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Fluffy (a.k.a. my buddy Jason) and I headed out to Dryer Road Park again today, to spend some time on two wheels. As it has done since we fixed that pesky little accidental-handlebar-removal problem, my trusty Trek held out just fine. We did about five miles worth of trail riding, then spent some time in the park’s “practice area” taking pictures. The duet of rented Canon 70-200mm image-stabilized zoom and sexy 14mm rectilinear ultra-wide lenses with my 20D made for some fun shooting.

The day’s only mishap happened early – Jason managed to pop a spoke while sliding over a big root in the trail, so we spent a few minutes re-truing the wheel before pressing on. In record time, I’ve even managed to post a gallery!

Now. Regarding that little handlebar mishap I referred to earlier … The photo above shows me riding over the first in a series of closely-spaced bumps in the practice area. It’s possible to catch a little air on these if you move fast enough, but I’m content to ride them planted on the ground to practice canting the bike forward and back (and moving my weight to match) to clear obstacles. A few weeks ago, however, one of my practice runs went sufficiently wrong as to cause me to (for lack of a better term) completely bite ass on the third bump: as I pulled up and onto the bump, my handlebars came out!

This doesn’t bode well if your goal is to not crash. Of course, my front wheel officially went its own way once the handlebars were out of the picture, and as a result I found myself rapidly plowed into the dirt. Not that this stopped us: a few scratches and bruises later, we fixed the handlebars and hit the trail!