(Christopher riding his bike Saturday evening)
We decided to take the first RV trip of the year and do the Wilderness Wake Up Mountain Bike race near Peoria this past weekend. The race is a fundraiser for Wildlife Prairie State Park, which has cool critters that have been rescued and could not be re-released into the wild and we got to visit the park for free -- big draw since money's been tight. We drove part of the way on Friday and got there by 11 a.m. on Saturday.
Christopher loved seeing the critters in the afternoon and loved the huge slide the most. After checking out the park, I prerode the course. There are only about four miles of trail but they are great. Turns, rocks, logs -- I was so happy to be on singletrack. It was the first real ride on the rigid fork and I have to say that I really liked it. My arms/shoulders were sore but I felt like I had better control, particularly with cornering.
After I rode, Tom went out and I got Christopher on his bike. He decided he wanted to ride the same trails I did and Tom were on but then I convinced him we should go find Betsy and say hi -- which lead to his first downhill ride. = ) I asked him if he remembered how to brake, which he did, and he made it down the hill pretty much all by himself. I did grab him at one point when he took his feet off the pedals.
Sunday was race day for Christopher and I. His course was all grass. Much harder to ride in and he was not particularly pleased. But, he absolutely loved the little swag bag he got. My race ended up being just me and Bev. I probably should have gone harder but wasn't sure how my body would handle that long on the rigid and, really, there is no way I'm ever beating Bev. So, I enjoyed being on my bike and being on single track -- albeit less since the freeze/thaw made them have to take out part of the course on Sunday.
We got more swag from a raffle and my taking second place and then Christopher and I headed back to the park. There are a total of three playgrounds that we played at and we saw more critters. As we were heading back to the huge slide, we even got to see the bear who wasn't out the day before. Christopher was excited. We still have another portion of the park that we didn't check out yet and plan to the weekend of the Jubilee race.
Overall, it was a great little trip.
