Dave Muse's Outdoor Journal

Reality Bikes Ride

2012-02-11T15:43:00.000-05:00

Man, it got cold all of a sudden! This whole winter has been more like an interpretive dance representing winter than winter itself, then today I actually had to put on warm clothes.

Today Reality Bikes had a big group ride planned and everybody on their various teams and clubs were invited. I was in the club last year but this year Todd's putting together a Grassroots Mountain Bike Team and he asked me to be on it. I guess I'm doing something right. Thanks Todd!

At any rate, we had this ride planned and it was really freakin' cold. I actually had to dig out my full-length fleece tights-bib-thing and winter base layer. I can't remember the last time I used either. We rode out of the lot at the Blue Bicycle, a little bistro up in Dawsonville.

It was one of those no-drop rides, which was good because I'm definitely in the kind of shape where I'll be dropped when they start up the weekly beatdowns again. I'm usually like this at the end of winter though. Winter just sucks all of the intensity out of me. I can ride forever but somehow I can't trade a pound of that endurance for an ounce of speed. This winter has been especially difficult. Back in September I had dreams of epic rides, overnighters and hauling around 12 pounds of crap in my camelback all day but between the weather, work, CoTrails, illness and a few oddly timed family events, this winter has been a wash. I've kept my weight down, but I'm not any stronger than at the end of September.

On top of all that, it never helps that at the end of winter, the cherry trees start to bloom, followed by the pear trees. It seems to be redbud, then cherry, then pear, then dogwood. I'm allergic to cherry and pear, and the only thing more miserable than the pollen is the side effects of the various allergy meds. It hit me this past Wednesday, right as I was getting over a cold. Ugh. I'm praying for dogwood. Come on dogwood.

I was planning on just sitting on the back all day, sulking and crying, but I ended up doing ok. Some of the guys around me seemed to be working a little harder than I was even, which was encouraging. Every year I forget how awesome a group ride is too. I've been pulling myself around all winter. In a group you can hide from the wind! Amazing! Who came up with that?

Did I mention that it was cold? Yeah. It was cold. In fact, it snowed on us the entire time. I got hit by a little sleet storm in my neighborhood too. The daffodils are already up this year and they had no idea what to do. No idea! I hope it has some effect on the cherry trees too, but somehow I doubt that it will.

We rolled an easy 40 miles and chatted and kind of felt out our respective fitnesses. The route was surprisingly hilly toward the end and a few guys pushed the pace a little bit over the hills. I've never been up on those exact roads before, but I'm going to make sure to include some of them in my personal stash, they were great.

When we got back, I wanted to eat at the Blue Bicycle but I had to get back home. Maybe I'll go there for dinner tonight.

Leita Thompson Memorial Park

2012-02-07T21:32:00.000-05:00

Today I drug Kathryn out of the house to another park in Roswell. This time it was the Leita Thompson Memorial Park. I've all but completely kicked my cold, but she's not quite over hers yet. She's been trying to build up some semblance of fitness though and I'm all about supporting that, especially if I can explore new trails while we're at it.

They're all about these little gateways in Roswell.

Oxbo has one too and it's as equally unlikely that you'd walk through it there as here. It's cute though.

The trail reminded me a lot of the Roswell Area Park - a wide, crushed shale sidehill. But the terrain was a great deal different. It was hilly and woodsy like Big Creek or like Vickery Creek. Kathryn wasn't really digging the hilliness as much as I was but she liked the woodsiness.

There were a lot of beech trees there. We talked about how they don't lose their leaves in winter, but she noticed that while that was true of the short little scrubb ones, on the taller ones, they do lose them on the upper branches. Do they get blown off? Does the sun play a role? Interesting.

There were lots of people out walking their dogs. Some people's dogs were walking them. We went down every little side trail and ended up passing this one guy 3 times. I always wonder what people think when that happens. The first 2 times they're always smiley, but not always on the third.

With the hills, the trail seemed really long. I was doing "The Zero" too. The Zero is where you wake up, don't eat anything and then go exercise for a couple of hours. I do that sometimes. It's not good for you per-se, but I think it's good to be able to recognize it and it's good to know how your body feels and reacts in that situation so it's no big deal when it happens accidentally. I get that low brain sugar feeling, it's hard to concentrate, everything seems bigger, my joints ache a little, my head hurts in a specific spot, if I'm carrying a pack, it feels heavy, but I can still push if I need to, but I know exactly how hard by feel. I'm really familiar with it. I hope that's good.

Most of the way around we ran into a memorial garden named after Leita Thompson herself. There was a pavillion...

...and a plaque.

She sounded interesting. I hope she didn't just do all that charity work for the tax break. Though, I guess, even if she did, it still worked out for somebody, so win-win, right?

Near the end we passed an elderly woman jogging in the other direction who was also an amputee, missing her right hand. When she gets up in the morning, that lady is harder than I am all day. That's what I thought when I saw her.

The last eighth of a mile up to the lot was all uphill and with The Zero, I was feeling it. The cure for The Zero? Dutch Monkey donuts. I actually had a Chocolate Chip Twist. The girls and I could have shared it and it would have been a meal for the three of us. Delicious.

Roswell Area Park

2012-02-07T20:06:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the first day in at least a week that I didn't feel really sick. In fact, I felt energetic. Stuffy, but energetic. I almost went for a road ride, but I didn't want to jinx it so I ended up going for a walk instead.

Roswell has a bunch of parks and every park has a trail system of some sort. I've been working my way through them lately, and yesterday it was the Roswell Area Park's turn.

I'd been there a couple of times before actually, for gym meets. In fact, Iz has a meet there next weekend. I'd always noticed the trails but never had a chance to set foot on them.

When I got there it was surprisingly chilly. This winter has been a joke. I think it was legitimately cold for about one week, but otherwise it's been in the 50's at least. For the past few weeks it's been in the 70's even, but yesterday it was cool and I actually needed my jacket.

The trail was easy to follow. For the most part it looked like this:

Occasionally it was paved. When I'm on that kind of a trail, I don't think of it as "hiking", but rather as "walking." Actually, just about everyone out there was jogging except me. There were elderly men and women out there jogging. Maybe someday.

Whenever I get to a park trailhead I read the rules and frequently they leave out whether the trail is open to bikes or not. This was the only indication I could get one way or the other:

It was at the very back of the park, diametrically opposite the trailhead. A kid on a bike who didn't know better, wouldn't know better until he was at the furthest point he could possibly have ridden in either direction. It was almost as if it was there with the intent of maximizing the likelyhood of unauthorized use.

There were a few little neighborhood connectors. One went to a school. One went to an apparently very exclusive neighborhood.

Keep moving boy.

The rest of the side trails just led to other parts of the park. One led to this gravel storage area. Hah.

Most of the way around there was a pretty little lake.

Along the edge, I got to watch a woodpecker (or birdpecker as Sophie is prone to calling them) looking for a meal.

I heard it at first, then I saw it, but I figured it would fly right away. Nope. It couldn't have cared less about me. I watched for like 2 minutes while it hacked at the tree. In my mind, we had a primitive dialog:

Me: "What are you doing man?"

Bird: "I'm doing this." (peck peck)

"Yeah? Are you looking for a grub, or making a nest, or what?"

"I'm doing this. Right here." (peck peck)

"Yeah, what is that?"

(silence... stare...) "I'm doing this." (peck peck peck)

Yeah. That's my bird conversation.

At the very end of the trail I saw what looked like a Ring Tailed Hawk swoop down, land briefly on a branch, then bomb down and grab a mouse or something. It spent quite a while on the ground trying to get a grip on it. I didn't want to scare it away so I went a different direction, hoping when I came back around that I'd see it eating, but when I did, it was gone.

I think I walked around for two hours or so. I'd hoped to clear my head, literally and figuratively. Literally, it pretty much worked. I've apparently got exercise-induced rhinitis, which is great when you're trying to get rid of the last little bit of a cold. Figuratively it didn't work so well. At that trail school a couple of weeks ago, various people made points about how one of the the purposes of a trail is to rejuvinate ones mind and spirit. God I wish that still happened. These days, I notice the construction of the trail. It comes to mind what I'd have to do to fix the little problems. My mind hefts the weight of the work that would be involved. The little side trails jump out at me. Some are user-created. I remember conflict over those and allegations of other conflict. I remember manufactured conflict, ignorant and misguided hate, paranoia, hate-driven rhetoric and a guy that might just go all Mike Vandeman on me one day. I remember being pursued and hunted. I watch my back. It's quite the opposite of mental and spiritual rejuvination. I usually net-enjoy myself, but it's a balancing act. It's not pure. I yearn for that purity. I remember it.

Maybe next time.

Silver Comet Trail

2012-02-07T18:53:00.001-05:00

This past Saturday I was supposed to work up at Bull and Jake Mountains but on Friday morning I could tell that nothing short of a miracle would make that possible. I was still fighting that cold and though I was finally winning, I know all too well how strenuous exertion can put you right back at square one. What really bothered me though was that trail work counted as "strenuous exertion". I can "take it easy" on the bike for 4 hours but there doesn't seem to be any way to swing a pulaski that counts as "easy". Is that how it is for everyone or am I just weak? Maybe one day.

I slept in 'till at least noon. The rain that had threatened to cancel the work party had never materialized. I'd kind of hoped that it had so my absence would have been moot, but no luck there. I wanted to go for an easy ride but in my mind, the little hills of Cumming seemed interminably tall. Maybe the girls would like to go for a ride? There's still about a third of the Silver Comet that we haven't seen yet.

As luck would have it, they did want to go for a ride and we were on the road in short order.

I'd like to say we had a great time, that we spent a wonderful day building strong father-daughter relationships. Nothing could be further from the truth. Maybe I'd just hoped too hard that it would be that way. The girls attacked each other non-stop in the car and when they weren't arguing, they were complaining. I tried talking to them about it for the first 20 or 30 instances, but it was hopeless. Every 7 days I get to spend a day with them and for the past month or so, every time, they've just buried the whole day in negativity.

Kids.

When we got to the trailhead I just wanted to get moving.

For a while, it was OK. We rolled out to Rockmart.

That section trail is decidedly different from the previous section. Through Paulding Forest, it's dead straight and rolly but out past the forest, it's a lot flatter but it twists and turns and the scenery is a lot more variable.

I learned the origin of the name "Silver Comet" too. The trail was once a railbed and apparently there was a passenger train named the Silver Comet that frequented that particular rail. Makes sense. How that knowledge could have eluded me for the past 10 years though, I do not understand.

