Zen in the air... and over the handlebars!!! :-/

Today was an awesome day for mountain biking. K & I met Brent and Jason at the AEDC mountain bike trails at 8am this morning. It was so much fun. I felt a lot better about riding today after riding last Saturday at Chickasaw Trace with Lana, and 2 new friends Mandy and Angela. Wow, this was such a fun day. After Chickasaw we went to PF Changs. After stuffing our faces we headed for the Grand Ol Opry.... excellent as always. Then onto the STAGE :-) I always have fun in there.
Angela taught us about riding with "zen," - control and flowing with a mountain bike where no wheel can be placed wrong. I was very relaxed today - for the first time ever. K & Brent are super fast... so I knew keeping up with them was outta the question. This was Jason's second ride ever, and he gave me all I could handle. Impressive! :-) We did the hard section first by taking a right and doing most of the hills. The trail was in excellent shape!! It's being ridden more this year and that makes it easier on all of us. I had 2 major crashes. 1) I was heading down hill with lots of sliding rocks and met Bob Alt head on, got a little distracted, started sliding, tried to unclip and I am really not sure what happened but my bike went down with a vengeance! Ouch my left knee (the only healthy one left) slammed on a sharp rock and OMG - PAIN. PAIN and the PAIN increased. I sersiouly felt like I was going to puke everywhere. The guys wanted to stand around and wait for me to recover but OMG - I really wanted everything and everyone away from me. I was scared to look through my cold gear, so after about 1 minute or so I jumped up and took off again. It looks like my knee has been hit with a sledge hammer. Skin is broken but that's not the bad part - it's the huge knot on it and I'm having trouble bending it. As I type, I am icing it. :-/ It is scary looking - like there's a small plum sitting on my knee cap. 2) K & I had just climbed our last major hill. I was on his back wheel like white on rice - getting a little too frisky. Just as I was about to make a snide comment, his brakes slam (brake check to the MAX!) to make a turn, I SLAM my front brake and my snide comment was called to heaven. I ate his back wheel, somehow he survived with no crash and I felt myself flipping in the air. WHEEEEEEE!!!!! - front flip over the handlebars. All I could see was my beautiful blue mountain bike flipping over me and I gracefully landed on the right front of my head. Thank God for a helmet. My head took a blow like never before and I saw major stars and felt extremely discombobulated. This was just short of 5 minutes of when Brent showed us how to jump a huge log - where he "ZEN-fully" flipped over his bars and body-planted into the ground. OUCH!!!!! These were some true kodak moments.... that I failed to capture :-/ Here are some pictures of our ride that I did manage to snap though.