Condition: Sore

Had a fun weekend, but it's now Monday morning and I'm feeling the effects.

My original plan was to go dirt biking on saturday at Hollister with a couple guys from my hockey team, but they called me up on friday and said they weren't going until sunday, because it was raining, and it was cold, so the snow line was down at 1500 feet, and both Metcalf and Hollister had snow. Then Julia called and wanted to go riding, so I suggested we go in the late morning on Saturday, which would give us time a) to figure out if we wanted to go, if it was raining, and b) for the sun to dry out some of the mud, if it wasn't.

Saturday rolls around, and of course it's a bright, beautiful, sunny day. Of course. It's february, what sort of weather were you expecting? So Julia calls in the morning, and we decide to pack the bikes and go.

This was Julia's second time on her new dirt bike, so she's still feeling her way around this whole "dirt" thing, but she was up for some incremental challenges. When the TT track started getting crowded, I convinced her to try some of the blue trails in the back of the park (no traffic), and she tackled her first hill climb, which is pretty good progress for day 2. Had one minor fall in the afternoon, broke a clutch lever. Welcome to dirt biking.

I ran a few laps solo after she was done, on a couple of the easier black diamond runs Adam and I had scouted out earlier. Felt pretty comfortable on those, which was a good feeling of progress on my part.

Saturday night, Nate and Marissa had a birthday party at the Saddle Rack. I'd never been, and of course I had nothing appropriate, although it turned out not to be a big deal; jeans and a t-shirt of any sort were appropriate. I picked up Danielle at her place, grabbed a quick dinner at the Goose, and zipped over to Fremont to meet everyone. Embarassingly, Nate, Ken, and Marisa had all showed up before us. Can't even count on people to be late.

Had a good time at the Saddle Rack. I rode the bull, because, well, Marisa and Nate were going to, and I can't turn down something that requires you to sign a disclaimer beforehand. I have an image to uphold, after all. The bull ride is probably the main contributor to my being sore today -- that was hard work.

Hung out until closing time afterwards, danced with Sonia for a while, caught up with Jimmy and Ken, chatted with Nate, drove Danielle home, crashed into bed at 3 AM. Got up on Sunday and played hockey in the afternoon -- good game, pretty clean on both sides, and we won 3-2. We had more than the 8 players we had last time, which helped quite a bit.

But man, I'm sore today.