Out past Rockmart we had to adjust Isabel's seat. She's growing. A coal train passed us while we were stopped. It had two engines up front and two more pushing at the rear. The girls love trains and we watched the whole train go by before we got going again. Things were looking up.

Iz wanted to do rotations and they're pretty good at it, so we did that for a couple of miles. Of course, if you want to create conflict, just try to ride a paceline. Iz kept jumping off the front and complaining that Sophie wasn't keeping up. No amount of coaching or encouragement helped. They were trying to piss each other off. It was a game.

Sophie's gears weren't working either. Or I guess I should say, she wasn't able to make them work. She's always been able to before, but for some reason, that day, she wasn't strong enough to twist the grip-shift. It was looser than Iz's and I could make it shift, but her hand just slipped when she tried. Of course, she'd neglected to even keep track of where her gloves are, let alone bring them.

We came closer than I'm comfortable with to getting hit by a car too because Sophie just flat refuses to use her freewheel to reset her pedals when she stops. She wants to get all the way off the bike and walk it awkwardly forward while turning the pedals with her hand until they're set right. Inevitably they're not, so she has to walk it forward for another rotation. If she stops, it can literally take minutes to get going again. She did this right as we got to an intersection and the approaching car just expected her to get going, any second now. I've literally told her dozens, maybe even a hundred times how to do it right and we've worked on it and she absolutely knows what to do, she just refuses to do it. Only when she felt like she was in real danger did she finally come around, and the change was instantaneous. She does it perfectly now, every time, no problem.

We had a couple of issues like that. The kids would always respond with: "I'm trying!" It dawned on me though that their definition of "trying" is something like: "I don't intend for it not to work." But it doesn't include changing what they are doing in any way. "I'm just going to keep doing this thing that I know is wrong, hoping somehow it will turn out differently or that you will stop caring." Maybe that's a more precise definition. Jesus.

Endless frustration. Endless complaining. Endless negativity. Couple that with the legitimate challenges of terrain and traffic and it was an absolute nightmare.

We rode out about 12 miles, stopped at the Grady Road Lot, sat down and had a snack.

We also had a long talk and tried to "hit the reset button" on the ride.

Stunningly, we were successful.

On the way back, everybody rode well. We had good conversations. We enjoyed the scenery, which was quite variable.

There were train cars...

...a pasture full of bulls...

...an odd collection of at least 4 different species of geese...

...a cemetery...

...a beautiful run along the river in Rockmart...

...an old derelict gravel plant or something...

...and miles and miles of woods and trees. It seemed like everything would turn out ok, but toward the end, when the miles were starting to add up, they got right back into it again. Come on.

Not 100 yards from the end, we had to go through a tunnel under a 4-lane highway and the light had just turned off for some reason. "Aim for the light at the end." Iz aimed for the light at the end and made it through just fine. After talking to her about it later, I found out that Sophie had made no attempt whatsoever to aim for the light at the end. She just screamed about how she didn't know what to do, hoped somehow that would be sufficient, but eventually crashed and ran out screaming.

On the way home we talked at great length about everything. I know that they're kids - 9 and 11. Some amount of all of this is to be expected, but this much is beyond excessive. I definitely ask more of them than some parents but they've consistently been up to it and I rarely ask much more than they had fun doing the last time. In the past we'd have hours of fun and then about 10-15% would be work. Sometimes we'd have a bad day. Sometimes we'd have a great day. It just isn't like that any more, with anything, outdoor or not. We leave the house hoping to have a good time, but then everybody just ends up tolerating each other until they crack. I brings out the worst in everybody. At the end of the day everybody's angry and I hate myself for all of it.

I have no idea if our discussion had any impact. Time will tell. It was enlightening to them that my idea of "trying" required an actual change of behavior. That had allegedly at least, not occurred to either of them. Maybe that's good. Somehow, though I am 100% certain that I've told them over and over, they also didn't have a good feel for the idea that I actually look forward to spending time with them. Maybe they still don't. I've always told myself that some day they won't want to spend time with me. Maybe that's just what's happening. Who knows. We'll see. I hope not.

Woohoo! Fatherhood.

Wells Tract and The Historic Roswell Trail

2012-02-03T17:57:00.000-05:00

Good lord, I'm sick. Sick, sick, sick. I've got a head cold and it just won't give up. I think it was this past Sunday night, I was up late and over the course of an hour, I went from feeling totally fine to having a total cold. It's terrible. Terrible!

I felt almost good on Wednesday so Kathryn and I went for a little walk in Roswell. We tried to hit the Martin Lake Trail but apparently they don't want none of our kind about.

They check ID's. We didn't want to get our ID's checked, so we just walked all over the Wells Tract again. It was... OK.

Thursday morning hit like the proverbial ton of bricks and it was difficult to even get out of bed. The whole day was like that and I fell asleep at like 8:00. It must have done some good though because I was wide awake this morning and feeling about 15% better. Not good, but definitely below the threshold of miserable.

If I'm able to do it at all, a small amount of exercise seems to help with a cold. Maybe exercise is the wrong word. "Activity" might be more accurate. If nothing else, it definitely clears my sinuses. Hoping for that, Kathryn and I went for another walk today on the Oxbo and Historic Roswell Trails.

The Oxbo Trail just parallels Oxbo road for the most part. It can't be more than a quarter mile long. At the west end, it runs up behind some houses and there's all kinds of ancient-looking rubble to either side - bricks, metal and piping. It's right near the Old Mill, so I imagine all the rubble had something to do with the mill. There's a HUGE tree over there too. I have no idea what kind. It kind-of looks like a water oak but I'll have to wait until this spring to find out for sure.

At the other end, Oxbo tees into the Historic Roswell Trail. To the south it enters the Vickery Creek unit of the Chattahoochee NRA via a pedestrian bridge. From the bridge you can get a good look at a dam on Vickery Creek (AKA Big Creek) that Kathryn and I debated the purpose of for a while.

The internet knows nothing of this dam and as we all know, if it's not on the internet then it doesn't exist. Therefore the dam has no purpose because it's not on the internet and thus doesn't actually exist. Case closed.

We took the Roswell Trail north, following Waller Creek.

There is some kind of old waterworks at the south end of the creek. Up the hill there's an old concrete tank or something, obscured by ivy and kudzu and surrounded by a fence. Along the bank there are more old structures too - bridge pylons, a weir, some odd concrete tank... I'm sure each of these things had a distinct purpose back in the day. I wish I knew enough to put the pieces together.

The creek itself was really cool. Near the bottom end, it was pretty much one long shoal with little pools here and there. Further upstream there were bigger pools and unfortunately they had collected quite a bit of trash. I imagine when it rains, all the residential runoff just inundates that little valley.

A bike had apparently joined the runoff some time ago. Kathryn pointed it out to me but I didn't even see it at first.

At the northern end the trail joined up with Waller Park and we went walking all around.

They have a skatepark there!

Man! There are skateparks at Waller, Settles Bridge and Fowler Parks, and well-constructed ones too. They're just common features of a modern public park. I'd have killed for that in my teens.

Next door to the tennis courts, they also had a raquetball jail.

I'm not sure what else to call it. It was a two story, white-painted cinderblock enclosure with a steel door. I literally didn't know what it was at first and all that came to mind was "jail". Kathryn guessed raquetball and that turned out to be right. Raquetball jail.

The trail allegedly continues north of Waller Park and I know I've seen signs for it elsewhere in Roswell but we couldn't find anything that even vaguely looked like more of a trail so we headed back.

There were three different sets of stone steps leading down from the main park area to the trail, so we took one of those this time. It looked like maybe people used to just walk down the hillside and eventually they built steps in the popular locations. The steps looked old, but maybe they were just made to look that way. If so, it was a nice touch.

The creek looked especially scenic at the foot of the steps.

It reminded me of the creek that runs through Life University - surrounded by development but still naturally beautiful.

It was almost entirely downhill on the way back and Kathryn was happy about that. Cold-wise, I felt way better than I had that morning but before we even got home, all the symptoms were back. Hey, it was nice while it lasted.

Jake - Winding Stair - Noontootla

2012-01-31T00:00:00.002-05:00

On Friday afternoon the gears were turning. I wasn't going to let another weekend slide by, especially when the weather was supposed to be so nice. I called my buddy Tim to see if he was down for a ride on Sunday. Yes, Sunday. I was planning ahead. He was down. My brother was too. The crew was coming together. I had an idea for a route too. It was a little ambitious but you gotta bet big to win big, right?

We met at 6:45 AM at the Atlanta Bread Company lot in Cumming. By then my brother already had an hour of windshield time behind him. When we get together, it's usually a bit of a hike for one of us so we usually try to get something worthwhile done. I hoped that the route I had in mind would count as "worthwhile".

John had brought a buddy of his named Howie that I'd never met before but who he alleged to be a strong rider. We didn't need all three vehicles so Tim put my bike on his rack and I got a chance to ride in his bad-ass Bronco, which I suddenly realized I'd never actually ridden in before. When we were fiddling with my bike I noticed something strange about his: gears. I've always known Tim to be a devout singlespeed rider. He has supposedly ridden gears out west a few times but I'd never seen it. He broke a frame a little while back though and since then he's been trying desperately to get as much as a return phone call or email about it so in the mean time he's been relegated to the back-up bike which, apparently, has gears.

We arrived at the Bull Mountain Lot at about 7:45 by way of an unusual route that I'd never taken before. A friend of Tim's turned him on to it and I might have to get the road bike out that way next time I get the urge to ride up to Bull and back.

It was freezing, at least by mild-winter-in-Georgia standards. The day before it had been in the 60's all day and I was looking forward to more of the same. At that moment, it was 27. Hey, it'll warm up, right? Yeah.

We headed up the trail at the back of the lot which despite the freezing temperatures was somehow muddy with actual mud. The first 50 feet were the worst, but anywhere that it was slightly flat there was standing water, hoof prints and tire tracks. We passed a couple of riders getting dressed at the lot on 83 and talked to them for a minute. Apparently we weren't the only ones up there looking to get an early start. In fact, the internet had been abuzz all day on Saturday. There were at least 3 other rides planned.

The 83 Bypass was slightly improved over that first trail. The Bull/Jake Connector was even better. Jake Mountain was clean and pretty. We ran into a guy named Chris somewhere in there. He was new to the area and he joined our crew. A few minutes later I'm pretty sure he wished he hadn't.

