Let's Take Two

Two days on the bike in a row after almost a whole week off and the legs are feeling it this morning. Yesterday, despite being a walking zombie for most of the afternoon, I forced myself out for a mountain bike ride while our house was being invaded by 3 girls under the age of 6. Add in one super excited B-girl and you're left with an ear splitting evening (forcing me to don a pair of ear muffs!) and a super tired spud.

Anyway, I got out for a ride in the Schmid Preserve on the El Mariachi, my first ride on the El in quite some time, and decided I'd try to put together a respectable loop so that KillBill and BlahBlahCalvin can come up sometime for a sampling of the local brew. I hadn't been on the trails much the last couple of months because of work/house schedules so I expected them to be in a pretty horrific state but I was pleasantly surprised to find them in fine order and that someone (probably a mountain biker) had done some trail work. Why do I suspect it was a mtb'er who did the work? Well, two stone ramps were constructed in areas (and ways) that would only help someone on a bike.

To get over a stone wall.

to get over a log. I didn't see this one in time but it looks a tad sketchy.

Despite nearly falling asleep at the bars during the beginning of the ride, the bod finally came around and I had a great ride. In fact, I actually found a couple new sections of sweet double track that I'll be able to use to make a pretty good loop in the 1:45 - 2:00 range without using the other trails in the area that involve a bit of pavement to get to. Of course, if they're feeling up to it, we might hit those as well. I'm thinking of trying to get it together for this Sunday afternoon around 4-ish so if anyone is interested (and has lights since we'll most likely be out until after dark) let me know. The more, the merrier.

This morning dawned (well actually I was up quite a bit before dawn) with our first near freezing morning. I had to drop the car at the garage and ride from there to work so I got suited up in my usual morning attire and headed out. On the drive to the garage, as I watched the console temp dip to 32 degrees, I realized that I might be just a tad under dressed for the ride. I had with me, an undershirt, jersey, arm warmers and a long sleeve (thin) shell for my upper body and just shorts and knee warmers for the legs. Hmmm. Oh, and a Bikeman.com cap (without anything to keep the ears warm) and some long finger mechanic type gloves. Yeah, lets just say that even for me, it was a tad bit cold.

Almost runrise. Notice how red my ears are getting.