Ridin' 'round, Bali-K-style (pics just added!)

Hi all,
We just got back from Bali, and we all got a case of the dreaded "Bali Belly" :(
Oddly, I got it first, then Jill, then Iza... thankfully hers kicked in on the last half day and was mostly sick at home, and she's recovering much more quickly than we are.
I'll add more on that trip soon, but wanted to add some pics of what the riding has been like around here, both urban and on the outskirts of town.

Oanh, Holly 'n me, out on a Thursday 'Ladies' ride'
(which needs to be renamed, 'Stay-at-homers' ride'
;-)

Fairly typical downhill, on a variety of textures of concrete, sometimes fracturing off into oblivion as large chunks break off after the intense rains and gravity erodes another road, path or house, or village

One of the cruxes, linking 2 'hoods together through a singeltrack sandtrap, but first you need to duck the fence post w/o getting knocked off.
I've made it once, so far.

Us again, in the jungle stretch

The Saturday rides are usually on the edge or out of town. Cap'n Arbain (see below) emails where to start and finish and we either ride to the 'start' from the ridge doing a fast, hard, hilly 'pre-ride' or we load up a van with the bikes at the official starting point

We often start in 'urban' or village areas
Notice we ride on the 'wrong' side of the road
This is Brent in front of me.
His triceps are the size of tennis balls.


A few of the trails take us through some beautiful grassy areas, with lots of rolling hills and views off east to the ocean and west to some hills I'd like to explore some day

This is Paul wiping mud from his tires with a stick. This is a common sight on our weekend rides. A few rides later we had so much mud to contend with that my bike could no longer move forward, as there was so much mud jammed in my brakes and fork. It really helped for everyone else to have disc brakes in this situation! Paul is our Anglo human GPS, and, sadly, is leaving us in December for another post. He and his wife ride every single group ride, at least two times a week, for the past 6 years. We'll miss them and wish them well at their next assignment.

This is Arbain (rhymes with carbine), he truly is a human GPS! This is our true, fearless leader who knows every single twist and turn in the entire ridable region, urban and countryside. He is also a monster on the hills, never super fast, but always solid and rarely falters on even the roughest or slickest slopes.

All of these pics were made from my first group ride after arriving here. It was the only one I brought the camera on because, a) the camera got very dirty and no longer works so well and, b) just after sunset I fell (again, about the 14th time) onto a rock and broke a rib on my right side. Ouch. So, by now I'm mostly healed but have refrained form bringing the camera again. Perhaps I'll learn how to keep the camera cleaner so I can show off some of the prettier rides, or the uniqueness of the urban rides!)

Sampai jumpa lagi!
(See you later!)