When I booked three bikes and helmets for half a day in South Downs Way, I didn't realize I was signing up for complete failure.

Allix, Shelby and I headed to Brighton for the night with a pit stop at Housedean Farm Campsite in Lewes for some leisure bike riding. Getting to the campsite was one hurdle that I won't even go into, but once we got to the campsite the nice man running the operation asked if we had mountain biked before. Now, here's something to think about: I was wearing keds, Allix had on bright pink lipstick, which by the way, looked super fabulous on her, and Shelby had a shiny Cambridge satchel swung around her shoulder. We all had matching french braids (helmet ready) and Allix had just informed us ten minutes prior that she is scared of riding bikes. We looked at the nice man with blank stares and said "nope!".

For starters, it took us twenty minutes to find the trail. I think that's when we knew it was all downhill from there (literally).

Hiking up the initial hill/mountain wasn't even the worst of it. And it was bad. We were huffing and puffing and took very frequent breaks. [Note: none of us have done any sort of physical activity in four weeks] Thank god Allix has an amazing sense of humor because she had us laughing the whole way up. On a more positive note, the farther we went up, the prettier the view got.

The "trail" ended up being a narrow downhill road of rocks. I'd like to say that we rode the whole way down but really, we just walked our bikes down. There were moments when Allix thought that was it.

Half way up Mt. Everest. I promise it's tougher than it looks.

Four falls, three purple bruises, ten mysterious, burning bumps on our legs, one Jasmine band-aid and one broken bike later, we went back to the campsite. Mind you, we had only been riding for one hour.

In our defense, the nice man admitted that he had recommended a very difficult trail. We proudly turned in our helmets, bought a snickers bar, and hopped on the bus back to Brighton.

"Mountain biking was probably my favorite part. We were just so out of our element". Yes. That's a nice way to put it, Allix.