Another day of riding, and another broken spoke! No comprende!
After breakfast we headed out past Nuevo Arenal to a different hotel/resort called Mystica. This place is owned by an Italian couple, and they boast that there are good mountain biking trails nearby. We contacted one of the owners and made arrangements to head out there, get some good Italian food, and do some riding. Mystica was a very cool resort—we’d probably stay there for a day or two on our next trip, and the food—belisimo!
We got some directions for a ride, which included lots and lots of climbing, and headed out. I had hoped that my minor tweaking the other day would have limited by chances of busting another spoke, but alas, this was not the case. As we were climbing and climbing and climbing, I heard the all too familiar “ping” followed by “rub, rub, rub.” I could still roll without being too hampered, and I held my breath while I tightened the opposing spokes to lessen the rubbing just a bit. Then, we soldiered on. Or should I say up.
We climbed a good 700ft of elevation, then hit a town called Sabalito. From there, it was a steady downhill to Tierra Molenas where we were supposed to find a dirt road that would take us up to a wind farm. Unfortunately, we got a bit lost. Instead, we found some gnarly, rutted, jeep “roads” that seemed like fun. We cruised down for a couple of miles, ever descending, until the trail abruptly ended.
Jean was NOT a happy camper. Partially because we were slightly lost, although, I argued that point, because I had my GPS, and I knew EXACTLY where we were… I just couldn’t get us to where we wanted to go easily because the trails/road aren’t marked or mapped. The other part to her chagrin was the fact that we had essentially descended roughly 1,000ft on some gnarly trails, and our only option was to turn around and go back up.
In retrospect, the climbing wasn’t bad, and once we reached the peak in Sabalito, it was smooth downhill sailing on the road back to Mystica. The BeGo brought us back to the hotel and our hunger brought us back to the restaurant, for typico Arroz con pollo.
After an adequate amount of time to digest, we made our way down to the hot springs, when lo and behold, we ended up chatting with some fellow Massachusettians and one Connecticutian. The truly ironical thing is that one of the guys is a mountain biker and fellow NEMBA member.
As we were heading back to the room, we stopped off at the reception desk to talk with Elios, one of the VERY helpful staff here at the hotel. After much bilingual debate, he recruited his amigo to take my wheel back into town to see if anyone else could remedy my situation…
No comments:
Post a Comment