Tim had asked me about the route on the way up and when I told him he immediately realized we'd be crossing Jones Creek. I told him not to mention it to anyone else. There are no rocks or bridges. If you want to get across, you can't do it without getting wet.

I pulled off my shoes, socks and knee warmers and waded across. Soon enough the rest of the guys did the same. If anyone had gotten very cold, the wall of a climb up off of the creek warmed them right back up.

We took Jake north and the trail conditions were, at least to me, very obviously different up north of the creek where we hadn't done any finishing work yet. It wasn't bad, but there was occasionally mud and standing water. We passed on Black Branch and just kept heading north, paralleling 28-1. The trail up there doesn't get nearly as much traffic and though it hasn't had any finishing work done at all, was pretty nice, all-in-all.

We left the singletrack across the street from No-Tell and continued our push north on FS28-1. Just south of Camp Wahsega it appeared that a tree had fallen across the road and that somebody had cut it up and drug it out. A few scraps remained, but I was careful to dodge them. Tim was not so lucky. I'm not sure whether he was at an odd angle with the guy ahead of him and he couldn't see the limbs or what, but it sounded like he had ridden directly through the boughs of a fallen branch. I looked back and he was still up and rolling though, so I didn't think much of it, but a minute later neither he nor Chris were behind us anymore and we spun back to see what had happened.

What had happened:

That is absolute, total destruction right there. Apparently a stick had gotten into the derailleur and torn it off. Then the derailleur got into the spokes and after breaking a few, the rest of the drive-side went like dominos. I imagine one of them went through the rimstrip on the inside too because his tire was flat. I've never seen such complete devastation. What I'd thought was the breaking of boughs had in fact been the breaking of spokes.

No amount of duct-tape or zip-ties could get him rolling again. Chris had heard us talking about the route, had already decided that it was at going to be at least twice as far as he wanted to ride, had already discussed how to get back from where we were prior to The Destruction, and volunteered to ride back, grab his car and pick Tim up. I hope Tim got his contact info because he seemed like a really great guy and I hope I get to ride with him again. Thanks so much Chris.

It sucked to lose Tim and Chris but we pushed on anyway. I'd been up that way not a month earlier, Cooper Gap road had been freshly regravelled and I was worried that it was going to be a wrestling match all the way up. Nothing could have been further from the truth though. Apparently the gravel settles right in because aside from some extraneous bits to either side of the road, it didn't look any different than it always looks. I guess I shouldn't say that it didn't look ANY different. The washboards were gone, which was great. So, it was the opposite of what I'd expected - better and easier. Woohoo!

The frere went a little hard when it got steep and I eventually reeled him in for the KOM points at Cooper Gap. Howie was hanging right in there too. He's a strong roadie but he hasn't done a super ton of mountain biking yet, especially in the mountains-proper, so a lot of what we were doing was new to him but you wouldn't have known that from just watching him ride.

We hung a left at Cooper Gap, rolled past the quarry which wasn't as spectacularly frozen as it is sometimes...

...and continued west to Hightower Gap. We passed a truckload of hikers, presumably shuttling to some starting point on the AT, and a jeep or two but we didn't see anybody on bikes or on foot.

At Hightower we headed north toward the fish hatchery. It had been colder up on the ridge, but on the north side it was even colder still. I hadn't really planned for sub-freezing temps. I was basically wearing my summer kit plus a summer base layer, plus knee and arm warmers and shoe covers. I'm usually warm in that down to about 40. Below that though, I usually wear a fleece-lined bib, fleece-lined jersey and a windbreaker, which is good down into the teens. I'd brought my Dri-Ducks and had actually worn the jacket for the first 5 miles or so and I thought about getting it back out but I realized that I was actually ok. My upper legs and upper arms were a little cold but I was otherwise pretty good. The base layer did a great deal more than I expected to block the wind, which is funny because I wear it in the summer as a jersey for the exact opposite reason. It was odd. We bombed down into the Rock Creek valley, past old Edmondson Pond, turned Edmondson Wetland, now completely dry. Someone had even removed the sign. We passed the lake, passed the Church...

...and paused at the recently refurbished bridge on FS333.

By then I was pleasantly surprised with with how warm I'd managed to stay except for my left foot. It wasn't numb but it was unsatisfyingly tingly. No amount of piggie-wiggling did anything useful. John recommended I loosen my shoe. I thought I'd made sure it was loose enough back when we crossed Jones Creek but I fiddled with it anyway. Turns out that was the problem. One click made all the difference in the world. Within minutes both feet felt great.

We saw a pair of tire tracks on 333. John recognized one of them as Small-Block 8's but I have no idea who rides those. We hadn't seen them yet that day, but we might not have. The gate was closed on 333 and the rest of the roads were open to traffic. They might have been there from the day before even.

333 was fun. The sloppy section where it becomes a county road was only sloppy for about 30 feet, but it was so sloppy that I carried instead of even trying to ride through it.

Howie was on a singlespeed so we had to keep the tempo down a bit on the flats but even so, the rollers on Doublehead gap flew by.

We rolled by Big and Little John Dick Mountains...

...and plenty of beautiful rural scenery.

At FS58 we headed back north, up Noontootla. There was some inaccurate signage at the bottom.

Or at least, I'm pretty sure it's inaccurate. As I understand it, the Georgia DNR gave up the Blue Ridge WMA. It's just part of the National Forest now and no longer a WMA at all. Nobody has taken any of the signs down though and that one looked really new. So, maybe I'm wrong about that somehow. Maybe it is still a WMA.

Noontootla is popular for a variety of reasons. We saw hoof prints and several vehicles passed us. Many of the campsites were occupied and we waved to the campers.

As we rode by Noontootla Falls I mentioned to John that it's funny that with the dozens of times I've ridden by, I've never actually seen the falls except for what you can see from the road. He was surprised and said something like: "Go ahead and run up there, I'll wait."

So I did, though "running up there" probably doesn't accurately describe the strenuous and technical climb that turned out to be involved in getting up to the cascade. I managed it though, in bike shoes, no less, and it was difficult to find a spot to get a good look, but the reward was worth the effort.

The water was roaring. There's a big slab of rock to the right that I guess was a former route of the falls at some time. The current face has all kinds of squiggly little channels running down it. I ended up crossing over at the base and going back down on the north side. I thought it might be easier. It turned out to be infinitely rockier. I'm not sure I'd call it easier.

When I got back down my brother was gone. I figured it had gotten cold standing there waiting for me and I could see that there were now more than two sets of tire tracks heading north so I followed.

The climb up Noontootla is usually longer than I think it's going to be, but for whatever reason I felt good that day. Before I knew it I was crossing the AT. A bunch of guys in camo jumped in a Civil Air Patrol van as I passed and later they passed me heading uphill. I passed the sign for Hickory Flatts sooner than I expected. I felt great. I'd been eating Zingers all day. Perhaps they are the perfect cycling fuel.

Right in there somewhere I heard a sound like a helicopter, but not like a Huey and not like the Blackhawks I usually hear around there. For a second I thought of the Lifeflight chopper I'd seen the last time I went hiking up there but no, it didn't sound like one of those either. Where was it?

It never went away, and way up near the top I finally got a good look. It wasn't a helicopter at all. It was one of those crazy planes with the huge props and variable pitch wings. It had been circling the area for a while and continued to circle for the next half hour or so. I even saw a second one in formation later, or maybe two separate ones. A long time ago I'd read that the CAP do search and rescue training up there, especially when it's cold - Operation Deep Freeze or something. Maybe that's what they were up to.

When I got to Winding Stair Gap, my brother and Howie were waiting for me. John was lying on his back with his legs up in the air, crossed, and leaning up against a tree. We took a break for a few minutes. I ate a Crunch bar. It was much warmer up there than it had been on the north side of the ridge. Noticeably warmer. In fact, the entire rest of the ride felt comfortable though I'm not sure it ever got up above 40.

We bombed down Winding Stair, which appeared to have been at least regraded, if not also regravelled recently. At Turner Creek we hung a left and rode it until it teed back into Winding Stair. My original, ambitious plan had been to then head down 77A, take Lance Creek Road up to the top of Bull and descend Bull proper back to the car. John and Howie were satisfied to call it a day though, and honestly, it would have been a long climb up Lance Creek. I think I could have done it, but it would have taken a while. Ok, no more climbing. We headed back.

Long live long rides. I'm not sure how long it was. It seemed like around 50 miles. It was definitely a nice change from the standard 100% gravel road Winding Stair/Noontootla loop that I usually do. Not that I don't like that loop, but it was great to start and end on singletrack.

Howie gets the hardman award for doing it on a singlespeed, but more so for being inconspicuous. On a ride like that, there's usually somebody off the back all day. Admittedly sometimes that's me, but more often it's the guy you haven't ridden with before. Not this time. Nice job Howie! I hope I get to ride with you again soon, and maybe that Chris dude too, and Tim, of course, if you get that wheel fixed, or if Vassago ever calls you back.

Wells Tract

2012-01-28T01:16:00.002-05:00

In her words, I kidnapped my wife for an hour and a half today and drug her around down by the river in Roswell.

A while back, the girls and I rode the Riverside Trail, and on that day I discovered the Wells Tract off to the right hand side. At the time, we had to get back and I couldn't tell if it was open to bikes or not, but I put it on the list.

Today was the perfect day to check it out. It's been raining and somewhat cold for a while now, but for some reason today it was 60 degrees, sunny and breezy and Kathryn was in the mood to go walking around.

The main trail was a tunnel of green. Winter in Georgia:

No doubt next week we'll have snow.

The trails were all flat and graveled - typical urban trails, but the woods along the Chattahoochee is always nice and this area in particular was extra scenic. There was a little feeder creek and multiple ponds.

There were a couple of mallards in that pond.

We did a few loops to make sure that we saw all of the system trails. Kathryn talked on the phone for most of the first loop. Heh.

There were quite a few little side trails and we even missed one of the official trails at first because it looked exactly like the side trails. We were persistent though and ultimately rewarded with a nice walk down by the river.

On the way back we had just enough time to check out one more little trail near the lot. It led past what I guess is an old gauging station, the only structure we'd seen all day.

It's a nice little park. Kathryn was pleased that it was flat. I could have gone for some elevation but getting a workout wasn't really the idea, I just wanted to get out in the woods, spend time with Kathryn and get a little exercise for both of us.

