The girls enjoyed their introductory ride at CP yesterday, but I still needed to get my own ride in. The skies were threatening, but the weather maps looked like I’d have at least a few hours before anything serious was to roll in so I suited up and headed up to Rocky Point [map in pdf]. This was my first trip over to RP this year and I didn’t intend to do the whole thing. If you do every single black diamond and optional West Side loop its something over 20 miles which for me is a 2 hour ride. I skipped the West Side, did a few of the black diamonds (the Moguls and Campsite), then bailed down Firestone Road for a total of 11 miles in 1 hour 10. The trails at RP are nice and smooth track, without roots and you can get up serious speed at some points.

Firestone Road isn’t a fire break – its a road that was used on the RCA property to connect the main powerhouse building of Radio Central with a smaller building to the North (currently only marked by a small area surrounded by a chain link fence with a Hazardous Materials sign on it). When I was younger…

Read the rest of this entry »

Biked Cathedral Pines tonight again since it looks like rain may dampen any bike plans for the weekend. Odometer read 9.6 miles total with all black diamonds, and did it in 1 hour, 7 mins. That may seem slow, but its my best time this season. Perhaps that last ride at Glacier Ridge helped me man up a bit!

Read the rest of this entry »

Left work a little early yesterday with some planned time off and faced a dilemma when I got home. Although my job isn’t physically demanding, I usually come home exhausted. So the choice of stopping to pick up beer and sit on the couch and watch Netflix was compelling. Thankfully I decided to ‘man up’ and hit the trails instead. My last trip over to Cathedral was so disappointing (due to the RV party) I was worried that it might even be worse this time since its Memorial Day weekend. Usually I like to get my times a bit better at Cathedral before I tackle Glacier Ridge (PDF), a set of single track on the side of Bald Hill, because its a challenging ride and you really need to be alert or you can get hurt. Doing Glacier Ridge un-prepared and tired is not advisable. But it wasn’t too hot out, there was a nice breeze, and leaving work early meant I still had plenty of afternoon sun so as I suited up I began to get that exhilaration that comes with a good ride.

Read the rest of this entry »

I finished my ride on the bike trail in just over 1 hr, 10 mn last night (all told with every black diamond and optional trail its about 9.5 miles). As I rode around the perimeter of the central fields on the single track, it seemed that every inch of every open field in the park (every single field) was filled with RVs and super duty pickup trucks, most of them with diesel engines idling loudly and lots of generators going. The air actually smelled near the woods edge and there was a haze over the center of the field (though it might have been smoke from the un-necessary fires of course). Somebody even had a PA system on with feeding back microphone and everything, another a-hole was blasting his horn for some reason (maybe there was a deer blocking the road?). I was comfortably away from the mayhem in the woods wondering why they couldn’t just go set up in a parking lot somewhere. They certainly weren’t there to enjoy the quiet of the woods. I did see two people walking on the dirt road and met three kids on BMX bikes going the wrong way on the trail (dangerous). When I was younger that park was empty most all year round, and when there were people there it was to hike or bike or throw a frisbee around. Now every weekend its just a massive trailer park party. I understand why people want to bring their homes into such a nice park to relax, but it seems that too many people have gotten the same idea for it to be very relaxing.

This was originally supposed to be a facebook post, but it was too long (it barked at me that 400 characters is too long for a status update), well I’m getting to the point where I don’t even want to post anything there anymore anyway. I find it difficult to distill my status into a single sentence just to please facebook.