelers are on. I gotta pack for Boston. And tonight, Repo Man.
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