Rocks and Logs, We Ride It All

This location has several spots throughout the trails that offer good places to ride trials. In the summer, when the afternoons are longer, we usually session several spots for each ride. Lately when riding here, we’ve been sticking closer to the parking area. But this time we wanted to go further back to an area that provides a trials playground with a bunch of different opportunities for all sorts of lines.

Once we arrived at the spot we planned to ride, we immediately noticed that Mother Nature had provided us with a new feature! A tree had fallen across one of the typical rock roll-up lines. We’ve ridden this spot many, many times over the years. Despite still being fun after so many times riding it, having new challenges is a bonus!

Tony and I started out trying to get up over the log onto the boulder ledge. I just didn’t have the mojo that day. And it’s actually tougher than it looks. The ground is soft and spongy, with occasional (sometimes hidden) little rocks and various imperfections, making the runup less than ideal. I didn’t have the “oomph” to do it static, and couldn’t get the runup figured out to do a pedalup. Tony, on the other hand, nailed it on the second or third try.

And then Jim came over to give it a go. Jim tried various ways to get up and over, eventually figuring it out and getting it done. And then, of course, he had to do it in the other direction, which is actually a bit scary, due to the challenges of getting the front wheel onto the tree from a downward incline. And of course the tree was rather slippery. After a number of goes, Jim nailed that way as well. Since the struggle and the process are interesting, I decided to make a second video in addition to the group ride highlights, in order to capture Jim’s efforts with the tree.

Despite being sunlight-challenged, we actually managed to session several different spots in this particular area before deciding it was time to call it quits. We had some cool successes as well as some great fails – but that’s all part of the trials experience, isn’t it?

There was also a good bit of humor throughout the ride, which is one of the magical ingredients of the group ride experience – at least it is with our crew. One of which is the reason for the video title. If you’ve watched many of our group ride videos, you probably know that even after years of riding, Jim still has not been able to wrap his brain around doing pedal kicks. Tony provided some good ribbing to Jim about not doing pedal kicks, which included the phrase that became the video title. One of the other examples was Tony’s reaction to Scott doing lines that can be a bit ridiculous. In Tony’s words, “Scott’s ability to fear is broken.” Some of that apparent lack of fear shone through during the prior week’s group ride.