I looked and looked for signs indicating whether bikes are allowed in the Wells Tract, but I didn't see anything. The Riverside Trail is open and there were plenty of tire tracks in the Wells Tract but they could have been from jogging strollers. It would be a nice little loop to add on to the end next time I'm out there with the kids. I'll have to inquire.

Cumming GA

2012-01-26T22:45:00.001-05:00

Rain, RAIN! ...and the devastating stress of life. Those are the culprits. They're making me slow. They're making me unhealthy. How do I catch them? How do I put them down? Can it even be done?

This past weekend I had CoTrails meetings all day. We're making a lot of progress and it's very important, but of course, I'd rather be playing in the woods than working. That said, it rained ALL weekend. Literally, ALL weekend. So I guess it worked out just right. I got to hang out with Clark, Suzy, their herd of greyhounds and a couple of their friends. Josh Fix was up for an entirely unrelated Trail School. I got to eat dinner with Woody and his wife and of course I got to spend a time with all my CoTrails and FS friends, and an entirely different Woody of Trail Dynamics fame. It's unfortunate you can't stay fit by learning and working and socializing and watching it rain. If you could, I'd have it made.

There was one day earlier this week that I might have gotten out for a few hours, but I was just way too busy. This morning I got up, determined to put down some miles before lunch but it was super foggy and though I couldn't see it, the drip-drops on the chimney told me it wasn't just foggy.

Around 2 it cleared though. The streets were wet but there was no actual water falling from the sky and I figured that was about the best I was going to get.

I kind of had a mission today. I GPS'ed Central Park 500 years ago but for whatever reason I didn't take a photo of the lot or the kiosk and that generic little trailhead symbol on my map has been bugging me ever since. I always figured I'd be back for some reason, but the girls are too old for the playground any more and we just haven't been there in a while. No more! I rode directly there and took my precious photos.

Ha!

Then I just kind-of wandered. I found a short little dirt road off of State Barn. Who knew that was there? I wonder how much local dirt there is around these parts.

On the back side of Sawnee Mountain, north of where I usually ride, I discovered a bit of rustic flair between the Sawnee Feed Company and a few homes up the road.

I climbed over Sawnee itself from the back and spun a loop up through the park at the top. I've still got power but it feels like certain individual muscle fibers just don't want anything to do with climbing.

It was sort-of dryish on the west side but coming back down the east, it was wet again.

Somebody's bull had gotten over the fence at the base of the mountain. It was just standing there, half out in the road. There were cars stopped in either direction but it was completely oblivious, looking straight ahead at the cows in the pasture across the street. I rode up though and that was all it took. On sight of me, it spun around and leapt back up the hill and over the fence. I've never seen a bull jump like that. It was really amazing. So, note to self, without a fence in the way, cows are scared of bikes. Maybe.

Around the corner, there was a guy working in the same pasture. I tried to talk to him but he didn't speak much English. Darn my luck. Falo Portugues mas nao Espanhol. Actually it wouldn't have been any better if he spoke Portuguese. I know all kinds of words related to business and computers but I realized, standing there, that the words "cow", "fence", "hole" and "road" weren't coming to mind.

Rolling back into town it started sprinkling. I debated cutting it short but I really wanted to do my little Melody Mizer loop. Who cares if it rains? It wasn't cold.

And it rained. Rained and rained. But it wasn't bad. When I got home Sophie was all: "You're wet! Wet and red! You forgot to put on sunblock! No, wait. You're red because it's winter! You forgot to put on... snowblock!" Heh, snowblock.

What a day. It's still raining now. Maybe this weekend it will be dry. I can't even remember what the woods looks like.

PaCo Mixed Loop

2012-01-15T17:05:00.001-05:00

My road bike is dirty. By itself, that's not really news, as my road bike is generally pretty "dirty", but today it has ACTUAL dirt on it, and though that's not completely unheard of, it is a little out of the ordinary.

This morning, I met my brother at the Silver Comet's Rambo Trailhead at 9 with designs on riding the PaCo Mixed Loop. PaCo is short for Paulding County, thus the Singletrack Samurai-esque spelling. It felt cold. It was definitely colder than it's been yet - 31 at the lot, but I expect that it will be substantially colder in the coming weeks and I'm sure I'll soon be laughing at the idea that 31 felt cold.

I didn't know how cold it would be so I ended up bringing every stitch of clothing that I owned, just in case. I opted for some fleece-lined tights, but they ended up being a little too warm even. I should have known. They say if you're not cold in the parking lot, you're overdressed and that certainly turned out to be the case. I didn't have that much of a choice though. My old winter bibs are long dead. Both of the chamois are dead in my summer bibs and all I had left were the fleecy tights and a pair of inexpensive, ill-fitting summer shorts. Man, I really need to upgrade my wardrobe.

We headed east out of the lot and almost immediately passed the guy that had parked next to John on his way back in from a run. A few easy miles later we turned off onto the first "mixed" section of the loop.

They call it the Mixed Loop because, though it is all road, you get just about every different kind of road there is at some point during the loop. For example, right off of the Comet, you turn onto a dirt and gravel road.

They say "dust off your cross bike" for this loop but we hoped that the regular old road bikes would be sufficient. The frere and I both ride them on dirt and gravel all the time and I hadn't yet personally run into a road south of the mountains that I'd be worried about whether I could get down. For the most part though, we've ridden road routes with a mile or two of dirt here and there. Today's loop was like 50/50, or maybe even 60/40 with the 60 being dirt.

A few miles in, I had a sudden, sinking feeling. I think the route is supposed to be around 50 miles, and I'd grabbed 50 miles worth of food at the gas station on the way over, but I suddenly realized that I'd left all of it in the car. I had water, but no food. The realization induced Pavlovian hunger pangs and triggered memories of splitting headaches, aching joints, tunnel vision and that horrible feeling where you realize that your speed has become proportional to the distance you have left. I was saved though, John had brought 2 packs of Clif Blocks "just in case." I hated to provide that case, but I was very thankful that he had them.

We hit a few difficult chunks of road somewhere in there. One had gotten muddy and a little rutted. It was almost dry, but not quite and you just had to pick a tire track and hold it all the way up the hill. I don't know if he carried more speed into it or if he has a slightly bigger granny gear than I do but John was able to make it up that hill, though quite slowly at the top. I nearly made it but finally lost traction about 90% of the way up. I prayed it would be the only bad spot and as luck would have it, that was the case.

We alternated between dirt, gravel, hard-pack, deteriorated asphalt, beautifully smooth pavement, rough pavement... Everything!

The ride was fun, but I was having a very difficult time, fitness-wise. I'd start to go anaerobic the instant I tried to put down any power, I couldn't breathe deeply, I was breathing fast, I couldn't catch my breath without really easing up. It was like jumping back on Isabel's skateboard after 20 years. I could look at a hill and in my mind, I could imagine what it should feel like to climb it, but I had an impossible time getting my body to do the things necessary to make my real feelings match the ones in my head.

The scroll of excuses pouring out of that lame part of my brain was long and most of them centered around weather and lack of sleep, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. No excuses could change the fact that I got dropped, over and over.

It was no good, but usually if the ride is long enough and I get some good recovery on an easier section, then the next tough section feels easier and after a few hours, I'm back to normal. I was banking on that and hoping for an easier section, but instead the road turned into gravel again and we just climbed up, up, up and over Braswell and Brushy Mountains. I got so tired that I could barely even talk right. I kept slurring. The climb was a series of step-ups and in theory I could get some rest between them, but it was no use.

I had a little mental game going on too. Brushy Mountain lies at the heart of the Paudling Forest. It's small game season now and there were a lot of hunters out. I didn't realize, but I haven't done any dirt road rides since coming back from Florida, and it seemed like every truck in the woods today was a white pickup. The guys that chased me around Central Florida drove a grey truck, but white was apparently close enough in my mind. Every time we'd come around a corner and see a guy in a white pickup, I'd get a little flashback and a small shot of adrenalin. It wasn't that bad, and the more trucks I saw, the less significant it was but for a while, it was a factor.

Finally, on the back side, dirt became deteriorated asphalt, crumb-gravel became pavement and eventually, I got that rest that I needed. I could breathe again, I could punch it over little hills, I could crank big ones without going anaerobic. In fact, nothing even looked that big any more. I felt like myself again, or at least less like the shadow of myself that I'd been feeling.

I submit as proof that I had become myself, that I made a navigation error in keeping with the typical navigation errors that I don't seem to be able to avoid making. At an unsigned intersection, it felt right to stay left, so rather than check the map, we stayed left and rode downhill for about 5 miles before I realized the mistake.

Ah, yes. I can say it again: Don't trust me to get you anywhere.

The return was an easy tempo climb though and my lungs were finally working for real. Yeah!

We got back on track south of Yorktown and the rest of the ride was fast and fun. There were some mean kicks near the end and I struggled, but nothing like earlier. In fact, the biggest problem I had was that I didn't drink enough and my thighs started to twinge. I'm not sure why. I don't usually have that problem, but I did today. It's so disappointing when you've got a ton of energy but your legs aren't in any mood to do anything with it. Come on!

It wasn't that big of a deal though because right as it happened, we hit some flattish dirt again and the the Silver Comet a mile or so later.

I'd heard that the loop was 50 miles, but it didn't seem like anything close to 50 miles. It seemed more like 30, including getting off route and back. I'll have to see what Google Maps says.

The route is incredibly fun, if you're into that sort of thing. The diversity of scenery, terrain and road surfaces keep it interesting. Highly recommended!

Ride it.

Jake Mountain

2012-01-14T19:06:00.001-05:00

This past Saturday was work-day at Jake Mountain. We didn't have one in December so I actually found myself very much looking forward to this one. For months, we've been doing finishing work on the Jake Mountain and Moss Branch trails. There's one section left between the intersection of those two trails and Jones Creek that still needs work. We'd planned on getting to it this time, but Debbie had been up there earlier in the week and it turned out that there were a few sections of trail that needed more attention so we decided to work on them instead.

I think there were 16 or more of us. We split up into 4 crews. I took a crew down the Bull/Jake Connector.

That trail had been built 5 or 6 years ago but finishing work had never really been done on it. This past year, we ran a Dingo down about 2/3rds of it, but just past where the Dingo work stopped, there is trouble.

There's a step-up there that's just slightly too steep for the traffic and a groove is wearing into it, little-by-little. Give it five more years and it'll look like the old trenches on the old Moss Branch Trail. Deberming it by hand isn't feasible. We're going to have to armor it with pavers, rock and gravel. It will be quite a project.

