Heritage Park

When breaking a rib, you usually turn the corner about 1 week out. It's then that you can finally lie down in some position and get actual sleep, for hours and hours at a time, rather than 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there, sitting up the whole time, or worse, leaning forward on a TV tray with a pillow on it.

I got busted up on Sunday, and, to my surprise, turned that corner on Wednesday. I could also shift around, and get up and down comfortably. I was optimistic. It could be a short recovery.

A week out, I felt good enough to do some light hiking, so I headed over to Heritage Park.

It felt weird not running, I usually run there, but it also felt good not to jostle my busted parts all around.

It's really getting to be spring these days, and there was a good bit of spring happening at Heritage.

IDK what these flowers are, but there were a million of them, and they were beautiful.

I do know what this is though, Red Buckeye:

I've got a couple of friends who went to Ohio State, and I thought of them immediately. I send that photo to one of their wives and was like "Ask your husband if he knows what this is. He might..." She was probably like "WTF?" and might think I'm crazy now. Whatever... I promise it's perfectly innocent!

A while back, a friend asked me if there's anything at Heritage other than the Woolen Mill and Ruff's Mill. In fact, there is. I'd seen various things, but never gotten photos of any of them. There's a retaining wall on the other side of the creek. There are various old roadbeds leading up into what are now people's backyards over there too. There are various artifically leveled spots where maybe there used to be structures... That kind of stuff. I figured I'd keep an eye out for any of that this time.

First thing I saw was a piece of wood in the creek, with big nails sticking out of it.

Hard to say of that's old though. I've seen various, similar boards in creeks up in the mountains, that must have come down from some structure upstream. Whatever it came from must have been there a long time ago, because it's been National Forest for like 100 years. But, that's up in the mountains. This board could be old, or it could just be something that washed down from somebody's backyard. Who knows?

The bushes along the trail itself were just starting to leaf out.

I've been running there all winter, gotten used to the open woods, and it honestly made me a little claustrophobic.

Farther on, I saw another old chunk of wood, but this one was on the right side of the trail, opposite the creek.

This had a better chance of being super old, but really, there are various pavilions and bridges along the trail, and a long section of it is bordered with 8x8's. There was nothing in that immediate vicinity, but... Eh. It could be chunk of soemthing modern that someone just chucked into the woods.

So, nothing really interesting yet.

I'm always on the lookout for "organized rocks" though, and ha! Organized Rocks:

They turned out to be the back wall of a basement. There must have been a structure here at some point - maybe 16x20. No idea what it was for, except probably storage of some kind - I didn't see any sign of a chimney.

Almost directly across the creek was that retaining wall.

Definitely old. I want to say there's an old roadbed leading up the hill over there too, but I didn't get a photo of it. My guess is that there was a house over there, up on the hill, and there was some structure down near the creek associated with it. There might have been a bridge or ford nearby at some point too. These structures are always a little enigmatic though. There's rarely enough context to understand them.

Farther on, I noticed this super hacked up tree.

Not sure what that's all about.

Just past the new road that was cut to get in the support beams for the mill, there was an artificially leveled spot.

It featured a single stone, kind of in the middle, and at first it struck me as being a headstone. I've seen lots of small family cemeteries right up by the road, just like that, up in North Georgia. Many with similarly nondescript headstones. At first, it looked like it might even have writing scratched into it.

But, closer up, I couldn't make anything out, and it looked more like an optical illusion. Just the way that plant grows.

IDK, might still be a headstone though.

Farther up lay the old Woolen Mill itself.

I'd never looked closely at the map before, so I took a look at it this time.

I recognized everything on it except for the Supervisor's House Ruins. I wouldn't have enough time to find it that day, but I figured I'd come back soon and look for it.

There were more organized rocks just past the mill, on the uphill side...

...and another artificially leveled area, but I couldn't discern the purpose of any of it.

Farther up still lay Ruff's Mill...

...with its strange 180-degree-turn raceway.

