Sunday 14 May – Forestville & Manly Dam (a 3pm ride)

Mountain bike riding is definitely the bees knees – and afternoon riding turns out to be a Really Good Thing too!

Following a shift in plans to accommodate Mothers Day, we managed to pull together a brief afternoon ride from the retirement home on Cook Street, Forestville, over to Manly Dam and back. Rees, Whisperer and Stephe were joined by Wayne “T-Bone” for the ride (so named because of a very scary moment right at the beginning of the ride, when T-Bone thought it would be sensible to follow Stephe (no-one had told him what a silly idea that was sure to be!), hurtling down a hill at high speed, just as Whisperer turned left across his bows to get on to the right track…). In any case, no-one died (although, later, as Rees managed to go over the handlebars, T-Bone looked scarily like he was going to try to live up to his name one more time).

From the Retirement Home, we did the standard ride to the turn off that leads to the Scout Hall, but diverted at that point up on to the Oval, across to Wakehurst Parkway, across the road and along the water pipe to a section of the track that leads down to Eva’s Track (Allambie Heights?). After a quick (great) loop around the top, we scooted along Eva’s Track, joining in to Manly Dam at the top of the killer hill. We were all feeling strong (T-Bone had attempted to put us off our game early, be declaring that his fitness may be suspect – but he managed to finish the ride still elegantly lifting the bike off every jump without any apparent ill effects), and the pace was reasonably solid.

Whisperer clearly had his Vita-Brits this morning, as he pushed on every hill (sadly, his competitive spirit became more apparent on each occasion that we came across some other hapless soul on any hill along the track!). There were quite a few folk out and about, but the weather was perfect, the tracks were fantastic, and much fun was had.

A brief pinch flat on the way home (around the technical section of the standard Forestville track) failed to dampen our enthusiasm at all.

Rees deserves a special mention for moving into the “For real Maturity, Brian ain’t got nothing on me” award category, and was Very Sensible almost the entire way (or, was that just after he sliced the top off his knee, in the absence of knee pads, while following Whisperer over yet another silly drop?(!)).

Anyway, it was great – you should have been there! Unfortunately, in the absence of Doug (which was a Very Bad Thing), we have no photos, no GPS, no nuthin’! Ah well.