Cross!!!

Cyclocross has sucked us all in to it's massive (muddy beerstained) gravitational pull. Everybody is pretty much riding a cross bike these days in the store and making it out to cross practice and/or races. The great thing about cross racing is that it is short, and therefore good for us slobs. Also, the cross races here on the Island tend to be pretty technical, which is nice for us mountain bikers. What we lack in speed and endurance we can sort of make up for by not falling off our bikes. This is not a foolproof strategy however as some of us sometimes have a bit of a hard time not flying over the bars and into the bush, or in some other way separate ourselves from our bikes in a spectacular manner. But that's another story all together.
What I was going to write about today was our excellent Remembrance day cross ride. Since we all had the day off we decided to go for a cross ride at the Dump. We decided to ride blue bubble wrap and off we went. In about the first km we had two flats, and we were beginning to think that our supply of tubes would not be enough for our ride. But higher tire pressures and careful riding only made for one more flat for the rest of the ride. We soon found out that trail riding on cross bikes is quite a bit trickier then on the full-suspension rigs we usually ride. Cantilever brakes and narrow tires make for an odd fit in the mountain bike park. But man was it ever fun! Every little obstacle is challenging and we had a few epic bails. Most of us crashed a few times and at the end I had a sore knee, Justin had a sore hand, Andrew was bloodied up and Shayne was really feeling his injuries that he is still recovering from. The only one to escape relatively unscathed was Mitch. Even so, we all made it out and back to the parking lot after a two and a half hour ride, and we all had a blast. We'll definitely be heading out again soon. Cross you bastards!