I honestly don't understand that raceway. It looks like water was fed in from the top, and had to make a 180 degree turn to run the wheel. This part of the raceway was built into the foundation of the mill, but the top of it is nowhere near the creek. There must have been a long flume leading to it from way upstream, but I can't find any remaining evidence of it. Maybe it was entirely wooden?

The wheel mounts were pretty clear.

But... the wheel must not have been mounted directly to the stone. It must have sat up on pillars, or the shaft wouldn't clear the rest of the raceway. Also, did it enter the mill at that hole in the side, or is that hole just the result of people trying to get inside. If it didn't enter there though, then I don't see where it could have. Again, without context, it's difficult to figure some of this stuff out.

There was also a gusseted piece of metal just lying nearby:

Is that the axle? I've seen another metal thing, that exact shape somewhere else. Maybe at the Lewis Furnace? IDK, it's familiar.

That was it for that day. I had to move to get out before dark, and there was a cacophony of frogs on the way out.

I ended up coming back the next day though, and went looking for the Supervisor's House.

Just uphill from the warehouse, I found some organized rocks.

Not sure what they were, exactly, but these looked like collapsed footings.

It turned out that none of that was the house though. Off to the right, there was a white-blazed path that led down to a small feeder creek and then up the next hill. It roughtly followed an old roadbed, and looked semi-official.

At the top of the hill were the ruins I was looking for.

It looked like someone had built a fire in the fireplace and primitive-camped up against it during the winter. I've wanted to do something like that at one of the various intact North Georgia chimneys, but never got around to it this past winter. I guess it'll still be cold enough in the evening for a while though.

There's a well on the property too.

Good it's fenced off. That would be awful to fall into.

There were a bunch of deer running around while I was exploring the area. One of them was completely ambivalent to me.

I found another old chunk of wood in the area too.

Again though, it could be modern. Somebody could have just chucked it back into the woods.

It turns out that on the other side of the kiosk, basically on the back of the map, there are a bunch of old newspaper articles about the mills, and even a photo of the house.

It was a pretty satifsying couple of outings. I'd discovered some cool stuff, and shaken the ribs out pretty well.

The next day, I rode my bike around the neightborhood, and the following day, rode down to the Silver Comet, out a bit, and back. The next few days it rained, but yesterday I went out for another hike at Heritage. My ribs are definitely getting better. They feel ok, but not good. I've also had this weird thing that I've never had before, where if I get in certain positions, my intercostal muscles slowly cramp up. I can feel it happen and just have to switch positions, but it often happens when I'm lying down, trying to get comfortable to sleep, or if I move around in my sleep. Waking up to your entire left side cramping is unpleasant. Hopefully that'll subside in a few more days. They actually feel better when I'm moving than sitting around, but modern life involves a lot of sitting around.

Speaking of which, I've been sitting around typing this for far too long. Time to move around a bit.

OCR King Compound

So, there's this girl...

Isn't that how it always starts?

I met this coolgirl Beatriz this past fall. She does obstacle course races, and she told me about this place out in Hiram that's basically an outdoor training gym with pretty much all of the obstacles that you'd encounter during a race, on site.

It actually sounded really fun, and I'd been in a bit of a fitness rut for a while, so I gave it a try.

Turns out it is a lot of fun! But it's also one of those things that you've got to be a certain amount of good at it for it to be fun. The first few times I went there, I just got beat all to hell, but it was a good beating. Lots of sore muscles. So much of it is upper body, and there's a huge amount of technique. It's analogous to technical climbing - picking the right line and having good form saves lots of energy. Same kind of thing. It's also a lot of upper body. So much upper body... I bought a pull-up bar, and started doing a quick, upper body routine in the morning, 4 days a week. A few months later, I could do pretty much anything there.

There's an organized workout on Sunday mornings, usually at 10. You show up, and the folks that run the place - Cody and Christine King, are usually there. They're really cool, and they have this extremely cute little kid named Slade. Cody writes up a whiteboard full of stuff to do, like this:

...or this:

And you do it in order, trying to get through as much of it as you can. I've only ever gotten through the entire thing once, though, that second one above.

There are some regulars that are pretty much always there. I got to know them, and I was getting to be to be one of the new regulars. It was great. Beatriz wasn't even going there any more, but I'd found something new and fun, and made some new friends, so I just kept doing it. Woo!

