Mountain biking adventure

Yesterday we had the great fun of going mountain biking with our good friends Mason and Emily. I really havent ever been officially "mountain biking" in the actual mountains so I was a bit nervous but excited as well. Once we started on the trail, which was beautiful, I was thinking to myself that it wasnt as hard as I had thought it would be. It was down hill for part of it so I coasted and looked at the scenery and all was well. Then came the switchbacks. Ordinarily that word would not cause fear to come into my heart but after experiencing my first down hill switchback I was terrified every time I heard the biker in front yell "switchback". I seriously came close to eating dirt so many times and thats even with me walking my bike. After one very scary switchback in which I nearly died I discovered that my brake had twisted, locking itself onto the rear tire. Emily was kind enough to carry my useless bike while I walked hers, hoping we would eventually find our husbands who had left us far behind. Apparently they were more confident in our abilities then they should have been. Thankfully a good samaritan saw our plight and stopped and actually fixed my bike. While standing watching him work his magic I unbelievably came close to falling off the side of the trail to my death. Apparently I was safer on my bike than on my feet. Who would have thought. So bike gets fixed and Emily and I are on our way again. We made it to the last mile which is apparently the steepest decline of the whole trail and very rocky. We decided to walk our bikes most of the way down, riding when it would flatten out a bit. While on one of those "riding" bits I must have misjudged the steepness and as I traveled down, hit a rock at a very high speed and completely flipped over my handle bars. I also took my bike with me and it rolled on top hitting my head in the process. Ouch!!! To say the least I was in pain. Very scary and yet pretty typical for one of my out of doors experiences. Again the husbands are nowhere to be seen so Emily and I finished the final leg walking, me limping, to the end. What we originally thought was going to be an easy 1 hour bike ride became a death defying three hour adventure. All in all though it was very fun and something I hope to do again. All but the flying off my bike part. Here are some pictures of the damage. I was hoping to have pictures of us all smiling and fresh looking after the ride but we could barely stand let alone put together a photo shoot so you will have to make do with seeing pictures of my battered body. ENJOY!