This past week’s weather forecast had lots of rain, including on our bike trials group ride day, which had a 70% chance of rain. Regardless, I gambled with the weather and loaded my trials bike onto my bike rack and headed to work to be ready just in case we got lucky. Well, we did get lucky weatherwise – it never rained. However, everyone else in our local crew had other plans and/or appointments for the afternoon, so none of them could ride. I decided I wanted to ride anyway, but didn’t really feel like going anywhere alone to ride, so I came home to ride in the yard.
Over the past few years I’ve collected a decent number of wooden pallets. Not enough to make anything useful for the likes of Charlie Rolls or anything, but certainly enough to keep me busy. So, armed with a stack of pallets (including one that looks like a section of train track), I was ready to build some trials features in the yard. I even made use of a tree stump, which is great for practicing since it has limited real estate on which to balance.
My left shoulder has really been bothering me over the past several months. Yes, apparently I have another nagging injury that apparently has no plans of going away on its own. I probably need to go see a doctor, but in the meantime, I’ve been trying to take it somewhat easy to avoid really wrenching the shoulder joint. So while I’ve been wanting to practice things like lunges, sidehops, and wheel swaps, instead I’ve mostly been doing smaller moves. That includes things like more skinnies, which you’ve probably noticed if you’ve been following my YouTube channel.
For this ride, I decided to try a mix of relatively small moves like skinnies, small gaps, and small rollups, as well as some small pedalups. Only one line was ‘biggish’ (for me), and that was a rollup and drop off a stack of five pallets. I’ve done bigger moves, but this one was a little scary for some reason – probably since I was dropping onto a small target. Somehow I managed to nail it first try, which is always a bonus. Some of the other lines too a bunch of tries, but that’s fine too. If trials was easy, it would be boring, with no sense of satisfaction.
Despite having to ride solo this week, I had a good time, got some exercise, and completed a few lines that I am proud of. Not too bad a deal, actually. Of course any day on the bike is better than not being able to ride.
0 Comments