One of the obstacles is The Low Rig, which is 2 rings, followed by a maybe 6 foot long pipe that spins, followed by an anchor, followed by a bucket handle, followed by a rope. It's waist high, rather than over your head, thus the "Low" part of The Low Rig. So, you have to keep your elbows completely flexed, and pull your knees in the whole time, or you'll drag the ground and fail. At least, that was how it was originally. The rings and stuff are attached to an overhead track, which is part of this big wooden structure built over a bit of a ravine on the property. The Low Rig used to be on the upper end of the ravine, and the whole thing was maybe 3 feet off of the ground. You really had to keep your knees bent. Cody redesigned the entire thing a few months ago though, and moved it to the other end. Now it's maybe 5 feet off of the ground, which makes the knee bend a bit less critical, but also allowed him to add the rope to the end of it, which is super difficult.

The technique that I use is to just use the first ring to balance, reach out and grab the second, swing out on it with my knees and elbows bent, hook both legs over the pipe and kind-of hang from it, transfer my hands to the pipe such that my head is now facing the direction I need to go, shimmy down it, grab the anchor with both hands, bend my elbows, release my knees from the pipe, transfer to the bucket handle, transfer to the rope, do a couple of brute-force hand-over-hands up the rope until I can J-hook it, then J-hook climb it up to the bell. I got to the rope 5 or 6 times before I was ever able to climb it, but a few weeks ago, I had the various techniques down, and I got it!

Man, I was happy.

The next week, the workout was especially tough (sadly I didn't get a photo of the board). I'd seen a 4-leafed clover in the yard as soon as I got out of my truck though, so I felt pretty confident.

High off my previous success, I even felt good when I got to The Low Rig. I'm not sure if I transferred the wrong hand to the pipe first, or just slipped, but whatever I did, the pipe spun, my legs just rolled right off of it, and I fell about 4 feet onto my head and left shoulder.

On the bike, I have this thing I call the "100% rule". If I look at something, and I'm like "oh yeah, I can definitely ride that safely" then I ride it. If I'm like "I'm darn sure I can ride that safely" then that's not 100%, and I don't ride it. The only exception was during a race. I would take some risks while racing. Any crashes I've had in the past 20 years have been cases where I was just wrong. I believed I could ride it safely, and I was wrong.

The trouble with any new thing, is that you don't really have enough experience to judge whether or not you can do it safely. You can be wrong more easily. That was the case here. I'd done that rig a dozen times, maybe more, and felt confident in doing it. I'd slipped off of it a bunch of different ways before, and felt confident that even if I slipped, I could land safely. I had not slipped off of it in that exact way though, and it just didn't occur to me as being possible until it was happening.

Also, the last time I'd slipped off of it, it was like a 2 foot fall into leaves. That was my concept of the danger. Now it was a 4 foot fall onto clay. It hadn't occurred to me to reasses the danger after the change.

At any rate, it knocked the wind out of me at first. I tried to shake it off, but after about 10 minutes... yeah, there was no shaking it off, and it felt really familiar, I was pretty sure I'd broken some ribs. I tried driving myself to the KP Urgent Care in Kennesaw, got about a block, and realized that wasn't going to happen. I needed the nearest ER, and there was no way I'd make it there driving. Cody drove me to the Paulding Wellstar in my truck, and I think Chrissy's folks picked him up after they admitted me.

After a couple of x-rays and excruciating CTs (seriously, I almost passed out from having to lie on my back for those CTs)... Yep, 3 broken ribs, and a 20% pneumothorax on the left side.

They put in a chest tube to fix the pneumothorax...

...and the relief was indescribable. Turns out a partially collapsed lung really, really hurts. It was like 90% of the ouch.

They kept me from Sunday to Tuesday, making sure everything worked as expected.

