I Miss It

<It's November 29th, 2007.  I think I might have taken my last mountain bike ride of the year over the Thanksgiving weekend in Mountain Home, Arkansas.  It's been a week tomorrow since I took that ride and being back up here in Macomb, Illinois, where the weather has turned significantly colder, I'm missing riding.  I suppose I could go out in the cold but I guess I'm not that hard core.  I'm hoping that after a little cold spell here there will come one or a few of those odd winter days when the weather turns abnormally mild and pleasant and all you want to do is get outside and play because you've been couped up in your house for weeks.  Yes, I'm sure we'll have a handful of those day through the winter and I'll say to myself, "Kelly, oh my God, the weather!  The weather is pleasant.  Got to get out there and do something!  Ooh ooh, go for a ride at the park!  Awesome idea."  And I'll do it.  But then I might think how I love to ride, but not necessarily ride alone, so I'll call Bryce and see if he would go riding with me and after he says no, I would rethink riding at the park and start thinking about taking the dogs for a walk at the park because they love that.  That's usually how it goes.  But there are times when I say "to hell with not riding because I don't like riding alone", and then I'll ride alone anyway.> 

 On our Thanksgiving trip to Mountain Home, Arkansas to be with family my Uncle said to me that a guy recently was horribly injured out here when he went riding alone.  This was right before I was going to go out riding alone.  He told me the guy, who was a doctor, called his buddy to go riding with him.  Well it turned out the buddy couldn't go so the doctor decided to ride alone.  Apparently he was going downhill and started going too fastand couldn't slow enough to make the turn and of course had a horrible crash.  Broke his ribs, a lung collapsed, broke his collarbone, a leg, you know, it was bad.  Fortunately, and truely this was fortunate, his cell phone got reception and they found him in time. 

The Mountain Home area is absolutely beautiful.  I go riding at the Pigeon Creek trail system, which reminds me to make that another trail so I can get more points, even though I don't know what the points are for.  Apparently lots of people from Chicago and California are retiring out there.  It's a changing small town, lots of building going on which is kind of sad because it's taking away from the natural beauty.  And it's an awesome outdoors area, great for mountain biking, but the problem is only retirees' are moving in.  So you've got all this great outdoor adventure and it's not getting used because it's all old people who sit on their pontoon boats and local yocals who are so used to it they don't see it anymore.  They've got it all down there; caving, mountain biking, rock climbing, kayaking, hiking, it's all there and it's all retirees' not using it.  I'm so jealous of the ones that do live there.  I see that it could be a great outdoor peoples' paradise but they don't know about it. 

I've been ranting.  My friend Bryce says thats a midwestern thing.  We apparently start a story then it splits and suddenly your on an entirely different subject and you can't remember what your original subject was.  I think mine was that I am starting to miss mountain biking.  I guess when the mountain bike season is done in Colorado you guys start snowboarding.  Yup, just waiting for the snow to come now.  But we don't snowboard or ski out here.  We sled.  And it's the shit!  I put together a sledding video like my mountain bike video, only it's 40 minutes long.  It will be going up on youtube here soon.  You should check it out.  Whoever you are.  Which reminds me, I need to search and randomly choose random people to add to my friends list.  It could be you.  How exciting!

But yeah, so I'm missing mountain biking.  The trail is calling me.  I dream about it sometimes.  I really was not looking forward to winter this year because this was the first season I was into mountain biking the entire season long.  And now it's over.  Let it snow because I'm looking forward to the sledding season!  We have a great hill in our back yard.  We usually build a snow ramp if the snow is just right and oh the fun we have!  We call everybody and have big sledding parties, lots of fun.  Alot of sleds have had their final ride on our hill.  We decorate the hill with the sled corpses.  It's great.  In the summer time when people come over and we walk around the yard their like, "what are those?"  and they're pointing at the sled pieces and parts tangled in the trees.  We just say, "It's our sled cemetery."  We had a great sled, name of Green Lightening because it was green and very, very fast.  It's lifespan was 1997-2004.  It took it's final ride in my presence.  My brother was riding it  and something went wrong on it's way over the ramp and snap, the sled broke in two.  Very sad day.  It was everybodies favorite.  It had a place in all our hearts. 

Well, that's it from me I guess.  I'm missing mountain biking and am so looking forward to spring so I can get out there again!!

Heaveno,

Kallycat