In the mean time though, we debermed about 200 yards of trail uphill from the bad section and cleaned out as many old nicks as we could find.

Isabel unearthed a hibernating toad.

At first we thought it was dead. Then it started stretching and we thought it was a zombie. It was only then that we remembered that toads can hibernate.

Zombie toad!

It had rained a lot over the previous week and even a little bit that morning but aside from the specific spots we were working, the trail was in extremely good shape. Several groups of horseback riders passed us and a group of mountain bikers too. Except for the low spots that we were actively clearing out, you could not have looked at the trail and determined how many riders or how recently they came through. I remember Woody mentioning that way back. A well designed trail can be ridden wet. That would appear to be the case.

The soil was wet and heavy. The work was difficult. Everybody swung hard though. Nobody sat up.

One semi-interesting event did occur while we were out working. We often move to a new section of trail, drop our backpacks on the backslope and work toward the downslope. We had done this and a little while later, group of riders came by on horseback. The lead horse was very frightened of our backpacks, lying there in a little pile. It stopped for a while and thought pretty hard about it, and once it jumped backwards about 6 or 8 inches, all at once. The way it jumped was kind of up and back with all feet at the same time and it seemed so unusual that Isabel kept talking about it all day. It was interesting to me too because I know horses can be afraid of bikes, and I've always heard that they can also be afraid of bright colors and of backpacks and of things on the backslope (because predators generally attack from uphill) but I hadn't seen it until then.

Speaking of predators on the backslope... I've mentioned that to the girls before, kind of in passing and Isabel apparently paid attention because whenever a group would come by, she'd tell Sophie to move to the downslope and tell her exactly why, and tell Greg, and tell Jeremy, and even tell the equestrians in our crew.

It's amazing to me how much they pick up.

We'd walked out to the end of the chunk we needed to work on and worked back toward the parking lot. The half mile or so nearest the lot was in much better shape than further out, though the sections had been constructed identically. There were a few little nicks that needed work though, and we quickly discovered why everything was in such good shape. The soil there was exceedingly rocky; just shot through with gazillions of little pebbly chunks and dude, it took like 20 minutes to do there what it had taken us 10 to do further down. We were so close to the lot too, it was like running out of gas within sight of the gas station and having to push your car up to the pump. Yes. Admittedly, I've done that.

We got everything done that we'd hoped to accomplish and the other crews reported similar success. It was a really productive day. I think collectively we turned in 101 hours or something. Woohoo!

Back at the lot we pigged out on lunch, graciously provided by the CTHA, and sat around a'jawin for the next hour or so.

A group of riders who had apparently come from a long way away and were completely unfamiliar with the trails rode up and headed out.

It gives me a very good feeling when I see someone enjoying those trails, even if they're enjoying it in a different way than I do. In fact, I think it might even feel even better when I see someone enjoying the trails in a different way than I do. I guess it's because I can see that the impact extends beyond myself and my community. Whatever it is, I love it and I'm already looking forward to next month.

Vickery Creek

2012-01-14T18:21:00.001-05:00

It's been one week and one day since my last little adventure and I'm just now sitting down to write about it. How does that even happen? In the past, it always seemed like I had plenty of time to do stuff and even more time to write about it. Lately, it just hasn't been the case. Man, I hope it's temporary.

Please, please, please...

Two Fridays ago I got out of the house for a couple of hours to finish exploring all up in and around the Vickery Creek area. This time, it hadn't rained continuously for several days, and the creek itself was relatively low. I could, for example, actually see the little shoal beneath the bridge.

My goal for the day was to see the rest of the park. I tried to see it all last time, but I got perpetually sidetracked and before I knew it, I'd run out of time. The same thing almost happened again though. Right near the covered bridge, there was a small maze of trails running up, down and around the hill by the creek, in the "Mill Point" area, or so I have dubbed it. It took forever to explore them but I managed to get it done.

I think I might have confused and possibly scared a girl though. She was by herself, down by the creek, playing around with rocks and sand and I kept looping back and passing by her. If some old dude kept passing back and forth by my kids over and over, they'd wonder what he was up to. I had my GPS and map out, but you never know if people know what those are or not. I hope I didn't creep her out too much.

Eventually I got away from Mill Point and started making real progress on the system.

Along one of the main trails, there were several sections of fence. It was clear in a few spots that they'd built it to keep people off of some old, user-created, fall-line trails that they'd also covered up with brush, but in some spots, the purpose of the fence wasn't all that clear.

Eventually I made it down to the Riverside Road lot and followed a trail out along the river for a while. There are maps at various corners, throughout the system and they all showed a closed section along the river. Eventually I discovered that section, and I think I know why it's closed.

There was a cable stretched between two trees and a "you could fall and die" sign behind it. A few years back we had some major rain and flooding. Along the Chattahoochee up my my place, it created some impressive washouts. Down by my brother's place, along the Dog River in Douglasville, it was really amazing. I imagine Vickery Creek suffered a similar fate. The trail, being right on the river, and apparently dangerous enough before, probably became pretty nearly impassible.

It was hard to resist the urge not to keep going and check it out, but I did. Barely.

Heading back toward the rest of the park, I noticed a tree that had been cut down by a beaver.

Up by my place, I've seen plenty of trees that have been gnawed on and plenty of old stumps, but never an entire tree, recently felled, until now. The limbs had been gnawed off and dragged away and the beaver appeared to be in the process of cutting the tree up into sections. It was fascinating. I always wondered how they managed to move an entire tree. Apparently they don't, they cut it up. It seems so obvious now.

Back on the main trail, I ran into a couple that was utterly lost. At first I thought they must be joking because the guy had an old, white beard and from the looks of him, I'd have thought he'd spent the last 10 years of his life hiking the Appalachian Trail. I guess looks can be deceiving though because they were, in fact, quite lost. They had some issue with the signage. Something like "the map tells you where you are but not which direction you came from." Obviously, the map can't know which direction you came from, but I didn't mention that. I just walked with them back the the previous map and showed them which way to go.

There were a couple of side trails that led down to the end of some local neighborhood roads and I checked those out, but I didn't see as many interesting sights as last time. There were a few though.

For example, there was this really weird bush. Somebody tell me what this is.

Evergreen, leaves shaped like maple, but waxy and thorned like holly. Weird berries. Bees were buzzing all over it. I've never seen it before. It had never occurred to me that bees even existed in the winter. Weird.

Just past the weird bush, I ran into a jogger with a really friendly dog. Just about everyone out there other than me was a jogger and 90% of them had dogs. It's an in-town trail, so technically you have to have a leash, but almost nobody does. That said, virtually every off-leash dog was either ambivalent or super-friendly, but their owners seemed to be very self-conscious about breaking the rules. This guy was, in particular, but I was just happy to get to scratch his dog. Man, I wish I could have a dog!

If you just go by the maps along the trail, the system seems like a spider web. But after sufficient exploration and after taking note of some of the old, overgrown side trails, the layout of the system started making sense. It became clear which trails were old roads and how they used to connect up to each other. I started to remember where I was. I didn't have to check the map so much. It was a nice, familiar feeling.

Just uphill of one of the odd trails that I first thought was a side trail but which turned out to be an actual system trail, I noticed a weird little concrete structure.

It turned out that it was in the backyard of an old house. The ruins of the basement lay nearby.

What was the concrete thing though? It reminded me of an episode of Mythbusters. Adam once said he loved to find old, confusing pieces of equipment that clearly must have had some purpose, but try as he might, he couldn't determine what it might have been. The purpose had been lost to time. That's how this thing was for me. The best I could come up with is that it was some old grill. There was what looked like it might have been a chimney and certainly there were rusty old rails, but the rails were flat and wide, there wasn't any obvious evidence that any burning had gone on, and why would there be a chimney at all? It made me suspicious of some distinctly different purpose, and I stood there and thought about it for a while, but nothing came to mind. Sherlock Holmes would have been terribly disappointed with me, had he actually existed, that is.

Further on, I encountered another mystery, though it turned out to be a little more discernible than the last. It's hard to see in the photo, but somebody painted H-E-L-P on the trees. If you stand at just the right angle, you can read it.

The trees were dissimilar though: white oak and maybe red oak, neither rare, so it didn't appear to be an appeal to save any particular kind of threatened tree. I ultimately decided that maybe someone was appealing for help for trees in general, or perhaps for the park, in general. With the steady urbanization of Roswell over the past hundred years, I could at least imagine that was the message. "The trees themselves cry out for help!" Or something similar.

Up the trail a bit though, I encountered a distinctly different viewpoint. It is very hard to see in the photo, because someone painted it in dark green, but if you look closely, you can see the letters P-A-P-E-R.

"The trees themselves cry out 'We are paper!'"

The duality of man.

And with that, I'd explored the entire system. Every inch of trail. It was still a long walk back to the car though, and on the way, I stopped to examine something that I'd noticed all day. Probably every quarter mile or so, there was a little blue or green bag, at the edge of the trail.

I'd seen them all day. I've never seen them anywhere else. I was very curious what they were. Having accomplished my objectives, I felt free to indulge my curiosity and immediately wished that I hadn't. The bags were, of course, full of dog poo.

There are signs all over that say "pick up after your pets" and cleverly "it's your 'doodie' to pick up after your pets" and so on... But it occurred to me, the signs don't specifically say that you should carry out the turds because they're an eyesore, somebody might step on them, a concentration of them getting into the watershed can bump up the local e-coli level, etc. etc. etc. The signs just say that you have to pick them up. This is classic for North Georgia. Leave it to a North Georgian to follow instructions to the letter, but to miss the point entirely. On the other hand, leave it to a North Georgian to give very specific instructions but leave out the point, entirely.

The bags appeared to be made of some odd material too, like maybe they're those biodegradable plant-bags or something. So, I'd bet that the people using them are doing their best to be environmentally conscious. E for effort. At least they're trying. And honestly, I'm not really sure I have any issue with it, one way or another. It kind of reminded me of the beheaded deer carcases I see scattered all over the roads at the end of each deer season. We don't have chronic wasting disease here. Yeah, it's an eyesore, but is it REALLY hurting anything? Maybe. I have no idea. Yeah, the poo gets in the watershed, but so does the runoff from everyone's yard. Eh, I'll leave it to somebody else to have an opinion about that one.

