Bike report – Sherwood Pines

Chris and I spent a few hours mashing the suspension on our bikes Weds evening at Sherwood Pines near Mansfield. For me this was a confidence–building session, for Chris it was simply a case of seeing if I'd follow him over and off increasingly scary stuff until I twitched.

We started with a nice blast along some tame singletrack until we came to the first play area – a few small jumps and rollers to practice on – we both managed to leave the ground with respectable ease and soon got bored, so we moved round the corner to the section with a nice dirt jump and some steep downslopes where, last time we were here, Chris was throwing his hardtail off the drops but I wouldn't even try. This time I followed him down all but one of the drops and confidence was building all the time.

Next up, a terrific blast through some fast singletrack to the next area, which was the best yet. Last time we were here there was a large set of dirt jumps, but these have since been removed. In their place though is a number of rolling jumps, drops and transitions that proved to be blast to ride. Eventually though Chris's confidence and skill predictably outshone mine, as he hucked the Coiler off a nasty almost–vertical 5–foot drop that used every last inch of his bike's travel, plus a fair bit of his legs'. Despite several approaches I just couldn't find the courage to do it, pulling up each time. I'm regretting it now of course. I'm also regretting not taking a camera to capture a few shots of us in the air, grinning/grimacing dependent on our mid–air appraisal of the forthcoming landing…

Steven Carpenter : 11 Aug 2006 10:02 |  Tags: Pedals |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem