Recently (about 3 weeks ago), I bought myself a mountainbike (MTB for now) to have some more sports apart from our regular street hockey club. Jesus, a team mate, offered to take me with him on his next Sunday excursion. So we went to the north of Madrid, to Cercedilla, where you can find mountains as high as 2,400-and-something meters, while Cercedilla itself is at about 1,100. Quite impressive, as I did not imagine to find such heights close to Madrid (1/2 h ride from the outskirts in a car). Jesus, having a Specialized Stumpjumper (if you know MTBs, you probably just had a cool breeze running down your spine reading this), and that's not any version - he has the absolute pro stuff with about the best component for each part you can have (i.e., you better use 5 digits if you wanna estimate its price...), so I knew this would be a tough one for me. Well, Jesus prove to be very patient and a good motivator, as he kept chatting to me even on the last, really tough 300 m like we were going flatlands... So, finally I made it to a lower peak if 2,000-and-something, which I think is still OK - more than 800 m on my first tour - proved to Jesus I'm tyrolean... Below see some pics of the tour.
Yet, what happened during my second tour probably is not as fun... The next time, I was (actually, am, but... well, read on) covered in work, so on a holiday Thursday, instead of leaving Madrid, we went to the local park, Casa de Campo (about as big as my hometown, Innsbruck), which has a few hills and especially some interesting trials - it is even a fixed point in the MTB world championships! So looking forward to some technical fun and some jumping around, of we went. Yet, at a particular difficult passage with several successive jumps I probably over-estimated my abilities (after all, I had not been biking anything serious for 8 years now, or so) and did not land back into the trail but slightly next to it - enough for a fullstop, anyways. So I and the bike went crashing into the last jump, and while I was rolling over it, the bike luckily wasn't. ...and thus ended my trip to the city park in pain... My friend called the ambulance - yet, the police arrived first (...) - and they transported me off to a hospital. What I think is really ridiculous although is, in all my MTB-life, I never had a bad accident going down crazy slopes and being on high mountains; but once I go to a damn city park, I almost disable myself. So that's life, eh?
So I had been in the hospital a tenday (which in itself is a story to tell, and a weird one, too - just to give you an advice: make sure you never have to go to a Spanish hospital (or three, like me...); blog will follow ;P) and now am back home and will be fine again in 3-4 weeks according to my (last) doc - back to hockey in December maybe even - or so I hope! Therefore, I'm working from home, but can't move. So I have PLENTY of time to work on my blog, watch unwatched movies, etc. etc. etc..
One last shoutout: THANKS, JESUS AND IRIS, FOR ALL YOUR HELP DURING MY HOSPITAL STAY!!!
