Checking the weather prediction on a Friday only to find that it will be raining for almost every hour of the weekend feels a bit like a killjoy. Having to choose between sitting indoors all weekend or HTFU was not very hard. We chose the latter.
On Saturday at about noon we met up with our good friends Reto and Madeleine for a ride at Meerendal in the Durbanville hills area. Upon arrival the weather looked okay and we kitted up. Just as we were ready to ride it started raining.
From the word go the trails were muddy, and as we continued up the hill it did not get any better. We got to "Stairway to heaven", a smoothly paved "single track" with some tight switchbacks that was pretty easy to conquer. After that a bit of a climb they call "Thirsty mountain climb", which our little hardtails somewhat enjoyed.
Once at the top we were met with some seriously strong winds. Reto and Madeleine decided to descend first as they were on the suspension bikes and would for most practical purposes be faster than us on the hardtails. Reto had a bit of an off as one berm just gave way and he ended up bending his deraileur hanger and also damaging his deraileur. Arné and Madeleine had a smooth run down and on my run I really struggled to go fast, a combination of horrid weather, some seriously sketchy building technique and frozen up fingers does not help you when trying to go fast.
We kept pushing on to do the last bit of single track down and as we got back to the Bistro it started bucketing down. The girls ran inside and left me spraying down the bikes to get most of the mud off. Within a few minutes I was completely soaked! We then had a cup of hot chocolate and chatted about our experience.
Thanks Reto and Madeleine for the fun ride!
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