Though I felt a lot better, it's still no picnic being busted up like that - you might as well weigh 500 pounds. Shifting around in bed is like trying to shift a boulder around. The little table next to the bed might as well also weigh 500 pounds. Shifting it around is like trying to shift around a boulder at arms length. The hospital was great though. It's funny... Over the years, I've actually stayed overnight in a dozen or more hospitals, by myself, or with family, for various reasons, and that one was, honestly, the best I've been in. I got really good care.

I could even Uber Eats food to my room after hours...

...which was great because with broken ribs, you barely sleep, and it sucks being up all night, busted, and hungry.

My buddy Mark Grace even came by and hung out with me for a few hours, got my keys, went back to my house, brought me back my charger, laptop, and laptop power supply! It made a huge difference to have them, but it also made a huge difference to have someone from real life be there in person. It was only a few days, but it felt like a week. Chrissy checked up on me a lot, and I also texted and talked to family and friends, but man, seeing a real person, in person... That gets two thumbs up.

After everything looked good, they pulled the chest tube out.

...and weirdly, just set it on the floor next to my bed for the rest of the day, all bloody and dripping. :D

I got to take a shower too, which was amazing. I was still gross from working out two days earlier, and super dirty from wallowing around on the ground like a quadruped after falling.

Before they discharged me, they gave me this breathing thing:

You suck on that tube, gently, keeping that plastic circle on the right in between the arrows, while the plunger on the left rises all the way to the top. It's easy to suck in hard and just pull it all the way up. Doing it slowly is tricky.

Tuesday afternoon, I was able to drive myself home.

Sadly though, I've broken a lot of ribs, and the first few days are usually not the worst. Over the next week, the lack of sleep grinds on you. Then your entire rib cage gets stiff and difficult to flex. Three to six weeks to heal, then three to six more to recover fitness. I had a long road ahead of me, but at least it was a familar one.

I actually saw Beatriz the next day and she felt bad because she introduced me to all of this. I felt bad for her, for feeling bad: "I wouldn't worry about it." The way I think about this kind of thing... Yeah, technically she had a hand in it for turning me on to the sport, but it was a really small hand. Cody technically had a hand in it for building the rig, but it was also a pretty small hand. Whoever developed this style of obstacle such that there would be an analog of it at a training facility technically had a hand in it, but it was a super small hand. Arguably, everyone who's ever done anything that I interpreted as encouraging to do these kinds of activities had a hand in it, but again, super, super small hand. The hand I had in it was the biggest by far. I knew what I was getting into. That I might someday break a rib doing it was a rsik that I was well aware of. It's what I eventually end up doing when I get well enough into these kinds of sports. I had a clear choice, and I accepted the risk, rather than quitting the sport.

Going forward, I'll be a lot more aware of the specific risk on that obstacle, and of what I need to do to avoid it. Next time I try The Low Rig, I'm going to get somebody to spot me, or maybe some mats, or something!

Winding Stair and Montgomery Creek

Late last month, after fully recovering from the covids, I felt like doing some actual mountain biking, you know, in the actual mountains. Oddly enough, I didn't feel like ripping singletrack. Rather, I felt more like just being in the mountains. The Winding Stair/Noontootla Loop came to mind, so I checked the weather - 10% chance of rain, nice, and headed on up to Dahlonega.

It took me forever to get out of town though, and there was, of course, construction on 400, so I ended up getting to the Mt. Zion Church lot later than I really wanted to. After some quick math, I realized that I'd definitely be coming back in the dark.

Hey, whatever... Adventure! Right?

Despite the 10% chance, it rain on me, off and on, on the way up, and it had apparently poured in that immediate area earlier. It wasn't raining when I got there, but man, IDK about that 10%. I feel like I was let down a bit by that prognostication.

As I was right about to start rolling out of the parking lot, like 10 riders came down Cooper Gap Road and continued on towards Camp Wahsega. I eventually noticed that they were all fairly young, like high-school age. I've seen tons of middle and high school teams practicing at in-town trails, but it was cool to see them up in the actual mountains.

It was pretty foggy on Cooper Gap Road.

I passed a few stragglers about halfway to the top.

It was foggier still across the top...

...and it rained a bit here and there, but never more than a drizzle. By that point, I was pretty well warmed up, and had already shed my windbreaker and arm warmers.

