Sunday 19 June 2005 – Redhill / Oxford Falls

We had all forgotten just how good a ride Redhill is – what a blast!

We did the standard loop, with a bit extra at the top, starting at Sport & Rec at 7am (having received our warning about parking there in future!), and were back by around 10.30am (profile here).

We took off up the hill nice and cold (always good for fun, eh), fiddled about a bit on the Whisper’s singles track at the top, went down the rocks, across Wakehurst Parkway and along Oxford Falls Road to the dirt road, and up the singles track to morning tea (the most important part of the ride). We then rode across the top, played around for a while in the chute and some singles tracks up there, went down the track to the aerodrome, along the fire trail, down to Deep Creek, along the creek, and back along Wakehurst Parkway to Sport and Rec.

Although Ash “oops, did I forget to mention that I was the welter weight mountain bike riding champion of the world” Fenton did manage to blow us out of the water on each occasion that he was put to the test, we still had fun. More gets offs than we’ve had in some time, and Jeff came back from the dead to join us. Clear star of the proceedings was Matt (and this unfair shot), who managed to *not* trash Richard’s old bike despite Ed’s allegations that last week’s disaster was all the bike’s fault (and not his (Ed’s) underwhelming skill!). Thankfully, for those of us with limited skill and limited fitness, Jeff and Matt fell off the pace towards the end so we got to rest up at least a bit.

One of the highlights was Ed’s attempt at Brian’s collarbone rock – and we managed to do that without any more injuries!

Another highlight was the number of times that Ed, Brian or Stephe got in the way of Doug (being pushed hard by Ash), and stopped him getting up bits that were a doozy last week!

For entertainment, the singles tracks at the top have grown over a lot, so there was a lot of ‘cussing’ as folks got whipped savagely by well grown bush… Ah, the joys of mountain bike riding.

Brian racing around without gloves was amusing, and unfortunately contributed to his view that today was not to be his day – so he kept a generally fairly low profile (other than a series of pointless (but amusing) stacks on the way out!).

Some samples from the day (the rest are here):