Ride Lugged

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So I found some Irish guy on the interwebs that just moved to Prague too and mountain bikes.
We both were kinda looking for folks to ride with in a kind of passive way. We emailed back and forth a couple of times and settled for a Sunday afternoon ride. He was desperately in search of dirt after finding the long paved and busy trails around here. He claimed to only have brought his jump bike to Prague, but seemed willing to do just about any ride. So a 1pm meeting in the center of Prague…

(On a side note: Since our chauffeur from yesterday didn’t get to work or ride, Verča had suggested that they should go ride out of Prague somewhere while Mark and I headed off. Anyway, she got a call at about 10am but we were being lazy and didn’t want to answer. About 10:20 she listened to his message that they were meeting at 11. She was sure she couldn’t make it in time. I stuck my foot in her butt and told her to hurry up and get ready. By the time I had tightened her cranks from yesterday and put her bike in the car she was ready, and at 10:59 I kicked her out of the car about 350m from the prearranged meeting point. Not to see her again for 9 1/2 hours: read her story about Posazavska, when I kick her butt a bit more and make her type it!)

Where were we?
Oh yeah. The Irish guy, named Mark, right.
We rolled south to the Točna area I am beginning to frequent. We explored a bit and skirted a city golf course on some more urban singletrack and doubletrack along the river, avoiding a good 3km of tourist clogged asphalt. Score! Then we took the same route up to the airfield as I did last time with Verča. At the top we found the airfield full with up to 3 gliders in the air at one time and a couple of tugboat planes on the ground. It was a beautiful day; 85 degrees and clear blue skies, with a few puffy white clouds. Our direction/route was a repeat of the last with Verča, save some more exploring. Near the other side of the airfield, on a hunch, I took us up a big doubletrack.

We found more nice swoopy singletrack then all of a sudden I was confronted with what looked like a nice shore-style bridge. I slowed to inspect it a bit, when I saw that it was actually a big-ass gap jump over a ravine. We apparently found the local downhill spot. It was a super rad flowing section 750m long of dirt jump, berm, step, and gap jumps. Very well maintained. Very well built. Cool.

We rode up to the top of it which was strangely enough on a marked touristic trail. And had a great view back to the city below across the airport. We took a breather and watched a plane take off with a glider, haul it up, then come back down for a smooth landing on the grass runway. You could see people biking along trails a km and a half away. Rather pretty actually. A couple of normal not overly sportive 18ish year old girls rode by (not talking on cell phones, or shopping for shoes, or anything) on 10 year old clanging mountainbikes, and Mark and I took bets on whether or not they would drop in to the jump trail. Sadly enough they stayed on the doubletrack.

So we dropped in and rolled through the nice flowy and bermed options with a couple of very little jumps to make us feel good. We hit more flowing singletrack before heading south to the gravel-y knifeback trail and then looped back. We found a new section of singletrack with a nice fast descent and a 8in log to jump. I went to bronco over it when I quickly found out that my left lock-on grip was a bit loose. So I used about 60 of 85mm of the Reba, as I just barely got the front tire off the ground. The rear did it’s job fine and all was well. We zipped past the airfield again and descended back to the river along the trail I rode up on the Gerber a week or so ago. A few more trees have been cleared, and I had a blast doing little wheelie drops off the bridges and hips. There was another skinny and I tried but fell off a bit; and in the interest of my health decided to head on (after Mark made some comment about whether either of us knew the 911 number here. Would either of us be able to talk to someone on the phone in Czech, if we had to? Hmm, doubtful!)

Back along the bike trail by the river, we grabbed an ice cream at a trailside stand, and watched the silly rollerblading Czechs go by. Finally we headed back north along the east side river path watching the scenery of scantily clad women rollerblading and biking. We both talked about riding slowly, yet pedaled hard and pounded on the little hills. Mark talked about having lost a bunch of fitness but rocked it on a 35+ pound DMR steel jump bike with Profile cranks on a 1×9 setup. I hope he doesn’t get too fit, otherwise I won’t be able to ride with him!

We split and headed home and will probably ride again soon, maybe even a week-day afternoon.

Thats all for now,
check back soon.

-Cory