A Tremendous Adventure

Last Saturday afternoon I had this great idea. The great idea, in theory went like this: My wife would drop off my two sons, Eric and Ryan, and me near Payson Lakes and we would ride our bikes over the hills and through the vales and get picked up at the cute little white church in Birdseye. The great idea in reality went like this:
Shortly down the descent from the trailhead we met up with a walking lady and two very large dogs. The lady was barking sharp commands that sounded a lot like “Be nice Rover, don’t bite this guy or his two sons”. It was just my slick and ever-so-predictable luck that we met up with ‘dog lady’ in a spot on the trail that I had to actually get off my bike and carry it across a little creed by balancing on a fallen aspen tree. I tried to avoid direct eye contact with either of the two dogs, but in the back of my mind I had planned out how to apply a firm guillotine choke on whichever dog decided to strike first. I must say that in that sort of strange way I was slightly disappointed that there was no guillotine choke. I did notice, however, that the larger of the two dogs seemed to be saying to me that he was letting me off the hook because I was about to experience some self-inflicted hardships that would pale in comparison to a vicious dog bite. I hate when stupid dogs are right.
Shortly after we got by ‘dog lady’ and her two mutts, we found ourselves at the front end of the only real ascent of our trek. It could be described (by an in shape person) as a mild incline for about a mile or so. I was describing it as “holy crap, what is the deal with this hill, we are supposed to be riding downhill to Birdseye, not uphill”. About half way up this enormous incline, I was churning away on the pedals – I’m sure my huffing and puffing, and ooooing and aaaawing sounded exactly like “ol’ number nine” coming down the track. Do you remember me mentioning that I just so happen to be diabetic? In an instant I was experiencing a hypo-glycemic state. I can recall a few things with foggy recollection – I was on my back looking into the sky, my heart was pounding, repetitive yawning, nausea, and oh yes, Eric was unraveling a protein bar and jamming it into my face saying “eat this – it has a lot of carbs”. I think the Boy Scouts of America should grant him the Lifesaving Merit Badge for his efforts. Soon I was on my feet, then back in the saddle and I found myself at the fork in the trail.
The initial portion of the right fork (that actually heads toward Birdseye) is a lot like hopping into a barrel and going off Niagara Falls. Soon my brakes were screaming “please…no more…you are killing us” and the wheel hubs were chanting “let’s roll, baby”. As I got used to being on the bike on a surface other than a paved road, I felt compelled to appeased both the brakes and the hubs by extending my fingers and allowing the bike to pick up some pretty good steam. This is the part where I must say that it was a beautiful location to ride a bike. It had been raining earlier that day, so everything had a sheen of dampness on it. The vegetation was tall and green; the air was cool and refreshing. I managed to survive being barkbusted by several tree branches, I even found that I could tolerate all the bushes bushwhacking my bare shins. However, I found out that I was no match for the 8-inch stump that was on the edge of the trail hidden in the grass. Hitting this stump was kind of like those rumble strips on the side of the road that are there to wake you up if you drift into them, but on a much larger, and more painful, scale. Like my glycemic episode, I don’t remember everything with precision. I remember wondering what the back tire of my bike was doing above my head. I remember the seemingly slow motion episode of my forehead having direct contact with the very hard ground – I think this bang caused the local Richter-scale to register a four-point-nine (yes, I was wearing a helmet – thankfully). As I laid face-down in the dirt, I remember trying to figure out how to breathe – I had the breath knocked out of me when I landed on my gut with a camera draped around my neck. When I finally made it to my feet and was assessing the damages, I was pleased to see that my bike was relatively unscathed. I came out of the ordeal with road rash on both knee caps, a nice painful bruise on my inner thigh, a slight headache, two smashed fingers, a bruise on my belly and most importantly; I came out of it with confidence that I can survive an end-over-end bike crash and live to tell about it – bring it on, brother.
The rest of our adventure passed without incident. We even stopped at a couple of beaver ponds and caught a few little fish. We made it to the church in Birdseye shortly after dark and within one minute my wife showed up to haul our tired, wet, sore, and muddy butts back home. I would describe the whole adventure as “TREMENDOUS!”