After work last night I rode home, switched to my full suspension bike, and off we went on a drive up Mount Seymour to ride one of the original North Shore mountain biking trails: Ned’s Atomic Dustbin.

A blue (intermediate) trail, this was a pretty big challenge for me to take on. There were plenty of places where I just stopped dead and jumped off my bike to walk over logs, rocks, technical areas, or drops that just plain terrified me. For a girl who’s afraid of heights and has only been off-road biking a bundle of times, all within the past year, this steep and technical trail was a big step for me to try a real north shore trail above the green level. (When you grow up in a river valley, a grade more than twenty degrees is steep.)

I managed to actually ride through more of the trail than I expected. It was a pretty eroded trail with quite a few drops, most of them manageable although I wouldn’t want to try them on anything but a full suspension. Once I got into the right headspace (as in not terrified of every tiny rock on the trail) it became a lot of fun. We will probably be riding Ned’s a few more times this summer – by the end of the season I might even be able to ride the whole thing.

Next up: Flywheel.