The cloud of dust settled around me as I assessed the damage. I could breath – that was good. Stand up? With a little (okay, a lot of) pain, yes. Blood? Nothing that would require a transfusion. “Are you okay?” my biking cohort Miyu asked. I looked myself over, taking note of the dirt now covering the entire right side of my body and the road rash lying beneath it all, “I feel like I used to after rugby games, so I think I’ll be alright.” With that I grabbed my bike –which after flying over my head, had landed several feet away in the bushes. A few tentative and painful steps brought me back on the trail and we were off to finish the evening’s ride.
Once we caught back up with the main group (a hodge-podge group of riders ranging from borderline professional to beginner – AKA me) Alex, the best rider out of the girls took one look at me and laughed. “Took a spill?” I explained how after hitting the third roller (a rounded mound that resembles a jump) on the trail I had misjudged my speed and caught way too much air, after my front wheel touched the ground I ended up flying over my handlebars headfirst before somersaulting to a stop. “So you’re trying to be Superman huh?” she teased. I enquired as to why, on my first attempt at mountain biking, I had been taken to an obviously advanced course that careened down a highly technical track. “That’s what Stu does to beginners,” Alex explained, “he likes to take ‘em up here and see what they got.”
Nice Stu.
After several more less-impressive spills, I found myself back on the lakefront enjoying a beer and the gorgeous view with my fellow riders as the sun faded and the air cooled. Taking the advice of other riders, I have invested in bigger tires and a pair of protective gloves for my next outing, which I am about to embark on in a few hours.
I may have just found my new sport of choice in mountain biking– and I can’t wait to see how far my new wheels take me.
-Ashley
Fun Fact: New slang words I have picked up and found myself using…
- Sweet As: meaning “cool” among other things, and yes, it was inevitable I would start saying this popular Kiwi phrase.
- Keen: finding something favorable or wanting to do something as in, "You can come to the movies if you're keen"
- Legend: a hip way of saying “thanks”
- Proper: used in conjunction with another word to legitimize it as in “are we going to throw the rugby ball around or play a proper match?” or “are you having a snack or a proper meal?”
- Skull: replacing the American phrase “chug” as in “skull your drink!”
- Chips: French fries
- Brilliant: excellent, great, wonderful “he was brilliant on the guitar”
- Car Park: parking lot
- Lift: elevator
- Dodgy: bad, undreliable
- Eh: (pronounced as the letter “a”, but slightly different than the Canadian “aye”) often used at the end of a sentence when expecting a response “the weather was a bit dodgy today eh?”
- Knackered: utterly exhausted
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