Muse back!
June 08, 2008 / Sunday
Joaquin Miller
"Why did you pick this park?" Aaron asked as we drove home.
"Because I like the name," I replied. He didn't believe me, but it's true. I saw it on a map last week while looking for East Bay rides and decided I wanted that one. That one! So that one it was.
Joaquin Miller is a small but fun park. I like the terrain, the tree cover, and the bazillion trails all over the place. I'd have liked it even more if we'd had a map, but all the trailhead map bins were empty. We'd heard that there were maps available at the ranger station, but we couldn't find the ranger station without a map. Hrmph.
There were two trails at this park I kept reading/hearing about: Chaparral and Cinderella. These were supposed to be the two most difficult (and, therefore, most fun) biking trails in the park. We headed down Chaparral, and after a while I decided I was not having any fun riding down what was essentially a giant staircase built with railroad ties, so we turned around and looked for Cinderella. After a full loop around the park, we finally found Cinderella, which was considerably more fun... right up until the very last portion, which scared the living daylights out of me.
This very last portion, it was steep. Steep so I couldn't stop, and littered with consecutive 1-2 foot drops that had me doing everything I could to pick a reasonable drop, steer for it, and ride it without killing myself. I don't know how many times I repeated "Don't try to stop!" and "Keep your weight back!" in my head. I seriously thought I was going to go flying over my handlebars. But finally, I reached the bottom, rubber side down, with nary a scratch. My quads were shaking, but not because they were tired. I think it was from all the adrenaline (or simply from being scared to death about... death!). Later, when I looked at my HRM graph, I noticed a strange little section where my heartrate went up dramatically going downhill. (Usually, my heartrate goes down on the downhills because I don't have to pedal.) Bottom of Cinderella? Yes it was.
I'm pretty sure I cheated death. Hooray for all those 1up mushrooms I keep everywhere. :)
June 8, 2008 10:38 PM | Mountain
Comments
nice work! i've been to that park--very steep, very beautiful.
Posted by: heather at June 9, 2008 02:00 PM
whew! i'm laughing ONLY because you made it out without a scratch. i will confess to holding my breath while i reading it though. =)
(oh damn, i have a 1up mushroom for you but the dogs ate it!)
Posted by: i, andrea at June 11, 2008 02:54 PM