AVCRH–If This is a Sport I Suck at it. (honeymoon flashback!)

Another year-later honeymoon post.  It’s like the trip that just keeps on giving.

This will be the last adventure recap, I think I’ll do one big overview post of the places we stayed, travel tips, reco’s, etc. 

… Someday.

Our last excursion was a bike tour around Arenal Lake.  The description said we’d “ride bicycles on the roads around the lake and the National Park.”

Sounds pretty chill, right?   I was looking forward to a relaxing outing after 5 days of go-go-GO crazy adventures, and taking in the local scenery on a known mode of transportation (read, no harnesses required).

The shuttle picked us up and our super nice (bilingual, btw) tour guide asked us if we’d ridden bikes before.

“Ummm, yeah…?”

I mean, who hasn’t ridden a bike, right?  And if you haven’t, or can’t, or don’t like to, why would you sign up for a BIKING excursion?

(Apparently the family that showed up before us, is who.  Seriously they’d never been on a bike before.  That was a short-lived tour.)

We watched them put together these mountain bike / road bike hybrid things, and I should have known we were in for more than just an easy stroll around the lake.  The little teeny ass-massacre seat coupled with tread tires and shocks??  It’s like sporting equipment from a horror film.

I’m sure you can see where this is going.

We take off, immediately up an un-paved, rocky hill.  Brian drops his chain and I lose all forward momentum and have to walk the rest of the way. 

Not a great start.

But damnit, it was the second-to-last day of our honeymoon, and we were going to enjoy ourselves!  This is fun!  We are so adventurous!!

I got the teensiest bit comfortable just in time for a big downhill that came out of nowhere – suddenly we were flying down this bumpy, tire-tracked, giant-boulders-in-the-middle-of-the-path hill and OMG I’M GOING TO DIE.

White knuckles and insta-arthritis.

We made it down – not without a few scares (of falling or crapping my pants) – and Brian looked back at me with a big grin as if to say,

“See!  It’s not so bad!”

Heh, yeah.

By the time I loosened my death grip – no seriously my forearms were cramping I was squeezing so hard – it was time for YAY ANOTHER FREAKING HILL!

This one wasn’t so pretty.  In amateur mountain biker status I reflexively squeezed the brakes when my front tire hit a big rock and ramped into a tire rut, causing my back end to fly sideways and eventually toss me onto the gravel/dirt/boulder path.

Brian and the tour guide (we were the only three riding) were way ahead and didn’t hear me go down.  I’m not sure what was more humiliating – yelling at them to come back for me, or walking my stupid bike down the stupid hill because it was too steep (for me) to re-mount and ride down.

The rest of the ride was better.  We slowed down and our guide told us all sorts of cool things about the land, which I didn’t remember any of because I was too busy wallowing in my own un-athletic shame and wondering what kind of blood-borne disease I’d contracted.

We did get to see some howler monkeys and got a good photo op in front of Arenal, which saved some points for the trip.

If only it weren’t laced with the “remember when you wiped out??!” story op as well…

Sarah OUaL