Get Knotted

After fridays slog I was thinking about hitting a trail centre on monday, hmm maybe not eh? Asked around for snow free routes on stw and Grum offered to show us round Farleton, okay then. Si picked me up and we met Grum and Johnnie near Holme, Grum had forgotten his biking shoes, oops, whilst getting ready a load of swearing form Johnnies car suggested he had somehow managed to forget his shoes aswell, oh dear, trainers on top of spds today then, good job they both had platform jobbies. Was a nice clear day cold wind but nice when you were out of it. Climbing up onto holme park fell the trail was completely free of snow, dry and dusty! eh? Dust? How? Getting to the top we could see cracking views of the lakes all covered in snow, lovely. Across the road and onto a lovely bit of singletrack, a few rock obstacles some twists through woods, bit of traversing and onto a lovely bit of downhill towards Hutton roof, both Grum and Johnnie managed to keep their feet on their pedals and me and Si were taking it easy getting used to riding unfamiliar trails. A quick road climb got us back to Holme park fell, bit of riding around the limestone pavement towards the knott got us to the top of the downhill track. Track was fast and fun, a scalextrix style twisty rutted line on the top section, then it opened out a bit, a few rock steps, twisted and turned it's way down to the woods where there were multiple lines with some jumps and drops thrown in. Grum showed us the big drops at the bottom, the smaller was getting on for 4 feet onto a nice little transition, I backed up for a run in, was a bit out of breath from pedalling back up the trail then when I looked back and saw the other 3 watching and grum with his fone out filming my heart rate shot up, got even more out of breath and started off feeling very nervous indeed. Managed the drop ok with a comedy buzz from the tyre hitting the (today redundant) mudguard at full travel. Whipped off the mudguard and went back for another go, nailed it again even smoother, cool. Then we had a look at the big one, 6 footer with an OK but not quite as easy run in and out, nooooo maybe another time, if this was my local patch and I was regularly hitting the 4foot smoothly and calmly I reckon I'd have a crack at the big one, there's some nice progression here, varying drops with easy run in/out just right for learning on unlike the stepdowns at lee quarry. We rode straight back up for another go, it really was a lovely day, climbing up a looooong steep climb, sun on our backs, views to die for, ace. Another run down a little smoother this time and hit the drop again, whoosh. After that we called it a day as the others wanted to get back, fast ride down to the cars, I flipped the bike upside down and looked for my multi tool to undo the bolt up front wheel....when I remembered I'd not had the multi tool out yet today...which meant, yep the front wheel wasn't bolted in! Eeek! I'd fit the axle by hand then completely forgotten to do up the pinch bolts, so just 5mm of hand tight threaded axle holding my front wheel on! Argh! Like waking with a bad hangover trying to remember the embarrassing things you did last night after getting completely mullered, the flashbacks of the ride came back to me, that steep downhill to hutton roof, the downhill track, the drop, several times! I started to feel a little queasy. I shall try very hard to never ever do that again. A full on sugar rush from a slab of cake and a coke in the car on the way home sorted me out. Cheers to grum for the guiding, only a tiddler but that was the first spring ride!