Stealing Away

Today felt like a day off, a vacation day. I am currently in that time of having some stories for XXC No. 7 done, some still out there, words but no pics, pic but no words. In other words I gotznuthin' to do right now (as I type this a boat load of stuff just came in. Cool!)

So after the B-Man was safely off to school, I was off to get a quick ride in on the mountain. I normally don't dig mid week adventures up there. I feel rushed, and limited on what I can and can't do. I need to make sure I'm back in plenty of time to fetch B-Man, and at least pretend to have done something around the house for Wifey (sadly she knows better).

The plan was some singletrack near Hidden Valley, some doubletrack,, some gravel climbs, some Seven Springs singletrack, and then gravel back to the car. It sounds epic, but it's really only about 2 hours or so of riding.

First some rooty single track.

Then a gentle climb up the back side of Seven Springs. The only thing gentle about it is the hard pack gravel surface. It is a SLOW climb (for me) with some steep grades at times. Eventually you hook up with some of the 24 Hour race course on your left, which I took of course. D-POW knows this climb (up and down).

The trails were freakishly dry, and my tires had WAY too much pressure. Oddly I didn't stop once to let some air out. I'm an idiot. The trails at Seven Springs are always good and bad for me. Good because I've logged HUNDREDS of miles on those trails, they are fun, rocky, but not TOO rocky, rooty, but not TOO rooty... they are just fun! Lately after I ride them I seem to always come away pissed off. Today it was seeing more and more lot markers. Yep, much of that single track after the paint ball area, it marked off for some rich bastard to buy up a lot. Condos = cash for ski areas, trails = dead beat mountain bikers like me using the trails and paying nothing but the occasional race entry. In the near future some of my favorite trails will be condos for Biff and Buffy to park their Beemers, and to entertain and impress a bunch of the knob headed friends. Sorry for the rant.

Once I started down to hit some of the newer singletrack I realized I wast taking too much time. Some singletrack would need to be aborted. No big, this day was a gift, and much of the singletrack was littered with branches from the winter, and causing me some stress. So when I hit the F*ck Tree I took a second to think.

First I thought "who takes the time to carve "f*ck" into a tree??" Then I thought, "I'm pretty sure the road I'm about to cross is Neals Run!" And it was. So I thought better of doing more time sucking but smile inducing singletrack and just took the right up to and across the slopes. It was a good move. A move field with a few slow grunts, but a good move. Doing the extra single track would have put me too far behind schedule.

Finished the ride with a bit over 2 hours in the warm mountain sun. 2 more hours would have been titz, but I'll take what I can get. I could have just hit Boyce for 2 hours and ridden some buff twisty single track. As much as I can dig Boyce, it will be there when time is even more crunched. It was mentally worth it for me today to steal away for some long climbs and rocky singletrack.

Weather is about to get more seasonable here, meaning less 84 degree days and more 50 degree days. No complaints though, it's been a nice couple weeks of sun to help melt the nightmare that was Winter 2010.

Back to work tomorrow.

Later.