So yesterday was the first time I had ridden my mountain bike in a while. I rode at Norris in Knoxville about a month ago, but that was mostly fireroad stuff, but yesterday was singletrack at Steele Creek in Bristol.

I had been on the road bike a whole lot over the winter, even riding in sub-freezing temps a lot of times, doing a weekly ride on Wednesday's with some buddies and, of course, the occasional commute to and from work. I will digress for a minute and tell you about my commuting since my last real blog was about just that.

The first day I started, it was chilly outside, of course it was 7 in the morning, but I put on my jacket, windproof gloves and started out. The execution of my commuting plan worked flawlessly, however, my preparation...not so much. I had planned to take a set of clothes in on Mondays so I can have fresh clothes when I get to work, but, I forgot to include shoes, a towel and a few other things in my clothing stash. So, I had to bring all that in my backpack on the bike ride, which made for a very heavy and uncomfortable pack.

I also thought that the evening ride would be the most enjoyable part of commuting, the sun would be out, it would be warmer and it's the end of the day, right? Eh. In the mornings, I mostly have the road to myself, there aren't many folks out and about at 7am, but EVERYBODY is out at 5pm. I have to fight traffic all the way home, so the ride home takes about 15 minutes longer than the ride to work, go figure. Nonetheless, commuting by bike from exit 14 takes me 15 more minutes to get to work than if I drove my car all the way there from exit 19. Not a bad trade, plus I get to ride my bike more often. Hopefully I can commute more often which means I'll have to plan my days ahead of time, which in turn is not good, because I never plan for anything.

Back to my original topic, mountin biking. Since I had all this "fitness" from riding the road bike all winter, I figured that yesterday's mountain bike ride would go fairly smoothly. I did remind myself of some suffering that would take place, after all, my mountain bike is a singlespeed, a far cry from the 30 gear combinations on my road bike. So, I knew it would hurt a little.

The first part of the ride was lots of climbing, it was tough, but I made it to the top of the first climb without incident. I found out shortly after that, that I had the rhythm of an old white man. I rode terribly and wiped out a couple of times. It's a different animal that mountain bike. Roadies have it so easy and now my legs look like I've been mountain biking. Welcome Summer!

On a not so lite note, after my ride yesterday, Amanda told me that her sister's house burned down while they were out at the store. So, if you could please pass along some good karma, thoughts and prayers for them, that would be awesome.