I saw a few cars parked here and there, in the various campsites along the ridge, and a few people were milling around, but it didn't look like anyone was actually camping. Honestly, can't say I blamed them.

At Hightower, I decided against doing the full Winding Stair/Noontootla loop. The roads were so soft and wet, it would take forever, and I didn't want to be out after dark in those conditions.

At Hawk Mountain, I hung a left and spun up to the top. The old roadbed looked pretty photogeneic to me, at the time, in a spooky sort of way.

Everything up there had that spooky haunted forest vibe to it.

Even the daffodils.

The grassy patches were trying to turn green, but it wasn't quite late enough in the season yet.

Couple more weeks, maybe.

So far, I had mostly been climbing. There were a few short descents, but nothing long or very steep, except for the drop down to Hightower Gap. Coming down off of Hawk Mountain was fairly steep, and I just got sprayed, all the way down. It was going to be one of those days.

I spun up a couple of little kicks over to Winding Stair Gap, and encountered a group of like 20 or more riders there. They were a pretty diverse group though. Didn't look like a high school team or anything. I kind-of wanted to stop and see what they were up to, but they all seemed to be pretty busy. Like maybe they were just starting their ride and still getting ready, or something. IDK, I didn't totally understand.

The descent down Winding Stair felt like getting sprayed with a firehose, or maybe like sandblasted with wet sand. Lord. I had to stop near the bottom to dig as much dirt out of my eyes as I could.

I look a little dirty in this photo...

But, I swear it doesn't do it justice.

At the old game check lot, I saw a guy who looked like he was finishing up his ride. I didn't see anyone else for the rest of the day though.

At Montgomery Creek, I hung a left, and spun that loop. I figured if I wasn't riding the whole Noontootla Loop, I might as well throw in Montgomery for a couple of extra miles.

The little channel-beam bridge had been restored.

Last time I was through there, it had gotten yanked over to the opposite side of the road and was aiming downstream.

Montgomery Creek was uneventful, except that I got blasted and sprayed just that much more on all of the downhills.

I eventually arrived back at Mt. Zion...

...feeling pretty fulfilled with the day's Adventure.

Yeah, now the pictures kind-of do it justice:

It had been a long time since I'd gotten that dirty, and it was honestly pretty fun. I wouldn't want to do it every day, but once in a while is great.

I didn't actually know how dirty my face was, at the time. I mean, I knew that I was dirty, but I didn't know HOW dirty. I took that picture, but I didn't look at it, and I didn't really look in the mirror, I just changed clothes and hit the road. I even got gas on the way out, but the guy behind the counter at the gas station didn't look at me funny. It wasn't until I got back in town, stopped by the local pizza place and went into the bathroom to clean up that I could really see it. It was all dried on by then too.

Lots of fun.

In Dahlonega, on the way out, I noticed lots of Forsythia at the local high school.

It's spring for sure - Daffodils and Forsythia. I was lucky to get that shot too, it comes and goes pretty quickly.

Heh, I also noticed the Sims Gold Nugget Lodge on the way out.

I've seen it a hundred times and never thought much about it, but I know a lady who's last name is Sims now, so it struck me as funny.

Huh, huh.

Yeah, that was about it. Pretty good day, all things considered. Novel fun. My bike was as filthy as I was, and took multiple passes to get clean, but hey, even that's fun sometimes.

Mableton

Early last month I suddenly started feeling pretty bad. Like, in the course of an hour, I went from totally fine to full on upper respiratory infection, with a fever. Dangit, I've had this before...

Great...

This time I only had a fever for two days though, and basically just had to ride the rest of it out for good measure. Goodness, it hurt though. The muscle aches were rough, and my skin hurt. MY SKIN! For a few days after the fever dropped, it was hard to think straight. Goodness. It's all garbage.

By day 7 I was fine, and starting to go stir crazy, so it was nice that I was legitimately negative .

I celebrated by shredding local trails, and got this beautiful sky as a reward on the way home.

A Mableton Sky.

I'm sure I'll move away some day, and when I do, I will very miss the Mableton sky.