Eric's Ride Log

Erinna and I did a fun little ride yesterday evening at Bent Creek. We started at Hardtimes, went to Homestead to Little Creek to Deerfields to South Boundary Road. We took that to 479, up to Lower sidehill, back down to the campground connector and back through Homestead to Hardtimes.

Erinna and I decided to get out there right after my first single-speed ride the day before. We kept our plans and arrived and were ready to ride by 6pm. The pace was quick right from the get-go partly due to the lack of parts on my bike. Single-speed bikes are fast because you're either riding... or not. My 29er w/32-23 gearing was again super fun and never too hard. We quickly made our way through the singletrack and onto the gravel. I had only ever been there once before, during the rain ride, so I didn't expect the road to continue on, or the hill to continue up, for nearly as long as it did. There were a ton of riders out including a father/son couple that looked like beginners but were definately putting effort into the ride. That was cool to see and we gave them words of encouragement as we rode by. We made our way to 479 and they had just graded the road recently. That made the climb up to Lower sidehill a bit harder but we took the opportunity to pick up some flakes of mica for an art project of Erinna's. Getting to the top was tough on the single-speed but I just grunted a lot and forced my bike up here. As we started the descent I realized another reason I like the SS. Erinna was right there for he entire descent! How cool is that?!? Rather than shifting into the big ring and totally rocking it out, I had one gear and just used gravity to pull me down the hill. Because of that she got to witness me doing a log crossing and we both saw an absolutely HUGE Owl? Hawk? BIG BIRD fly ahead of us, about 20 feet in the air, down the trail with us for at least 5 seconds. That was soooooo cool. We saw it together, too, it wasn't a mountain-bikers equivalent to a fish tale, we both saw it. :)

We made our way to the bottom and over to the campground connector very quickly. We decided to redo Homestead backwards to Hardtimes. On our way back to the Jeep who did we run into? The BioWheels group! Again! Damn I need to remember those guys head out on Thursday nights. The new group ride looks like a lot of fun, not the merciless race-pace hammer-head who's-got-the-biggest-dick ride that I went on a number of months ago. Maybe I'll join the new BioRide next week! Maybe so, Maybe not.

Got a few photos too... Here's Erinna at the top of Deerfield Loop:

and again at the same spot:

and another shot of the equipment we use. Three vehicles, one made by Jeep, two made by WaltWorks.