05/15/15 - Biking Green River, Utah

You can check out the Youtube video of the trip here:  Adventure 2015: Episode 2: Green River, UT or see Drew Barber's much more professional video here:  GreenRiverFreeride

After leaving Moab I headed to #GreenRiver and met up with Drew Barber to try our hands at some downhill freeriding.  Neither Drew nor I have any real experience with this style of riding so the first day involved a lot of crashes and a lot of real slow lines.  The more comfortable we got the bigger the lines we tried and the faster we rode.  For Drew, this meant some really sick, clean lines.  For me this meant a couple sick, clean lines, but mostly this meant a lot of really big crashes!  For so long the only big drops

I have done have had pretty flat landings.  This even resulted in me having to buy a new fork in Moab!  The habit I have of really bunny hopping and keeping my bike flat in the air was a big problem on these big drops with nice, steep landings.  I took a couple really hard spills on my butt, but nothing too painful at first.  I have to say, I was a little nervous about how the new #Rockshox #Lyric fork I bought in Moab was going to handle everything.  I have to say, though, that it crushed everything I threw at it!  Every day we explored more of this outrageous zone and found more and more lines to try and ride.  I definitely improved on my jumps and big drops during the four days of riding.  One of our biggest goals of the stay was to attempt a rock drop that involved about a four foot gap jump on to the rock and then a twelve foot drop off the rock to a nice steep landing.  My first attempt I landed way on my bike tire and went straight down to my butt.  The second attempt I overcompensated and landed slightly on my front wheel, but not so much that I wasn't able to ride away.  Unfortunately, as I was riding away my weight was a little too far forward and my front tire dug in to the dirt a little and I started to drift to the right.  Of course the right side of the landing had a jumble of rocks that I headed straight for!  I smashed into the rocks which tore three spokes out of my front wheel and badly damaged my right knee.  Luckily I have been borrowing some knee pads from Drew or else my knee would be in much worse shape than it is!  I took the day off riding yesterday and just tried to recover. Drew, on the other hand, rocked everything all week.  I think that he only had one small lay down and otherwise stomped every drop and jump that we attempted. I really need to step up my game.

 Today we are driving down to #Virgin, #Utah for the next leg of the trip.  There is no part of my body right now that isn't at least a little banged up, but I don't think it is going to hold me back from starting to explore the #freeride mecca that is Virgin tomorrow!  I am hoping to redeem myself and start stomping everything too!  Shoutouts to #TrekBicycles, #Giro, #KaliProtectives, and #PearlIzumi, for all the gear that kept me safe and styling!