I wasn't going to go riding last weekend. Had friends coming over for dinner (drinking) on Saturday night, and planned to do the honourable thing and sleep it off on Sunday. Then Rich, who is normally the ring leader on these ill-conceived rides (although he is not on the list) rings up.

"No, Rich, have to pike this weekend. Planning on being seedy and hung over on Sunday. I'll come next week."

"Um...there's 8 of us, and only my car. We need your car."

"Well...do I get any say in this at all?"

"No, not really. See you at 9.30."

"I thought you said 10."

"Change of plans. Bye"

"Yeah, whatever, grumble..."

Ended up only drinking 2 bottles between 3 of us on Saturday night, washed down with massive slabs of my world famous vego lasagne, so Sunday morning was better than could be otherwise expected.

The location for the day's mission was the Lerderderg River Gorge, which is a bit closer to Ballarat than it is to Melbourne. Cars get you as far as Blackwood.

We had 7 people in 2 cars up from Melbourne, and another 2 we met up there. Sweetest bike would have to be Tom's FSR Extreme with Bomber Jr T's, followed by Rich's Giant MCM with Bomber Z1 Bams.

Most of the track is vaguely reminiscent of parts of Melbourne's Studley Park, except on a much bigger scale. It is basically a 10km long, fairly technical undulating singletrack, winding along the wall of a river canyon. At Studley, the river is about 10 metres below you. At Lerderderg, it is about 100m.

We formed a fairly natural order. The four nuts on dualies sped off ahead, the more enthusiastic hardtailers tried to keep up. I tried to ride everything, but took my time. Row kept dabbing (and stacking), and Mel walked half of it.

At several places, you have to duck around the outside of a big slab of granite, on a narrow bit of track that gives you about 5cm of error before you go over the edge. After my little overbalancing adventure at Studley a few months back, I was pretty cautious.

Then it happened.

Certainly not the hardest bit of track, but I misjudged the clearance my bars needed around one of the granite boulders. Just snicked a bar end, but that was enough to put me off balance, and to turn my bike in toward the hill. I'm going one way, my bike is going the other. There is about 100m of thin scrub on a slope of about 80 degrees between me and the river.

I'm going to die.

As luck would have it, I didn't die. About 5 metres down, I found myself a nice log,wedged between a few rocks. The perfect thing to break my fall. With my face.

No idea why I didn't lose any teeth, but my cheek is all grazed to shit, my lip has a golf ball in it, and the inside of my lip is black. I parted company with an ear ring too, which leaked a little bit of claret so it must have torn a bit on the way out.

By absolute fluke, I dropped my bike over a little tree stump at the top, through the main triangle. Smashed my bottle cage, but the bike stayed at the top, undamaged.

Feeling fine, but a little shaken, we kept on the last 4 k or so of single track.

At the end, there is a bit of a climb up to a fire trail (a few of these cross the singletrack along the way, straight down spurs to the river. The lads have ridden down a few of these in the past, just because they were there). Then another vertical hundred metres or so to a picnic spot and a ford down at the river.

Nobody could believe how fast the "bomber brothers" took this track. I know Tom has been riding with some serious downhillers in Adelaide, but that is just no excuse. Nutcase. He brings out the less sensible side of Rich. They both made it unscathed, although Tom apparently took a shortcut crashing through the bush, and had to hop a branch that was in his path about a foot off the ground.

I was doing well, keeping speed moderate but in control, until something happened. The second time within an hour that I thought I was going to die. Front wheel stops, back wheel (and my butt, right down scraping on it) keeps going up.

I must have ridden for nearly 5 seconds before the back wheel landed again. I had realised I was in the shit, released my brakes entirely, and just tried to steer, way out of control, until I could pull my back end down again. Some combination of gravity, momentum and oil-damped coils saved my arse. Judy just munched rocks for me until I could get some control happening again. Love that fork. No blood.

The ride back (along the same track) was most notable by the fact that everyone was buggered and hungry. Row entertained us by clearing a rocky section nicely, then crossing his front wheel on the flat, and going over the bars without releasing his feet. Two others took a jaunt over the edge, but sensibly waited until one of the places where the track takes a deviation along a creek so they only tumbled about 3 metres, onto grass. Bastards.

Last note for general interest: the hamburgers at the general store in Blackwood take for ever, are way overpriced and are not very good. But by 3 in the afternoon, even they went down pretty damn well. It was pretty funny, sitting there inhaling lunch, and looking at about $40,000 worth of bikes leaning up against the wall of the shop.

"Y'all ain't from 'round here, are yer"...

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