Last fall I decided that I wanted to get back into riding bicycles.  Specifically, I wanted to start riding "off-road" trails, so I did some research and bought myself a new mountain bike. 

As any of your know who have bought a new bicycle, this can be a very joyful experience.  The fact that I bought my bicycle on-line and had to wait for it to be delivered made me think of being a kid and waiting for Christmas as it approached!  To say that I was psyched would have been an understatement!

Then disaster hit!  The evening before my bike was to arrive, I tore my right rotator cuff!  No good story here, I simply raised my arm quickly to steady myself when I kind of tripped going down some stairs and "POP!" it tore!

Well, to say the least, this took a bit of the joy out of my bike arriving the next day.  After I signed for it, I drug it with my good arm into the garage and there it sat as I started the odyssey that is being injured with today's modern medical systems!

After a few weeks and as I was waiting to have the surgery to repair the tear, I finally got to get on my bicycle and ride it a bit.  I rode it around the neighborhood and on some flat, paved trails, but since I was still in a fair amount of pain, I didn't push it to much at all.

Being an old road biker, I was a little bit surprised and disappointed at how much work it was to ride one of these things!  One weekend we took the bikes out to ride the Katy Trail (a rails to trails project that runs from north of St. Louis to Sedalia Missouri) and I damn near died from exhaustion during what turned out to be a 15 mile ride!

I actually got to the point where I was regretting my decision to buy a mountain bike when I had to put it away while I recuperated from the surgery. 

Time Heals All Wounds

Well, this past week I got to get back on the bike and Kathy and I rode a couple of paved trails near our house.  While it was cool to even be back riding, I was still a bit disappointed by how hard it was to ride. 

I attributed some of this difficulty to the fact that while I had been recuperating that I hadn't worked out much and also hadn't missed very many opportunities to stuff my face (when you're hurt it's very easy to rationalize overeating!).

So, this past Saturday we took the bikes out to a trail near Weldon Spring Missouri called, "Lost Valley Trail", which I had written about after Kathy and I taken a hike there earlier this spring.  It seemed like a nice compromise between not pushing my healing rotator cuff and getting off road a bit. 

If you read my previous post, you'll see that we only hiked a couple of miles into the trail and from what I saw, it was pretty mellow.  Well, was I in for a surprise!

Being on the bikes, it didn't take us long to ride further than we had hiked on our previous visit and we found that the trail becomes just that..... a trail!

Pretty soon we were zooming down steep grades and pumping up the next ones.  The trail became more and more challenging as we went along and all thoughts of nursing my shoulder went out the window as I realized that this is what my bike was designed to do!  TALK ABOUT FUN!

Zooming through the woods under a canopy of green, my heart pumping as I jumped the bike over a small tree that had fallen across the road. 

I was in heaven!  This was exactly what I had originally had in mind!  And if you think about it, how often do your expectations line up perfectly with the actual experience?  True, I was pushing my shoulder a lot harder than I should have been, but it was definitely worth it!  Now, in the spirit of full-disclosure, I did pass on quite a few of the harder parts of the trail and walked my bike through them, but even still....it was GREAT!

Anyway, the shoulder held up and is no sorer than the rest of me, so I can't wait until I heal up a bit further in order to go back and do the entire trail again.  I know that this post has absolutely nothing to do with real estate, but the experience was so cool that I had to share it!

Thanks for reading about it!

R.B. "Bob" Mitchell

ValueList Real Estate Services, Inc.

Bob Mitchell is president of ValueList Real Estate Services,  St. Louis' largest discount/full-service real estate and mortgage company.  If you would like to find out more about Bob, ValueList or our flat-fee listing program, please feel free to visit our web site at valuelistre.com