It took infinitely longer than it seemed like it should to get back to the car. Near the end, I got stuck behind some college kids that had apparently been out jogging but were now cooling down and walking extra slow. It didn't matter though, I had plenty of daylight and I was just happy to be out of the house.

All right, so the exploration of Vickery Creek is now accomplished. Yay! On the other hand, there are still Allenbrook House, Ivy Mill, Oxbo and Old Roswell Trails nearby, begging to be explored as well. So, I guess, for that, also yay!

I wonder if I can convince the kids to help me out with those trails. It doesn't seem likely these days, but I guess I can dream.

To Bull and Back

2012-01-05T02:48:00.002-05:00

A long time ago on some forum or something, I mentioned that I'd done a long ride up at Bull Mountain and I think it was Neal Nichols who joked in response that I probably rode there from my house, which is like 40 miles away. Ha, ha, we all laughed, but apparently the incident planted a tiny little seed in the back of my mind.

When I leave the house for a road ride, I rarely have a destination in mind, I usually just feel out a route, but over the next several months I found myself feeling like riding further and more directly north. A few weeks ago, about ten miles into the ride, it suddenly occurred to me that I wanted to ride to Bull and back and I got as far north as the kangaroo place before running out of time.

Today I had all the time in the world though and for the first time since The Circumnavigation of Lake Lanier, I left the house with a purpose.

Dawsonville used to seem like a long way away but I barely noticed the ride up today. It was familiar and I guess that makes the miles fly by.

I'd eaten only a bowl of Raisin Bran that morning and my stomach was feeling a little empty so I stopped at a gas station just off the square for a pair of Whatchamacalits. One, I ate directly, or at least about 85% of it directly. The other I saved for later.

The last few times I'd been up that way I'd headed east out of the square and then North on whatever road becomes Bailey-Waters. I don't know why but today I felt like heading due north on Shoal Creek and picking up Hwy 136 instead.

I doubt there was any difference in distance or terrain though, and before terribly long I was again at the kangaroo place.

I actually got kind of excited as I rolled by, I guess because I hadn't made it that far yet and for the first time it appeared like I might actually achieve my goal.

It had always seemed like Bull Mountain was only about 5 miles north of the kangaroo place, but I think that's just because I've always been driving. If it's only 5 miles, it's a long 5 miles. And hilly. HILLY! About halfway down Bailey-Waters I could see the Blue Ridge barely peeking over the top of the hill.

My destination was at the foot of that ridge but it looked so very, very far away.

A mile or so after jogging right on Hwy 52 a girl screamed as their car passed and it startled me half to death. I can't remember the last time I shook so hard when somebody yelled at me but man, I shook that time.

It seemed like it took a year to get to Nimlewill Church Road, and I really didn't remember all those little rollers being there. The ride down to the church itself flew by though and before long I was in the lot, in sight of my goal.

The aforementioned goal, achieved:

Or, at least, half achieved. For it to truly count, I had to make it back home too.

As I stood there, screwing around with my phone, a guy with a mountain bike on the back of his car drove by and waved. When I rolled out, I noticed a lone car parked in the Jake Lot too with somebody sitting there, either about to head out or just getting finished. Just up the road, I passed another guy with a bike on the back of his truck and he waved.

It was surreal being there on the road bike, kind of like when I volunteer at a race. My instincts tell me to be excited and that I should be doing all the things that I normally do to get ready for a ride. But what is this? I have no mountain bike! Did I forget it? Oh, wait, no. Everything is fine. I'm here for something else. But, wait, my bike! Oh, yeah, heh, remember... Not here for that. ... My bike!? And so on.

It wasn't until I was well away from the lot that things started to seem normal again.

I stopped briefly at the old Grizzle's Store.

Long ago I used to take a route up to Bull that went right by the store. Now I go a different way and I realized that it's been a really long time since I'd last seen it. I had to stretch my mind a bit to remember, but it was when Billy Pickens and I rode up there after Hurricane Ivan had taken out a bunch of bridges. We couldn't drive to the church from either direction, parked at the store, rode down the road and had to hike-a-bike across a creek where one of the bridges had been washed out. We then proceeded up to Nimblewill Gap, quadruple-flatted and I had to ride a flat tire down FS28-3 and beyond to Hwy 52 and then head east in the dark while Billy went and got the truck. It was quite an adventure.

I took Hwy 52 east to Hwy 9 and then headed south. It was somewhere in there that I first felt like I would actually make it back. For some odd reason, I never feel like I'm making real progress until I turn and head in the general direction of the end. Even if I'm well over halfway, until I make that turn, it just doesn't feel right.

I had to stretch my mind to remember the last time I'd been on that section of Hwy 9 too. It was AGES ago, even before that quadruple-flat adventure, probably 2002 or so. There are some big, twisty climbs up off of the Etowah. Yes, indeed, there are.

Somewhere, not too far north of Dawsonville I rode past this burned up old homestead that was too interesting to just ride on by.

The dual chimneys are still standing, along with the brick columns that held up the porch, but the rest is a total ruin. Kathryn would have loved it. She loves old broken down buildings.

Not far south of that I started to get light headed and weak-kneed climbing some long, steep hill. I was short on calories and there were a gazillion miles left to ride. I ate the little nub of the first Whatchamacalit and eased up, but it wasn't enough. I was getting weaker by the mile. It was that long, slow bonk where you either barely drag yourself home after teetering on the edge of hypoglycemia for hours, or suddenly crater halfway up the last hill.

I stopped at a gas station in Dawsonville again. This time it was the one across the street from the last one I'd stopped at. I refilled my bottle, ate the other Whatchamacallit, warmed up in the direct sun for a few minutes and hit the road again.

It's only about 20 miles from the Dawsonville square to my house but it was the longest 20 miles in the world. I never really bonked but I never really recovered either.

A few miles north of town I jumped again when an Outback just like mine (but green) drove by and the dog in the back seat with it's head out the window barked as it passed. For some reason, apparently, I was all nerves today.

As I rolled into town it wasn't officially dark, in that you couldn't really see any stars yet, but everybody's headlights had been on for a long time and I'd turned on my flasher ten miles earlier. I had a red, rear flasher, but nothing up front. I own a little white bar-mountable light, I should just put it on my bars and leave it there all winter.

I'd mentioned before heading out that I was worried I'd be about 15 minutes short on time and it turned out that I was right on the money with that prediction. The hills in my neighborhood seemed taller than ever, especially in the failing light, and for some reason there were dozens of people coming home from work, right then too. I made it though, and all's well that ends well.

I wasn't sure of the mileage before I left. I guessed around 70 miles and upon returning, I checked Google Maps and it shows it to be right about that far. Not too bad of a ride. I've been hoping to get in some longer rides this winter. Next time I'll have to manage my nutrition a little better but it felt like a pretty good start.

McIntosh

2012-01-02T23:08:00.000-05:00

Yesterday my Dad and I tried to ride 5 Points. I had a great time up there with Travis, I knew he'd love it and I wanted to see where the Long Branch Trail went, so we met at the corner of I-75 and 140 and trekked on up there. Both of us checked the weather the previous day, and the previous night, and that morning and still we got rained out.

Baaahhh!

5 hours of windshield time, down the drain. Such is cycling though.

Today we endeavoured to make up for it but we didn't have the same kind of time to spend so we hit a local trail, or at least a substantially more local trail - McIntosh Reserve. My Dad and my brother and I used to ride and race there a good bit in the early 2000's. Some time ago it flooded really badly though and much of the park was under several feet of water for a year or more. Around that same time, trails started popping up in Paulding County and at Clinton and nobody even talked about McIntosh any more. It seemed to have been all but forgotten by the collective Atlanta-Area Mountain Biking Consciousness.

In truth, I wasn't sure it was still even open, so I actually called to make sure before we made the trip down. Yep, they were open, and they have a website, and there was even a map. Woohoo!

I picked up my dad from his place and met my brother at his place and we headed over together. The lady at the front gate was very friendly but she talked my brother's ear off. She was concerned for us being out in the woods because it was already 'cold' (48 degrees) and the temperature was supposed to drop and the wind was pretty strong. She was also really worried that we didn't have enough time (3 hours) to ride the entire 12 miles of trail. It was a bit brisk, but the wind wasn't a big deal and we were pretty confident that we could knock out the miles.

We parked down by the river and got dressed. A cat was roaming around the lot and though it was a little apprehensive at first, it eventually let me scratch it for a few minutes.

I taped the map to my stem and we hit the trail.

Right away, I could see that it might be a long day. Mountain bikers may have forgotten about the trail but it appears to have become even more popular among equestrians. The first hill didn't run straight up the fall line, but it definitely didn't follow the half-backslope rule. The soil there is somewhat sandy, and between the grade, the hoof prints and the dense leaf cover, it really took some effort to climb.

I know my Dad's pace, so I just started up the first hill at that pace, but my brother doesn't usually ride with us and it threw me off. I heard him right behind me the whole time, confused that for my Dad being right behind me and rode harder up the hill than I otherwise would have. We ended up dropping my Dad and he over-worked himself trying to catch. He didn't blow up completely, but he wasn't far from it. It took most of the ride for him to recover. I did that once on the Dalton Pinhoti with my brother and Mark Baldwin - I blew up on the road before we even got to the trail and it took 20 of the 32 miles to recover. I almost did it on P1 on Andrew's birthday. It's so easy to do, especially when you're first getting warmed up.

We rode all around the Southeast corner of the park. The trails were soft and leafy and bumpy and eroded. They were definitely challenging, with plenty of technical climbs and descents, but they were very rough and it was difficult to carry speed.

We crossed a creek by a little water park and meandered past an old cabin.

Apparently the land is named after William McIntosh, an Indian Chief of both Creek Indian and British descent, thus the English name, who ran a plantation on the grounds. He served under Andrew Jackson and had a distinguished military and political career, helping to establish many US-Creek treaties. Despite all that, his cousin on his Dad's side got elected Governor of Georgia by promising to remove all Native Americans from the state and that put him on the Creek's bad side. Ultimately they murdered him and burned his plantation.

I'm not sure whether the cabin was left unburned or whether it was built later. There are interpretive signs all over the place though. If we'd been in less of a hurry, I might have read them. Apparently there was a Civil War battle somewhere around there too but I didn't see any signs for that.

There's a big hill down by the river with a pavillion where you can get a good view of the river.

A lady and her daughter were looking around too and talked our ears off about kayaking.

