The mountains of Thailand

We've made our way up to 700 year old city of Chaing Mai in the mountains of Thailand were the beer is cheap, the silk is cheaper, and the motels are $20/night (and that's a nice one!). We're staying at a guest house Bo recommended and we walked around the city yesterday to check out all the temples and then ended up at the weekly chaotic but amazing street market. Half the entertainment is watching the people and the other half was the shopping.

Today Jamie and I went mountain biking! We took a tour group that runs moutnain bike rides off the highest mountain in Thailand. Jamie, being a little more sane, opted for the leisurely ride down the mountian on gradual decending dirt roads and single track.

I opted for the less sane route. 3500 ft down some of the steepest, most erroded and washed out trail I've ever seen on a downhill bike. I've never been on a real downhill bike before and besides being heavily, they are really stable at speed and corner better than I thought. However, the trail was so rutted, loose and steep that you couldn't really get in a groove and spent a lot of the time staying on the brakes. The smell of burt calipers lingered at each break and the guide's rear rotor ended up blue by the end of it. It was crazy, took a lot less leg muscles and a lot more upper body muscle than I realized. I've down some downhill courses before on my cross country bike and I've seen some steep, rocky stuff but nothing like this for that long. It took about 2 hours to get down. Oh, and yes, me, the guide (owner of the outfit) and the other guy ate it several times.

Alright, we're off to nurse our sore muscles with some Thai beer (not great but at 75 cents a pint, just right).

Lee