The easy trails at Schaeffer Farm kicked my butt. There, I've said it. Back in April at SK102 Susanita clued me in to Schaeffer Farm Mountain Bike Park, a set of trails maintained by MORE (Mid-Atlantic Off-Road Enthusiasts) in a park near Germantown, Maryland. That's not far from where I work, so I've had it in the back of my mind to one day head to the MTB park for a spin before heading home. It only took me 2 1/2 months to put this plan into action, which isn't too bad in my book (actually I had brought my bike once before intending to do this but was foiled by a rainy evening).
After a later-than-expected departure from work, a couple of wrong turns and a quick change of clothes in the parking lot I was ready to ride. I'd read up on the trails - the white trail was the "easy" warm-up trail and was the one which connected with the parking lot and so I figured I'd start out riding the white loop then maybe move on to more challenging stuff.
"Easy" at the parks I've ridden before means fairly broad, flat trails; however, clearly the good folks at MORE are more manly mountain bikers than I am, because this trail quickly turned into twisty, hilly single-track, some of which was a little beyond my skills. For example, there was one point where you bomb downhill, cross a stream and then head straight into a steep up-hill. I slowed down to cross the stream which left me going too slowly to make it up the hill on the far bank. So I stopped. I considered walking the bike up the hill, but no - I wanted to get this right. I walked the bike down to the base of the hill just past the edge of the stream and tried again, using the tiny bit of flat runway to get started. Well, I must have tried ten times. Sometimes I couldn't get my feet into the clips and get going quickly enough and I found myself on the hill before I even had my feet situated on the pedals. Other times I got part way up the hill but lost traction. Or I was in the wrong gear to push all the way up. Sad to say, I never got it; I finally gave up and walked.
There were any number of other obstacles and terrain sections which proved too challenging. The good thing about mountain biking is that, unlike sea kayaking, you can always walk the tough parts. When you're in your kayak and you find yourself in four foot breaking waves you can't hop out, drag the kayak 20 feet to calmer water, then hop back in and resume paddling. With mountain biking you can always walk past that log obstacle or crazy jump. I skirted some steep drops into streams and a couple of logs. I fell once and would have fallen two more times had there not been trees alongside the trail against which I could steady myself. More times than I could count I wound up awkwardly grinding to a halt. It stinks being a newbie.
Also, as I had gotten a late start as I was riding the light started to fade a little - there was still plenty of daylight left but under the tree canopy it started to get a little dim. I'm great at manufacturing wilderness disaster scenarios in my mind and so I pictured losing my light and having to walk the bike back to the car in darkness with nothing but the single LED light on my keychain to guide me. This thought pushed me onward and I really kind of cranked as the trail opened up into a meadow towards the end.
In the end I made it back to the car with plenty of daylight left, loaded my muddy bike (how is it that mountain bike trails are always muddy, even in dry weather?) and headed home. Actually, I headed to Thai Noi where I picked up some veggie pad thai for dinner. I must have been quite a sight, all muddy and scratched, and I'm sure they were happy when I paid for my food and got on my way.
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