Tuesday Two-fer

Yesterday's plan was simple.  Get up uber early, get some work done and then hit up Bradbury with the snow bike on my way to the Portland office.  Conditions at BB were varied.  The initial trails were well packed (some by snowmobiles) but as you got away from the parking lot it got dicey in some areas where the trails had seen little traffic (where are all of the Portland areas snow bikers???).  All was good though as I was able to lay down 7 miles of riding in 1:10.  I had planned on riding longer but once 8 am rolled around the twinge to get to work started to spark up (despite having plenty of hours in already).  No worries though since, before I headed out, I had seen another ride in the evening posted for Cape Elizabeth.  It's going to be a two-fer!

Early evening I met up with six others ready to rip the Cape E trails.  They were all running studs.  Me?  I was still on my snow bike.  This was going to be interesting.  Before we left, we met two guys who had just come off the trail.  They said that other than a glare ice corner right at the beginning, the rest of the trail should be fine for me. When we rolled, we quickly started to pick up speed and things were looking to be fun.  Fun for about 30 seconds that is, at which time I hit that glare ice corner.  I tried to ride it out by staying in a straight line and aiming for the snow on the opposite side but my speed was too great and the ice too lumpy so I was unceremoniously thrown to the ground and hurled into the woods ejecting both my bar light and gopro (too bad I hadn't turned it on yet!).  All seemed to be ok though so I got up and caught up to the group.

At this point I wasn't sure the ride was all that advisable but I was there so I'd give it another shot.  Glad I did.  There were plenty of sketchy, butt puckering sections but there was also lots of fun stuff and the added bonus of constantly scanning the trails for ice free areas kept things interesting and taught me a lot about line choices.  And then to top things off, I managed to catch Danze doing a pretty spectacular endo crossing a wet area.  Observe:

Finally, some GoPro success!

From go pro