{"id":1638,"date":"2009-01-17T23:51:15","date_gmt":"2009-01-18T05:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/?p=1638"},"modified":"2009-01-17T23:51:15","modified_gmt":"2009-01-18T05:51:15","slug":"the-thrills-and-spills-of-mountain-biking-in-el-paso-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/2009\/01\/17\/the-thrills-and-spills-of-mountain-biking-in-el-paso-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"The thrills and spills of mountain biking in El Paso, Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"http:\/\/travel.latimes.com\/\" href=\"http:\/\/travel.latimes.com\/articles\/la-tr-newheucoside18-2009jan18\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>by Hugo Martin from the Los Angeles Times<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Not the ocotillo. Anything but the ocotillo.<\/p>\n<p>As I flew over the handlebars of my mountain bike on a rocky trail outside of El Paso, I knew my landing would be hard. I just prayed I would not land on those nasty ocotillo plants that bordered the bike trail like roadside land mines.<\/p>\n<p>Even a prickly pear cactus or an agave plant would be a better landing alternative to the ocotillo, whose quills extend like hypodermic needles.<\/p>\n<p>But I lucked out. I landed on a patch of hard gravel &#8212; a feather-soft landing, compared with the cactus thorn beds I missed by just a couple of feet.<\/p>\n<p>After two days of mountain biking in the Redd Road mountain trails northeast of El Paso, I understood why folks in the Lone Star State say &#8220;Don&#8217;t mess with Texas.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Hugo Martin from the Los Angeles Times Not the ocotillo. Anything but the ocotillo. As I flew over the handlebars of my mountain bike on a rocky trail outside of El Paso, I knew my landing would be hard. <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/2009\/01\/17\/the-thrills-and-spills-of-mountain-biking-in-el-paso-texas\/\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,138],"tags":[91,5261],"class_list":["post-1638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-mountain-bike","tag-el-paso-texas","tag-mountain-bike"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4tok-qq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}