Got out for a ride on Saturday, 24 April with Chris and Root. This was the first ride since Akron was in town. The weather had been extremely uncooperative, with sunny weeks and rainy weekends for a while, and schedules just didn’t seem to work out either. Finally we were on the dirt once again. With mixed sun and clouds, we headed up Government Road, managing the ascent to the side loop entrance with a lot less pain and suffering than expected. We were actually jaw-jacking the whole way, albeit riding in a lower gear than normal, probably. The ground was perfectly moist and grippy where it wasn’t covered with leaves through disuse.
Climbing back out onto the road, we took the Ditch outbound, finding neither outstanding mud nor obtrusive deadfall. The fallen tree near the last third had been removed. At the log-over, I managed to find a root on the roll-out with my front wheel, reflecting the bike backwards and landing me in a patch of fist-sized cobbles. Climbing cardiac hill to the top, we checked out the inward-leaning-tree singletrack then took a break at the big tree. We missed the new contour cut on our way down flailing fat guy, but no big loss. On the way back along the Ditch, I could feel the deficit from not having been riding for a while: The legs didn’t hurt, but didn’t have the power reserves to push the big ring to any good speed along the flat return. Lack of saddle time also rendered some monkey-butt in the subsequent days.
Pictures here
D = 11.36km (7.06-miles), Vavr = 12.1 km/h (7.5-mph), Vmax = 31.4 km/h (19.5-mph), T = 57-minutes (actual trail time <2-hours)
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