The good thing was I had an equally trained partner to come along in case anything went wrong. After all, I had NO idea what I was doing, and at that point I didn't have much choice.

So I hopped on, started peddling and was off to a good start. My partner was always 30-40 feet in front of me, leading the way. And then we got into some interesting "paths"...

The bike wasn't cheap so it handled the terrain pretty well. Still, I had a death grip on the handlebars...