We sort-of rode a more-rideable-than-it-looks trail over the rocks behind the overlook, past the Council Bluffs where Indian Chiefs used to meet, along the river for a while and back up into the woods.

The trail was hard to follow in some places. Hard to even see.

The hills were steep and chunky. The flat spots appeared to collect water and hoof prints. In antiquity, there was always a horse-line and a bike-line. There was always a path of packed-down trail to one side or the other of the hoof prints. Not so much any more. We just had to power through them.

It's more or less one long, difficult climb to the north end of the park, away from the river, and then a long descent back to the south. There was a side-loop off of the main trail heading back south and it was actually really nice.

There was a mile or so of trail that we hadn't ridden yet so we looped back over toward it on the pavement. On the way, we ran into the lady from the front office. Again, she expressed strong concern over us being out in the cold and it seemed inconceivable to her that we only had a mile left to ride.

My dad had whacked his knee earlier trying to climb one of the sketchier little kicks so he bailed off back to the car. John and I hit that last little bit of trail and joined him. We probably had enough time to spin another, abbreviated lap but we were just as satisfied not to.

The trails out there aren't bad, they're just not great, given what else there is to ride these days. I hear complaints all the time about how all the new trails people are building are too sanitized and too easy. There's always McIntosh.

Silver Comet

2012-01-01T01:14:00.001-05:00

Yesterday we dialed in Sophie's bike and this morning we all felt like putting some miles on it. The Silver Comet seemed like the perfect place to do that. It's long and straight and easy and there aren't too many road crossings to challenge her new braking skills.

Allons-y.

It was unexpectedly warm at the Tara Drummond lot but then unexpectedly cold when we got going. Not too far in, we actually had to turn back to get jackets and spare clothes. Fortunately we'd only gone a mile or so, but unfortunately it was mostly uphill back to the car.

On our second attempt, we made a great deal more progress. We rolled through several little tunnels and out across an old train trestle that took us high above some little creek below.

Somebody's property backed up to the creek and they had put out a lawn chair and an umbrella on the bank. At first I thought that somebody was sitting there and I prepared to wave, but then I realized, it wasn't a person sitting in the chair, but rather a skeleton.

Ha.

I wonder if it's there all year or if they've just been lazy in picking up their Halloween decorations.

The Silver Comet trail gets pretty remote out west of Dallas. It crosses the Paulding Forest and there are few signs of civilization.

We saw one or two road crossings and two or three houses but that was it. The houses were interesting too. One looked as if it had exploded all over the property, in classic North Georgia form. I didn't know that happened this far south. I guess it does. The other had a small lot to the side that, given the ruts, was dedicated exclusively to mudding. A big, jacked up 4x4 was parked at the edge, facing the clearing, eagerly awaiting the next rain.

I think I like the Silver Comet out that way a bit more than I like it closer to Atlanta. The geography is much more complex.

You pass through deep cuts and over even deeper fills. We were always surprised by how cold it got when we were down underground like that. There were several long stretches and a few times we got to the point of shivering.

Looking at a map later, it seemed that for the people that had to lay the old railbed, there was no easy route through those woods. An old mountain range, now worn down into thousands of little hills, comes slanting in from the northeast and there's nothing to do but push though it as quickly as possible. There's no great contour to follow. It looks like they had to cross one major creek at right angles and then they tried to follow another one northwest, as much as possible, but even that was hard to do.

When they hit Brushy Mountain, there was only one thing to do. Drive right through it.

Sophie has always liked tunnels but riding through that one was surreal. It's just so tall. You get a clear sense that it was designed for some other purpose and it almost feels like you're intruding. Combine that with the length and about halfway through, you start to feel a little like you've overstayed your welcome.

We got passed by several riders who commented in how surprised they were to see the kids out there. We were a long way from parking lots in either direction and I guess they knew how far they must have ridden.

Most people were friendly but somewhere in there we got passed by a older lady and her friend. The friend was lagging behind a bit and almost looked homeless. The lady was extra chatty and about half of the things she said were friendly but the other half were decidedly negative. She commented, for example, on how it would be much easier if the girls were on road bikes and that she HATES hybrids and a few other odd things. It was just enough to make me a little uneasy. If someone doesn't know any better than to say unfriendly things, it makes you wonder if they know any better than to do unfriendly things too. I was relieved when they were gone and Isabel indicated as much herself.

We stopped for a snack at the county line and the kids were more fascinated than I expected that they could be in two counties at once.

On the west side of the tunnel, we noticed more old railroad debris than in the east side. There were old ties piled up here and there and even one old rail. There were old telephone poles still standing beside the trail in some places and odd concrete boxes chucked off to the side. It brought again to mind the great argument... Trash or artifact?

We continued west to Coots Lake Beach.

The lake itself looked uninviting.

There we set a spell and checked the mental math I'd been doing for the past hour or so. We'd started around 1 and it had taken us 2 and a half hours to get there. Most if it was climbing though and we'd stopped for at least 20 minutes so far. We had about 2 hours to get back if we wanted to get home by 7 for dinner with my and Kathryn's folks, who are both in town. If we didn't screw around, we had plenty of time.

And for the most part, we didn't screw around. I had to stop to pee twice but other than that we made great time.

The second time we stopped, there was this oddly misspelled graffiti on the curb.

I can understand misspelling Clif but who doesn't know how to spell "bar"?

It seemed like an odd word to get wrong.

We got back right on time and made it home right on time too. Sophie did great all day. We were able to go much faster, she's got the brakes down and she's figuring out the mysteries of shifting. The only problem she had was that the shifter is still stiff and it gave her a blister on her thumb. It was a minor inconvenience though. Overall, she loves her new bike.

All tolled, we rode 27.58 miles. I was shocked when I read the number. Yeah, it was all on flat, paved trails but still, it seems like a long way for a kid to ride her bike. The girls seemed pleased with it too, as our previous record was right around 20 miles.

They didn't seem too worn out from the effort either. I needed a nap but they were bouncing off the walls all night. I wonder if I can coordinate something even more ambitious next time.

Habersham Bank

2011-12-30T18:26:00.001-05:00

The Swing, and how to get back into it? That is the million dollar question these days.

Sometimes just pure immersion helps. I hoped it would today.

I didn't feel like going to the bike shop but my road bike was in dire need of repair. I'd popped a derailleur cable weeks ago and my bars are in such hideous need of new tape that it's embarrassing, even to me. I also talked to Todd about getting a new gruppo and through it all I could feel the ancient memories working their way back up to the surface.

I got Sophie a new bike about a week before Christmas too, but with the weather and everything else going on, we haven't had time to dial it in. We made time today though, at our favorite learn-to-ride spot: Habersham Bank. Both kids learned to ride there. Iz learned to ride her geared bike there and now Sophie has too.

She was a little nervous about the brakes. She's been riding a coaster brake for years now. Iz didn't have any trouble adjusting though, and as it turned out, neither did Sophie.

Also, Iz got a skateboard like 2 Christmases ago and she wanted to try to learn to ride it again today.

Actually, she got 2 boards, one small and one adult sized. She played around with the little one and I tried to ride the big one. It's so weird. I've got photos and videos of myself sliding gigantic handrails, clearing huge gaps and doing 3 foot backside ollies on the 7-foot half-pipe at the Skatepark of Houston but stepping onto that board today... It was inconceivably foreign.

I remember, way back, other people's boards always felt foreign and if I'd take a week off then it would take a week to get back straight again. I never imagined taking 20 years off though. It's not like riding a bike. It doesn't just come right back. I could feel how to do stuff in my head but making my body do it seemed impossible. I spun a few laps around the bank though and before long I felt confident enough to do a couple of skip-ollies. Before long I was doing frontside 80's but then I crashed on a backside and figured I'd better quit while I was ahead.

Fortunately, crashing instincts do come right back.

Sophie likes her new bike and she's noticeably faster on it. They'll be off until Thursday, so hopefully we can get in a good ride before then.

It's all starting to come back to me now.

Vickery Creek

2011-12-25T02:32:00.001-05:00

Topsy Turvy.

That's how my life has been lately. Twisted around by work and weather and eventualities, I barely feel like myself. On the one hand, it's kind-of nice to get a break from the routine, but on the other hand, I really like some parts of the routine and I don't really want a break from them. For example, I've been stuck in the house and I haven't seen the sun or set foot on dirt in weeks.

Weeks!

Last Saturday I tried to end that run though, with a little trip to Roswell. It's not really "the woods" but there are trails there, and thus I must hike.

I parked at the Old Mill Park. The kids and I had stopped by a few months back on the way back from riding the Riverside Trail but we just looked around a little. You drive down to the lot from Hwy 9 and it seems like a good way down, but then there's an even more precipitous drop from the lot down to the river.

There are some ruins of an old cotton mill down there and a covered bridge down there that takes you across the river.

Down by the river itself there's a network of pipes running up and down and back and forth.

I'm really curious about the pipes, actually. Where do they go? What are they for, exactly? They don't look big enough to be drainage or sewer lines. I guess they could be part of the water supply, but they're way down in the creek, lower than I'd expect supply lines to be.

There were a dozen or more people walking around down by the river, not all together, but in a couple of little groups. It looked like a popular place. Aside from the pipes, there were other interesting sights down there too.

There was this crazy cave-rock.

And it rained torrentially for days last week so the creek was raging over the little shoal under the bridge.

The creek, by the way, is Big Creek - the same Big Creek that the girls and I ride along so often, just further downstream. On the west side, where I parked, the land is owned by the city. Across the creek, the land is part of the Chattahoochee NRA, in the Vickery Creek Unit. In antiquity, Big Creek was known as Vickery Creek, named after a Cherokee woman who owned a farm somewhere upstream.

I didn't find a trail map online (though I must admit that I didn't try all that hard) so I was really just kind of winging it. I had a topo map, and it looked like basically there was just one big hill in the area, hemmed in by Big Creek, the Chattahoochee and some neighborhoods.

The trails along the river looked kind of unofficial, so I headed back to the bridge and up some stairs. I figured if there were stairs, then there were probably real trails at the top. And yea, there were.

Most of it was doubletrackish.

But the park wasn't entirely without singletrack.

Along the river there appeared to be dozens of scramble paths too where people climbed down over the rocks to get to the water. Those are very common, up and down the entire Chattahoochee. Further upstream they have become cavernous but with all the rock in the area down there, they weren't so bad.

I headed up to the northwest corner of the park and followed a trail back along the river. It was wide and clear, and then ended abruptly at a bridge of sorts.

