Starlight Beach Ride

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My Avalon to Starlight Beach mountain bike ride - August 27, 1998

Summary of the ride: I went from Avalon to the Isthmus by way of Empire Road, stopped for lunch, then rode to Starlight Beach (the end of the Island), skinnydipped in the ocean, then rode back to the Isthmus in time to grab a ton of food and drink and take a boat back to Avalon. (~47 miles)

Here's the e-mail I sent to a friend from Catalina Island after this awesome mountain bike ride.

Had that 47 miler today.. it kicked so much butt.. it was the most fun i've ever had mountain biking.. there was some crazy downhill, unbelievably steep uphill, tight rocky rutty singletrack (english? - really narrow trail with loose rocks and ruts - grooves cut out of the trail by rain which can catch you and throw you off your bike if you don't know what you're doing..)

oh, here's the really fun part.. when i got to the end of the island.. Starlight Beach, i scaled the mountain side down to the water (leaving my bike leaning against a fence), stripped naked putting my clothes on the big sunny rocks and hopped in the water! (nobody was around, i hadn't seen a human being for like 10 miles).. skinnydipping is cool! i highly recommend it!! (no, I'm NOT an exhibtionist) then i came in and air-dried (hey, I didn't bring a bathing suit, so you think I'd really bring a towel, either?), wiped the salt (from that pesky salt-water ocean) off my body with my jersey, dressed and climbed out.. it was great... all my clothes were almost completely dry (well, except for the shoes and socks, which were still totally soaked...)

oh, i forgot to mention that i crashed back past parson's landing (about 4 miles before the beach i stopped at). here's another biker vocab word.. ENDO - (watch it in use) so i was going along, minding my own business when i turn a corner and see this really super steep dropoff (mini cliff).. i looked at it, balancing on my bike, thought to myself, i can make it, all I have to do is just pop the front wheel over the lip, and I went for it... Problem was i underestimated the lip at the bottom (lip, you know, when it levels out quickly, abruptly)... As soon as I went over the edge, I knew I was gonna eat it. So it looked like this (i think), front wheel over the dropoff (mini cliff), weight back over the rear wheel, behind the seat (and i mean PERFECT form... well, perfect form for going down a steep cliff that levels out nice and SMOOTH!), rear wheel over, ok, we're goin down now, and it's STEEP we're talking 70 deg angle and about a 4 foot drop.. i look at the lip and see it smiling at me, i know i'm dead, it's way too big, i can't roll my front wheel over it, so i run smack into it.. heading almost straight down (but with forward momentum), i STICK the front wheel into the lip (the front wheel ain't goin anywhere now, my suspension compresses, and boing! (thanks to the speedsprings, no rebound dampening) i go over the handlebars (thinking in the air oh man, i probably tacoed my front rim (taco- you know what a taco looks like.. what use is a front rim that looks like a taco? it won't roll, and you can't fix it (and i'm 7 miles from civilization))) so i fly through the air, tumble in midair thanks to my forward momentum and the lip that launched me off the bike, and do a roll when i hit the ground (martial-arts style, also perfect form (thank you harvard-westlake for teaching ju-jitsu!!)), and roll right up to my feet, still thinking, please let my bike be ok..., so i walk up to my bike and it's totally fine (well, it got scratched, but the bike already had tons of scratches.. it builds character.. the computer wire got pulled out of the computer (doh! now i won't know how fast i'm going or how far, or my average speed, et cetera...)) then i look myself over and see one little scratch on my left forearm, a little scratch on my right elbow (right over a scar), a little scratch on my left knee and a little tiny scratch on my right calf.. and nothing hurt... just a little blood... i laughed at myself and thought, huh, endo's are no real big deal!!! (fortunately this hasn't happened to me before) it wasn't until i was coming back from the beach much later in the day (and had to climb up what I rode down) that i noticed how far i flew (a good 5 plus feet, OVER this really rutty, rocky area).. I think God definitely pulled out a little miracle for this one.. I could've tacoed my front wheel, broken my rear derraileur (no gear shifting), bent my suspension fork, gotten a concussion, or a big bruise, or a big cut on one of those rocks, or landed in the bushes to my left (lots of little painful scratches)... hey, or I could've landed on my head and paralized/killed myself! Great!! Ok, not taking chances like that again.

So I did the biggest, scariest crash of my life, picked up my bike, and kept riding.. !! ;-p The ride kicked total butt.

What really made this ride so much fun was applying the skills I'd learned in bike trials to technical mountain biking. Read about it...