The Wheelsucker Goes Mountain Biking at Rosaryville State Park

The Wheelsucker is not a mountain biker. Sure, he has a mountain bike – a 2007 Motobecane 26” hardtail - but he has only put just over 700 miles on the bike, and not all of those were off road.

But the ABRTers were going mountain biking, and the Wheelsucker noted that it was an incredibly warm and beautiful day, and riding in the woods would be really cool. So off he went to Rosaryville.

It turned out to be just Stu and Iain, though Sue Estes and some friends were also in the parking lot getting ready to roll. After soliciting advice on tire pressure, the Wheelsucker was off, following Stu and Iain. That lasted about twenty seconds. They were pulling away easily while the Wheelsucker was tiring and going faster than his skills allowed him to ride safely. A couple of almost-wipeouts later and they were gone up the trail. The Wheelsucker continued pushing, hoping that “practice makes perfect” and his MTB skills would improve.

Fortunately for the Wheelsucker, Stu and Iain would stop and wait at all the obvious waiting spots. The Wheelsucker would roll up, Stu and Iain would start pedaling again, and twenty seconds later the Wheelsucker would be riding on his own again. Twice the Wheelsucker rolled out ahead of them, but despite his best efforts would quickly realize he was holding them up, and would pull over to let the past.

At one of these stops the Wheelsucker rolled up gasping, and managed to comment that he was terrible on a mountain bike. Stu replied “but you look good”. Once again it is all about the look for the Wheelsucker (in the absence of any talent …).

Riding the trails on his own the Wheelsucker was trying to decide what he should be looking at, further up the trail to see how the next turn looked, or a short distance in front of him to check for prominent roots or ruts. The correct answer appeared to be both, at the same time. At one point the Wheelsucker lost focus and started considering how much of what we know of Socrates’ teachings is actually from Socrates versus what Plato wanted us to think of Socrates’ teaching, and how much of Plato’s writings are actually Socrates’ ideas and how much are actually original ideas from Plato, but nearly wiping out on a tree root convinced the Wheelsucker he needed to refocus more on riding.

After on lap in the “normal” direction and a short break, they rode the loop in the other direction. This added the excitement as the Wheelsucker would see a cyclist coming right at him from behind the tree that the Wheelsucker was trying to set up to turn at.

In discussion afterwards Sue consoled the Wheelsucker telling him that his challenge was not running tubeless tires at low pressure and needing a more aggressive tread on his tires. Despite Sue’s assurances, the Wheelsucker knows the problem is that he doesn’t know what he is doing. Or as he told Stu, it was a software problem.