Mountain Biking in Er Dz Shan

This year for the Aaronic Priesthood commemoration we didn't go camping. By the way this is an activity I started over here several years ago. We decided that we would go on a 32 kilometer mountain bike trip. Having never been in this area, I was a little worried what it would entail, however James really wanted to go. About a week before the event my knee started hurting from some running up and down a mountain I had started recently and so I also wasn't sure how my knee would hold out. Needless to say we got up that morning and started on our trip. Upon arriving at the church, I was told that we would have to cross a river several times and that I should have brought some sandals. Instead I was sitting there with some pretty new basketball shoes. I didn't really want to ruin them, but I also didn't feel like I had time to go get another pair of shoes. Luckily for me when we checked in at the police station a truck drove by selling flip flops. I flagged him down and asked if he had any sandals and he said he only had two pair. One of them fit so I bought them. The ride up took about 2 1/2 hours along a rocky dirt road. We stopped several times because of the 16 riders that we had with us, there were several who didn't exercise very often and so they got tired quickly. There were several places where we could ride across the river, but there were also several places where we had to get off and carry our bikes across. Bro. Chen, James and I were always the first group to cross and then Bro. Chen and I would go back into the water to help the others cross. The water was about 40 degrees and so it was quite cold. Without even thinking about it this became one of the great blessings for me on the trip. As I would take the time to help the others, it was like icing my knee. At each one of these river crossings I would stand in the water for about 10 minutes. Standing in the cold water made it so that my knee didn't hurt the entire day as we had to cross the river like this about 14 times that day. When we got to a certain point in the trail we left our bikes and walked up the river about 600 meters to where there was a natural hot spring. We then spent about an hour in the hot spring before riding out. It took us about 45 minutes to get out since we were now going down hill. About half way down James and I stopped at a cold spring and filled our water bottles with the cool, clean water flowing out of the rock. In the end, I look back at it and say it was one of the best ways that I could have spent a Saturday riding with my son and talking with him about life. We hope to do it again, but Jennifer isn't too keen on the idea. I guess we will just have to wait and see.