Last weekend, the wife and I made it down to Brown County State Park to hit the mountain bike trails for the first time. With my wife being more on the beginner-intermediate end of things, we didn’t venture onto anything tougher than Green Valley (no Walnut, Hesitation Point, or Schooner). We had a blast.
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Got out today to attend a group ride put on by the Hoosier Mountain Bike Association at Ft. Harrison State Park in Indianapolis, IN. What a great place this is. I first rode here back in the summer and fell in love with the flowy trails here. They’re not super hard, but they’re a blast to ride. It’s also a good place to take beginners. There’s a little elevation change, but it shouldn’t be too much to discourage them if they need to work on their fitness. There’s a great beginner’s loop, too, where they can stay pretty close to the trailhead if they need to bail. I’ve been busting my tail on my thesis lately and not doing much else, so when a friend invited me out to Tyler SP on Sunday with the Morning Glory Yoga Run Club, I had to come. Most of the group was there to do a 16mi trail run in training for the Tyler Marathon. The longest run I’ve done has been just over 4mi (partially on trails, I might add) so I wasn’t up to that. But the time would give me the opportunity to do the whole ABCD loop. Got another ride in this weekend to make up for my ride being cut short yesterday. You know, it gets boring doing so many laps on a short trail network. I like getting in 15+mi, but to get that much mileage in exclusively at these trails, I’d have to do 2 more laps at least. Riding from my house lets me get those extra miles in and I’m certainly going to be going back to that. My house was featured in the local open house event today, so I had to make myself scarce. I took the opportunity to get a mtb ride in and enjoyed my time, although my ride got cut short. I had an incident of chainsuck, looks like I had a misadjusted limit screw, and threw the chain off my cassette. That bent the chain some, which messed up the drivetrain. I tweaked it back to being “good enough” to get back to the TH, and took it to the shop so they could check for busted parts. The bent chain was subtle enough that I couldn’t find it on the trail. Talking to some other riders in the area about our mtb trail opportunities, I got a somewhat crazy idea about linking our area trails together in a big, long ride. I wanted to do it all via county roads, but looking at maps of the area, it became apparent an all-county-road route would not be possible. The problem: the Angelina River bottoms. Between Nacogdoches and Lufkin, there’s only one road that crosses them: US-59. Not the ideal road because of its 70mph speed limit, but it’d really be the only option unless we REALLY wanted to go out of our way and probably spend days riding. Not this time. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone for a midday ride. It’s been so horrendously hot it’s not been worth it. But with Tropical Storm Lee in the area, we got clouds, wind, and cooler temperatures. I really would have preferred we get some rain along with it, but I’ll take what I can get at this point. I took advantage of the temps and went for a ride. It’s been awhile since my last post. Grad school is keeping me busy. So are trips to Schlitterbahn and yard work. Yesterday saw a slight cool-down due to northerly breezes and I took advantage. It was in the mid-90′s when I left and down to the mid-80′s when I finished up. I didn’t post any updates for awhile and I apologize. I had finals to deal with and hardly went to the office at all. And when I did, there was bad weather brewing so I wound up driving. So Week 2 was a wash. I didn’t bike to work, but then again I hardly drove, either. Week 3 was another matter. I biked in most of the week but wound up driving a couple of days for inclement weather forecasts. The forecast bad weather those days didn’t end up happening until well after dark, so I felt cheated. Today I went to Lufkin to help the folks from DET-TRAC and the Angelina Bike Club with some trail maintenance at Kit McConnico Park. I hadn’t ridden there yet and I thought it’d be a good opportunity to scope the trails out before riding. |
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