Strawberry Fields Forever

All in all, today was a pretty amazing day. First of all, it started at 2:30am. That's right. That's what time I woke up. I didn't actually give in and get out of bed until 3am, but I woke up at 2:30am. Mind you, I went to bed at 8:30 last night. You see, I knew I was going to be getting up at 4:30am for an early East-side yoga practice, so the only way to get 8 hours in was to go to sleep at 8:30pm.

I like to get 8 hours, but I haven't been able to lately with all those 4am wake-ups. So I thought I'd try to trick my body into more sleep, but alas, it did not work.

After yoga, I was supposed to meet a friend to go running, but she bailed. Predicting this might happen, I'd stashed my mountain bike in my Volvo so that if I weren't going running, I could go riding.

So out to CamRock I went, arriving around quarter past seven, just in time to see my friend the Great Blue Heron take off as I got onto the first patch of singletrack. The park was once again empty, and I was having a grand old time ripping around corners when I hit Raspberry Fields -- a trail that leads to my very favorite CamRock has to offer: Rip n ride.

It won't surprise you to learn, I bet, that as soon as I saw the Raspberry Fields sign, this song started to play in my mind:

Let me take you down
Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever

But it might surprise you that the first line -- Let me take you down -- foreshadowed a pretty crazy tumble that I took on one of Rip n Ride's rocky downhills. I literally flew off the left side of the trail, landing in bramble with my bike on top of me. It was nutty, and it shook me up a bit, but it didn't really hurt, so I got up and rode on:

Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It's getting hard to be someone
But it all works out
It doesn't matter much to me

But then it happened AGAIN, this time on an easier patch of trail, and this time I fell onto my other hip. I have no idea what caused me to go over -- it was like Mother Nature was trying to give me a chiropractic adjustment and she didn't quite get the job done the first time she took me down:

Let me take you down
Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever

Falls and all, it really was a great way to start my day. And then, miracle of miracles, my daughter finally agreed to go mountain biking with me this afternoon, so we headed out to Quarry Ridge. It was a bit of a debacle -- tons of mosquitoes, a jammed brake on her bike, a wrong turn that lead us to the wrong trail -- but it was also triumphant in many ways. Not the least of which was me managing to make it up one of the climbs I've been working on -- such a good feeling -- but I've got much more work to do in that department.

And thankfully, I didn't get taken down on the evening ride, at least not in the same way:

Let me take you down
Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever
Strawberry Fields forever
Strawberry Fields forever

Speaking of forever, I wish this amazing weather we've had all week would last forever!