too bad it wasnt a "real" mountain bike ride...

Saturday's ride was a big one...60+ KM and I successfully linked two trails together, two of the most unmarked, steepest and most difficult trails in the little book of pain I use to scout what are usually easy fire road climbs with short sections of single track...what some would NOT consider a real mountain bike trail. But I think any ride you do on a bike is called a bike ride, if its in the mountains, in the dirt, then perhaps...call me crazy...but a mountain bike ride...and with Loni getting an Extreme Makeover on thursday night, she was begging for a little abuse in the dirt.

City Loni...



becomes Dirty Loni...





Big climbs, worth it for the views, quiet like you cant imagine, cold enough air to put arm warmers on at one point, descents roughly constructed of fist to head sized loose jagged rock chunks and enough off-trail exploring with an empty water bottle and not enough food to warrant calming myself down a few times. Seriously. I had to keep repeating my mantra of "this is adventure cycling, if it was easy everyone would do it..." as I painfully decided which song on my barely charged iPod I wanted to listen to as I froze to death in the hills high above Firenze, lost, out of water, and off the trail. Check the late in the day video here...note the hysteria setting in. I still had several miles of climbing and one of the gnarliest descents of my life AFTER this, and the brutal climb back to the car.

This is how it started...



this is how it ended...



Bot loads of this in the middle...



water stop Italian style



cutting through properties...











following sometimes shady trail markings...



up mountain passes...



following pilgrimage markers...







Climbs climbs and MORE climbs...





some more like stair cases than trails...









But with views for days!










can you see the road I was on only a few minutes before... below...
You know Im a sucker for the little guys.....









and look who buzzed into the shop while I was blogging this...a true sign summer has started, the first rhinoceros beetle of the season!



the ride journal reveals this little gem...

"a symphony of birdsong, the grumble, crunch, pong of overinflated tyres on ancient gravel road, the wind echoes softly through stalk trimmed pines (or are they oak?) heart beats heavy rhythm as a plastic jar full of trail mix comically keeps time from deep within my handle bar bag. This place offers me transcendence, these wheels carry feeling up and over, siempre un altra colle! there is always another hill! Not unlike Oregon before Lewis and Clark, not unlike Yosemite before Ansel Adams, and not unlike riding at Annadel before Mark Twain's Daughter was even born - amazing!"

Scotty.