MTB

Variety is the spice of life; well at least that’s what I’m told. With that in mind, I was fortunate two weekends ago to do something different, and try something new. Mountain biking. Mountain biking is a pretty big deal here in Costa Rica, perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it’s always biking weather and that more than half of the country’s population lives in a valley between two mountain ranges. Or maybe it’s just one of those things, like how there was a ridiculously high amount of Johnnie (sp?) Walker in Laotian small towns based on the income in those towns. (And why only scotch and no regular whiskey?) My bet’s the former. But, back to the story, after the All Volunteer Conference I received a call from José, one of my two bosses (the conference is a three day get together of all the volunteers in country to share ideas, receive training, and engage socially (my team won trivia night!)).He called asking if I wanted to come through on my one time, off hand statement that I'd like to go mountain biking with him sometime. Because I'm a man of my word, I said yes.

So, after a ridiculously early 5:30 wake up, bus ride to the bus stop at the turn off to my county, and a pick up from José (he was coming from the other way but passing by) I was at my first mountain biking event. It was impressive. As I said, mountain biking is a big deal here, so a bunch of the various mountain biking teams have formed an organization that works with communities to put on mountain biking events. They are essentially races-except no one keeps time and there are no winners. The route is marked, there are snack/water stops, everyone has numbers, some get t-shirts, etc (aka just like a race, but not a race). It was impressive. I say that twice because Costa Rica is not exactly proficient at event planning-but everyone was on a bike, had their number tied on, had water bottles filled, tires pumped, and had checked in by nine o'clock-the official start time. Like, not 9:15, not 9:05, but 9:00. It was impressive. Unfortunately, being a race day sign-up, I didn't get a t-shirt-but I still got two energy bars, so what's there to complain about? (There is one thing, I'll get to it in a minute).

The race was awesome. I had a blast. Of course, I love riding bicycles, so that may have been part of it, but not all of it. It was advertised as the 'Hanging Bridges Route', and we did indeed cross five different hanging bridges. Being hanging bridges, they were all too narrow and unstable to ride over, so we walked that part. I walked some other parts, like up the toughest hill, and the one really technical part of the race. But I'm here to write about it, and lost my pride long ago, so I think walking was the best decision. Most of the race was on dirt roads throughout the Rio Frio district of my county (SE of where I live). It's green. It's pretty. Lots of pretty fields, some nice rainforest. Some great vistas. Some of the road was on narrow trails through the banana fields. Main object during these areas was to avoid running over rocks or hitting myself on the metal fencing and cable supports. Some of it was on dirt trails through the forest by the river. Absolutely beautiful. Main objective was to avoid rocks. A small part of the race was through what was essentially a small stream flowing down into a creek. This was the most difficult terrain of the race. Think of the muddiest road/trail you've ever seen in your life, fill it with rocks and small boulders. This is what we were riding through. Well, I wasn't riding. Unless there is some secret I'm not aware of, it was during this part that I learned that mountain biking is essentially a test of who can best grip his handlebars while continually saying 'Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit' to himself. Oh, and avoiding the big rocks. That's where the skill comes in: avoiding big rocks. The wonderful bike that José's brother-in-law loaned me performed beautifully, I only broke one spoke. Not bad for a first timer. Not good either.

The only thorn in an otherwise rosy ride was the fact that at one crucial turn in one of the banana fields the sign indicating for the riders to turn right had been taken down (not exactly sure by whom, or why). José and I had met up at a fruit and water break, then crossed over the bridge and ridden through the forest alongside the river. There wasn't anyone close in front of us, and the guys behind us had waited at the bridge for some other riders. So, we entered a banana field on our own. At the T-intersection it wasn't clear which way to go, as there were trails and bike tires in both directions. We chose left. We should've chosen left. We were in the bottom right hand corner of the field, but instead of cutting through this bottom right corner to get to the road, we road all the way through it to the left edge, then all the way around a giant square back to almost where we had started. As José said, the race was 45 km, but we rode 50.

I'm excited to take part in another event, and hopefully won't break anything if I'm allowed to use a borrowed bike again, and yes, I'll make sure to bring a camera next time (unless I'm again coming from a previous trip where I didn't have it). Thanks for reading! Please send grammatical corrections.