Maiden Voyage

I decided to go ahead and get a mountain bike and I did settle on the Gary Fisher Caliber, a full suspension mountain bike with a nice level of components. This morning I took her out for her maiden voyage. DH introduced me to the trails at Harris Lake.

There are three trails there and we did all three -- some sections twice. The trials have very creative names: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. I "separated" from the bike twice on the advanced trail but did not fall. I skipped some "moguls" on the advance trail as well and DH advised that if it said Black Diamond, I should skip that too!

We started out with the beginner loop, of course. As we approached the intermediate loop, DH realized that he had not locked the car so he went back to do that while I continued on. We met up again where the trail crosses the road for the advanced section. DH asked if I wanted to continue and I said that I wanted to go on and if it got to be too difficult, I would turn back and meet up at the car. We each went at our own pace -- with me in the rear doing the slower, more cautious thing as I learned the bike -- and met up ever now and then. After doing the advanced loop, we went back and did more of the intermediate loop and then I played on the beginner loop a bit more. I enjoyed it and I'm glad that I got the bike and I'm also glad that I went with full suspension.

As we loaded up the bikes on the car, we were like Dr. Evil and Mini-Me -- DH with his green Caliber 29er and me with the standard 26-inch model.