Back on the saddle

Things are getting back on track ride wise here... well they were - but I'll get to that later on at some point.

Had some internetal issues (weak signal all the way up in the sweet suite we have in our friend's house) so no blogs - and soul crushing delays on data uploads.  I had a nice weekend of riding, and I'll start here with my Friday adventure.

I didn't feel like driving anywhere to ride, but wanted to get the HiFi dirty and the one option I was aware of was the local trail 'to be"... some atv trail, singletrack, doubletrack, construction truck linkable paths around the neighborhood here (vague plans are in the mix to get some legit singletrack worked in here).  Road riding wasn't a good option either as I'm not familiar enough with the area to know what streets are good and bad for riding (condition wise, shoulder wise, traffic wise, etc.).  I really didn't want to be stuck in the heat bushwhacking my way through that fun sounding mess so I turned to the interwebs to help me.  And help me they did - I found a local Strava segment just a few miles down the road.

So a quick paved ride to the trail and boom - I hit up the Denver XC trail.  A short little trail (all of 3 miles) with some tight twisty stuff in there.  The "hilly" section was completely blown out by pour (I'm freakin clever) drainage.  The HiFi ate it up so I didn't care - possibly the only good a full suspension bike will serve around here - more on that in later posts.  It was balls hot out so I settled for one lap and then a little exploration.

Come on, I'm always bushwhacking and trailblazing it seems, so why stop now?

I hit up a clearing towards the back of the trail that apparently was over a sewer line, as evidenced by the periodic manhole covers in the middle of the woods.  It dead ended one way, well kinda, it was overgrown and I didn't feel like wrapping weeds around the drive train and finding out if they had tics down here - I had been hoping for a secret passage to a magical land of more trails...  in the other direction, the direction back towards temporary-home, I came upon a little jump track and a bit of a short cut back to temporary-home.  I also came away with a KOM (yay!).  That was not expected for two reasons.

First reason - and most important reason - is that when I had discovered the track on Strava it had listed the segment as Denver Trail Counterclockwise.  Upon arriving to the trail the bike direction for the trail was clockwise.  So no chance for the KOM right?

Second reason - I clipped a tree carrying too much speed through a tight and twisty bit giving myself a sweet scrape/burn on my shoulder.  I did gather myself and carry on quickly, but still.

It turns out that the segment was just mislabeled by the original rider.  Who is also the only other rider to have ridden the segment apparently.  Maybe the loss of the KOM will light a fire under his ass and he'll come back out and smoke me... only time will tell.

I was all excited about the "find" (thinking my buddy somehow didn't realize there was a trail right down the street) that when my buddy got back from Florida - hell yea we were freeloading in their house while they were on vacation - I excitedly told him about it.  Yeah, he'd already hit it up... duh, of course he would have.

I didn't take any picture out there because it was too damn hot.  Which has been the theme since I've been down here so far.  Although, in reality I haven't minded it too much - especially while on the bike (with one exception - but you'll have to wait a day or two for that story).  Tomorrow we'll get into road riding, and after that the insanity that is singletrack down here...  let's just say part of the trails we hit on Sunday were reminiscent of sections at Kingdom Trails.