While I was at Senor Kellys bike shop I ran into an American guy. I forget his name so I'll call him Joe. Joe was an expert mountain biker from Austin who had move down to Mexico to live cheap. He said he had some bad injuries and had to quit racing at the elite level. Now he was hanging out in Mexico and helping out with the bike shop. While I was in renting the bike he said he would show me the mountain biking trails outside of town for free. He wanted a workout and I could go with him.
I met him the next day about a half a mile from the hotel. He was good to go. The first thing we did was jump a barbed wire fence. I trusted him, so off we went.
It was dusty and desert landscape. At the beginning we had to dodge a big iguana who was in the dirt road. After jumping another fence we hit the trail that he and Senor Kelly had helped build. It was winding singletrack. After bit of climbing Joe was stopped up ahead. There were two horses was down the trail the other way. They didn't have saddles on so I didn't know what to think. Joe said something to them in Spanish. After a couple seconds they ran off.
Joe had names for all the technical sections of the trail. I was out of practice and couldn't ride a lot of them. One was called Diablo something or other and was impossibly steep. Joe said he had seen a few guys ride it. I was impressed.
The singletrack went on for a while. I wasn't clipped in to my pedals, so it felt weird to ride that way. I hung on for a while. I got off and walked more than normal. There was no way I wanted to get hurt in Mexico.
We finished on trail and rode to the next. I remember going by an agave field.
After several hours I was getting tired. We headed back to the shop and Joe was dropping he on all the hills. After we go back to the shop we said adios and I rode back to the hotel.
I'll never forget how nice Joe was to show me around. It was a very cool day of riding, one to remember.
Friday, January 27, 2006
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