Natalie was out scoping the local thrift stores and found a $20 trike so we went and bought it for Jamie. He loves it.
Let the racing begin:
Natalie was nice enough to watch Jamie while Christine and I took off for a bike ride. Michael and Ian accompanied us on the road for the first 5 miles until we got to the trailhead then we took off into the woods. It's really cool to have a mountain bike trail this close to home. No cars needed. Just ride to the ride and ride!
Just before ducking into the woods:
We rode most of the James River Park System Trail loop. We hit the trail going east on Buttermilk. Christine was in a little over her head skills wise and ended up walking lots of sections on the first half of Buttermilk so it was kind of hard to get a flow going. It wasn't really that the trail was that hard, but it was narrow, and the drop off to the left into the river below made you feel pretty exposed. I made the mistake of looking down once and didn't do it again. Definitely not a place to fall. There were lots of cool features on this section, rock skinnies, a couple of short slick rock sections, the "ramp", lots of tight switch backs, etc.
About half way, the trail kind of mellowed out and we started getting into a groove and we made it down to Belle Isle pretty quick. The highlight of the ride for me was riding around on the big flat rocks out in the river itself just before crossing to Belle Isle. There are these huge flat rocks the size of foot ball fields you can just ride around on. Real neat!
We rode around the island on the crushed gravel path dodging dozens of people with unleashed dogs and darting children, then crossed the really cool suspension bridge over the James. Then we hit the Northside trail. I really liked this section. It's basically carved into the side of the hill and has lots of bridges, some of them really high up, with no railings. Nice. It also had some cool bermed switchbacks that you could really rail. We ended up pulling off the trail at TX Ave because of time and rode back to the house on the road. We did about 17 miles in just over 2 hours. Maybe 7 or 8 of those miles were dirt.
Overall, I liked the trails, but at the same time I didn't. They were very well built, almost too well. It was very man-made looking. While it was fun to ride it kind of it felt kind of manufactured. I guess that makes sense since they are right in the heart of an urban area and not off in the mountains somewhere.
We headed home before the huge rush and bad weather on Saturday. Jamie says sitting in traffic in Walforf MD sucks. It rained all day Sunday and I was able to get in my full allotment of football.
No comments:
Post a Comment