Hmm. It was too perfect. Something had just struck me: I had a blue bike and a blue helmet, Zach had a green bike and helmet, Trey had orange, and Johanna had black and pink. It just seemed to fit, and I inwardly laughed to myself. (I would hope it was to myself... the alternatives aren't very attractive, hahahae.) Anyways, we were all set for a nice ride through the mountains; it was my first time going dirt biking for real! (There was a fake first time two years ago, but it was much less glamorous and hardly counted in the first place.) We all sat on our bikes and surveyed the path ahead; yup, it'll be great! Ten minutes later I finally got my back started and going after dozens of previous attempts ending in a pathetic stallout even before I'd moved an inch. I wasn't very used to the... well, anything really. It was all strange and new territory for me. A dozen or two yards down the way I stole a look back and saw everybody staring up themselves. We were off! I turned left at the road, only to find out we were going right. So I tried to turn around, but stalled out. Ugh. Nine minutes later I got it going again, and I puttered away. This was Johanna's second time biking, so she wasn't super confidant herself in terms of going fast, so she and I went slow down the road while Zach and Trey went off the road and cruised amongst the trees and went up the hills a little ways and came back and so forth. Eventually I got bored of just going slow along the main road and went off into a little baby clearing. I navigated between the trees and bushes and rocks, but stalled it again. Eventually I got it going again, only to stall it promptly again. Everybody else stayed in the general area, and kind of more or less drove super sloppy circles around me while I tried to start it again. It was slightly frustrating. Johanna said a word of encouragement whilst puttering by, and Zach gave me another tip for starting it. After getting going again, we went back out on the road so I could get used to driving around and not stalling out before reentering the woods. So off we went.
By and by I found myself a little ways up front, Zach and Trey a bit behind going off the road for a bit, and Johanna trailing not too far behind me. All of a sudden I broke out from the trees and found myself amidst a large grassy area with loping hills and no rocks. Then I got excited: here was a nice spot to finally drive around not in a straight line without trees to get in the way and make me stallout! So I started driving wherever I fancied in this grassy mountaintop fieldy area. And then, it clicked. I got it. At once, everything made sense and it was as if I had been seeing through a mirror darkly, but now it was clear! Now I didn't take the easiest, clearest route, I instead went wherever my heart longed to. At one point I came across a sudden rise in the ground (i.e. a hill or bump) and gave the throttle a good burst and did a little baby jump! Both wheels got off the ground maybe twelve inches or so; it wasn't much, but I was stoked! Then Zach arrived, and together we drove around in a seemingly random fashion going up hills and through ditches and so forth. It was amazing!
After that everything was fun. I didn't have to think near so hard about what I was doing, and I could go wheresoever I pleased. Eventually Zach and I found ourselves ahead of the others a little ways. There was a cute little rectangle of tall grass off to the left that ran alongside the road for a good long ways, so we turned off. Down further to the left ran a a beautiful stream, and we both puttered slowly along the better to get a good look at it. Zach even stopped altogether to gaze at it and take it all in. I puttered past him, and then he started pointing straight ahead to where I was heading; evidently we weren't turning around here but were going to continue along down the road. A moment later I turned my gaze back from the stream to where I was going, and noticed something funny: the grass up ahead didn't look like grass. It was much coarser and... huh, that's funny, it looked almost like the top of trees. All at once my mind became undeceived and I deciphered what I was looking at: it was a gorge! It was too late to turn around now, I was only a few feet away from the edge. "Here goes nothing!" I said to myself, "Guess we'll just have to try and ride it out and make it up the other side." I crashed and ripped through the brush and little trees, reached the bottom without dying, and then a grin creeped across my face. "Heh heh, I got this." I added more throttle as I started up the other side, and halfway up, the brush and little trees were too thick and the throttle not enough, and all at once I just stopped where I was. The bike didn't even fall over, and I was still sitting down when I took my helmet off and started laughing. Meanwhile, Zach didn't know how deep the gorge was, for all he knew it was a veritable mountainside cliff. He ran over quick as he could, and when he reached the top and saw me on the other side, he too burst into laughter. By this time Trey and Johanna pulled up and also got their fill of comedy. I started beating down the brush so I could push the bike out, and then Zach and Trey came and helped me, and together we got it up the other side of the gorge.
We all decided to take a quick break and laugh about what happened and recount it back in detail. Had I gone about a foot and a half more to the left, I would've ran straight into a boulder at the bottom of that gorge, and it'd've been a whole different sort of story. Handily, I walked away with only a handful of scratches on my hands. Anyways, I ran down to the stream to slake my thirst, and upon my return we set off again. The rest of the day was loads of fun, (Trey did a lot of cool tricksy stuff on his bike, like riding up in a semi-circle along a super steep sheer rock cliff, among other things) and on the way back I got into fifth gear going some fifty odd miles an hour. It was exhilarating and left you wanting to keep going on forever, but darkness has a way of convincing one it's time to call it quits, and so we packed up and left. So ended my first trip to the mountains for bike riding. Hopefully there'll be more to come!
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