Big Creek Greenway

Today I rode at the Greenway with the girls. We debated other activities but that was the one that seemed like the best idea. My folks are in town too so we even got them to meet us.

The girls and I got there earlier than my folks so we played around on the pump track.

I'd heard somewhere that they were building a pump track at Big Creek but I didn't know where it was or that it was even finished. The kids were kind of scared of it so they didn't ride but I pumped the heck out of it, on my road bike no less.

I first learned how to pump transitions on Hans Battle's quarterpipe with a freestyle bike, then later applied it to the skateboard, then to half pipes, mini ramps, skateparks and so on. Years later it was natural to do it on a mountain bike but it never occurred to me that I'd be doing it on the road bike. Will wonders never cease?!

My parents showed up after a little while and we all got geared up...

...and rolled out.

Including myself, that's three generations of family riding together right there.

The weather was great: low 70's and a slight breeze. Looking at the radar, you'd think it would rain any minute, but it wasn't supposed to until about 5 or 6PM and now at 7:30 it still hasn't started. Any minute now though.

We rode north as far as we could, all the way to the new northern trailhead. With the new bit of trail going under Kimball Bridge, we kept rolling the whole time and we didn't even have to cross any roads. I can't wait until they join it up to the section in Forsyth County. An out-and-back ride will be 30 miles or more.

At the northern end, I realized that we hadn't brought any snacks with us. Usually we at least bring some candy or something, but not this time. It was a tough ride back. It's a net descent but Sophie's blood sugar was low and she was feeling it. It especially didn't help that she was just finally starting to get over a cold. It took forever and I had to keep encouraging her to pedal, over and over.

About 3/4ths of the way back I saw a rider heading toward us that looked kind of familiar. Yellow shoes, Camp Highland kit... David Sagat! A mile or so later he spun back and talked to me for a while. He'd done a big ride out of his parents' house and was cooling down on the greenway. He was also REALLY looking forward to a cup of coffee.

Dead Sophie or not, we got back in decent time and packed it in.

Oh yeah, my dad was running the King-517's that I'd given him after his hub quit working at Jackrabbit last time.

Funny story there. His hub was stripped out so I gave him my old wheelset. Turns out that the rear hub in the wheels I gave him was also stripped out. After he told me, I vaguely remembered how that had happened. I've got King hubs on both road and mountain bikes and in that purple wheelset too. Twice I'd stripped out the ring drive in my mountain bike hub but needed it fixed quickly. Once I had the shop pull the guts out of the road hub and another time out of that purple hub. For the road hub, I'd ordered new parts and they just put them in the road hub. I guess I never got new parts for the purple hub and they'd just put it back together with the bad parts in it.

He was still in better shape than with his old hub though because you can actually get parts for the King hub and watch videos on the net that show how to work on it, whereas his old one was something random from the early 2000's, rebranded as Bontrager and finding replacement parts for it had become a wild goose chase.

We grabbed some burgers at Fudruckers and man, they were good. The last time I'd had Fudruckers was years ago in Dalton after a ride on the Pinhoti and that one's not even there anymore.

Kathryn's still out of town and I've got the kids to myself. Otherwise my dad and I would have gone back up to Jackrabbit. If the rain holds out we might get to head up there tomorrow. The greenway isn't exactly Jackrabbit but we still had a good time and besides, it was great to get everybody together.