Sunday 14 October 2018

Wild rides by white water

Yesterday I went on an epic adventure!
There was a party in the hills, 10 miles away, up a steep forestry track. The weather has been awful, with gales and torrential rain. My car broke down the day before (dead alternator) so there was no chance of driving there. Even if I had ventured there in a car I would have had to go home again, as I would have had to  face the prospect of a long walk from where cars could park uphill to the party.
Anyway, the weather broke yesterday evening, the rain reduced to an occasional drizzly shower, and the wind dropped from blowing a gale to breezy with gusts, so I decided I wanted to go for it on my magic bike! So we togged up, packed plenty of warm clothes and rode off into the night....
The road up to the party was very steep, very narrow, full of  flooded potholes and littered  with lumpy tree debris from the recently mellowed storm. A river runs alongside the road, and it was a raging whitewater torrent! In some places you had waterfalls on one side of the road running under the road to join the river..it was like one of those crazy film studio rides!
We made it to the party, and even after such an epic and crazy ride, I still had energy to dance and party til the early hours. I saw quite a few folks I haven't seen for ages, and and actually I got quite overwhelmed and emotional  (a couple of mohitas down). It struck me how I've spent more social time with my "field family" up and down the country than I have with people closer to home,  just due to the logistics of dealing with my fatigue.  I felt blown away and overjoyed. Like another layer of my chrysalis cocoon being sloughed off....God I love my bike!

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