Hmm. It appeared to be the right way to go.

When I was a kid in Texas, we used to cross pipes like that all the time. There was one in particular that I had to cross to get to the school behind my neighborhood if I wanted to skate there, otherwise I had to go like a mile around the other way. The pipes in Texas were generally suspended 10 or 15 feet above a dry canal but still, it was similar enough to trigger a flood of good memories.

Across the creek the trail led along the creek but there was a dense tangle of Autumn Olive blocking the view. Here and there little side trails led down to the water, but not for any immediately obvious reason. The water looked deep and slow there though and after a while I started to wonder if you could swim there.

The further south I went, the more I could hear the roar of the dam, and as I approached it, I got the answer to my question.

Apparently so. I know what I'm doing this summer.

The river raged over the dam with furious effort and a deafening howl. If the dam had cracked and burst and gone tumbling downstream, it wouldn't have surprised me in the least.

The main torrent was impressive, but I was more interested in the raceway outlet.

Water would pour through that outlet, run along a long flume...

and drive a wheel at the end which ran all this crazy machinery.

Apparently the flume was first made of wood but eventually they replaced it with that metal pipe.

There are interpretive signs all over with old photos but man I really want to see one of those old mills in action. There's got to be one somewhere in North Georgia still running. Standing there, looking at all of it, it was amazing. The things that people put together back then... There was no gasoline, no electricity, barely even steam. A water-driven mill was the height of technology, built by hand out of rough timber, brick, mortar and cast-iron. The scale was amazing too. It was enormous. There was a dam and multiple buildings packed full of pipes and wheels... It consumed acres, and that's just the part of the mill that generated the power, never mind the rest of it. Today you could get the same work out of a little engine sitting on a concrete pad with a natural gas line hooked up to it. I'm sure in another hundred years the enormity of even that will seem preposterous though.

As impressive as it might have been, it's all falling apart now.

I don't know though, that might make it even more interesting.

I crossed the covered bridge again and explored along the east side of the river some more.

There was a rope swing...

...and an old shirt tangled up in the tree revealed a recent high-water mark.

A rough trail followed the creek for a long time and eventually petered out in some thorns. Leave it to me to find thorns. I will find them. That is one thing you can count on.

I ended up backtracking a lot on that side, looping back to pick up trails I'd seen earlier.

The whole system is situated at a big bend in the river and along the north side of the property there was another pipe that you could cross to get to the parking lot for the aptly named Oxbo Trail.

The Oxbo Trail is a wide gravel trail running along the north bank of Big Creek. The Historic Roswell Trail tees into it near there too. I wonder if either or both are open to bikes? If so, they looked like good places to ride with the girls.

I headed back across the pipe, backtracked some more and found a nice piece of singletrack that paralleled the river, higher up the bank. Later I would discover that it was not part of the official system trails. Until you just know the system, it's difficult to tell where you're supposed to go out there.

Eventually the trail went under another pedestrian bridge, upstream of which was another dam, the purpose of which wasn't entirely clear.

The lower dam was there to run the mill, but this one was modern and didn't appear to have any machinery attached to it. At some point, I will have to inquire further into the matter.

Just south of the bridge, somebody appeared to have abandoned their guinea pig.

Maybe it bit them. Beware the feral guinea pig of Vickery Creek. It can't be tamed. It kills for sport.

Witness it's fury:

I'd say 9 times out of 10 when I see a dead bird, all I really see is a patch of feathers. Whatever killed it apparently de-feathered and ate it right there. But now and then I see one just lying there, dead and uneaten, except partially, by ants. Did it die of natural causes? Did it taste bad? Was the killer scared off? How?!

The entire trail system runs around and over a single hill and eventually I made my way up to the top of it. The topo map showed a square clearing up there, but there was no discernible clearing any more.

There was, however, this interesting little pen.

Or at least the ruins of one. I'm not insufficiently well-versed on farm structures to identify what kind of pen it was. Corrals are typically round. Poultry is generally completely free-range or kept completely indoors. On the opposite side, there was a small chute that didn't look big enough for cows or horses. Pigs? Maybe?

As interesting as all these little points of were, my body was falling apart on me. My right leg, in particular, felt like it had been transplanted from somebody who had never walked a mile in their life. The front of my hip was sore. I have actually wondered if I have a bone spur there that the tendon just grinds across. That's what it feels like. If I stretch, it's manageable but sometimes it really hurts. My knee felt like I'd landed wrong on a 12 stair ollie. My calf was sore. MY calf was sore. How does that happen?

It was Christmas Eve too and I didn't want to be out in the woods by myself ALL day. I'd only explored about half of the system, but it was time to pack it in.

There's still a bunch more to see out there, including the ruins of another entire mill. Maybe I can coerce the girls into joining me next time.

Five Points

2011-12-12T00:43:00.001-05:00

A month or two ago I read about this new trail system "Five Points" on the Sorba Forum. It was supposed to be up near Chattanooga somewhere. From the photos it looked like the kind of place I'd really dig but I then I half-forgot about it with everything else that was going on.

When I was at Mulberry Gap for Andrew's birthday, Richie brought it back up though. Legend says that it was designed and/or built by the same guy that did Racoon Mountain and that it's part of an effort to build a chain of connected trail systems from Chattanooga down to the Pinhoti, or at least to Taylor's Ridge. That little bit of background information was apparently what I needed to hear and it drove the trail firmly into The List.

Yesterday I got the chance to cross it off.

I did a little research online and it turned out that 5 Points is on the Cloudland Canyon property. So I printed out a map and headed off to Cloudland Canyon.

If I'd done 1% more research then I'd have realized that the trail system is up the road a bit from what you'd think of as the park proper. It's technically on their property, but not on the part that the public generally goes to.

Before I realized my error I drove around the main park area for a while. They've got miles of hiking trails and a waterfall and beautiful views and I'm definitely going back there sometime.

And! There are two inholdings on the park property. One of them just is a classic North Georgia used-to-be-farm property. The other has a trailer up near the road and a house set a little back on the property and it looks like both exploded all over the yard.

Between the natural scenic beauty and those two properties, the park is a perfect microcosm of North Georgia.

After figuring out what I'd done wrong, I got back on the road and went the right way. I'd sort of noticed on the way in, but after seeing the shredded house in the park, I really started noticing... The entire neighborhood is a collection of once-farm properties with dilapidated houses, trailers or shops next door and industrial debris and old trucks scattered about, randomly. It looked like a long time ago the town had been just prosperous enough to get established before drying up completely. Now, several generations later, people still live on their great-grandparents' land but for half of them, there just isn't enough money to hold it all together. That's how it struck me at the time. Later I would get a little more insight, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

On Hwy 157 I saw some little squirrel looking thing bound across the road. It was red though, like the squirrels in Dallas and Tennessee. As I got closer though I realized that it was big, bigger than a squirrel, and it had black markings on it too. It was some kind of weasel. At first I thought it was an escaped pet ferret but no, it was something else. The Weird Red Weasel of North Georgia.

Eventually I made it to where I had originally intended to be. The 5 Points Trailhead.

There, I met Travis, with whom I have shared so many adventures.

There were 6 or 8 other dudes in the parking lot too. I noticed two odd things about them. One, they all had shaggy beards. Like, I-just-finished-hiking-the-AT beards. Maybe they were holdovers from "Movember". Maybe they all just got finished hiking the AT. I wonder. The second odd thing was that they were all riding 26'ers. After Jessie and Karlos and the majority of the Florida mountain biking community making fun of my 26'er, I now notice the size of everybody's wheels. The bell can't be un-rung. It's like the CruisingGays.com guys and the custody swaps. Once you find out, it just jumps out at you everywhere.

The 5 Points Lot is great. There's a composting privy and an actual changing room, though the slats in the changing room don't quite overlap enough and you can see into the one next door as you walk into the other one. Fortunately I am only slightly more modest than Flea so this was not a problem for me.

The only problem I had was the temperature. It was like 37 degrees. Brisk. I prayed that there would be no sudden gust of wind before I was fully dressed and thankfully, my prayers were answered.

When we were done screwing around with bikes and gear, me and Travis hit the trails. The first one reminded me of Santos. It rolled up, down, over and around these weird little bluffs which couldn't possibly have been actual bluffs because they appeared to be mainly composed of little bits of sandstone and shale. I couldn't imagine a natural process that could have formed them, or any of the dozens of little half-frozen ponds between them either. I mentioned that to Travis and we discussed it a bit. Mining? Maybe. Whatever it was, it was done a long time ago.

The name of the trail should have given us a clue. If I'd paid attention to it, then it might have. The trail was called "Tailings Run". As in mine-tailings. As in the piles of dirt left over from a mining operation. I had guessed that they might have been left over from a mining operation, but even later when I read the name at the next intersection, I didn't put it together. It finally hit me on the way home later, like a Thunderbold of Duh. I was thinking about something else, then Bam! "Tailings."

On the drive in, Travis had gone up north in search of breakfast and noticed that the trail crossed the road up there. The map didn't show it crossing, so we checked it out. Yep, it crosses the road. On the other side, it's "Long Branch".

Later I would read on the Internet that Long Branch leads north for about 5.6 miles. It looks like that plan to connect up with Chattanooga is coming together after all.

On either side of the road there were these crazy signs.

I love the dramatic depiction. It reminded me of a sign that Norma had seen up north warning you not to approach elk with a similarly dramatic depiction of an elk attacking a guy. It's just not what you expect to see on such a familiar yellow road sign.

Most of the trails out there loop out and back from a central point - 5 Points.

Though I'm not sure that's the right name for it because I counted 8 trails leading out of there, 7 of which followed old roadbeds, so it's not like it was 5 points historically and 3 more were added recently. Maybe 7 Points just didn't sound as good. Maybe it got the name when before two of the roads were built. These are the kinds of things that I just need to know. Somebody knows. Tell me.

We'd ridden Tailings Run, taken the CCT out and back and climbed part of the Fugget Lift when we noticed Slickenside, which was marked in black on the map. The black trails kind of blended into the lines for the old roadbeds and it always surprised me to find one. Slickenside was chocked full of berms and small tabletops but it looked like maybe it was designed to be ridden in the other direction so we did an out-and-back. The other direction was anticlimactic though. You really had to work for almost every jump and it was a little disappointing.

We rode the rest of the Fugget Lift, took Windy Shot back to 5 Points and headed out on Kettle Bottom. I kept expecting it to drop down into the Valley but for some reason we kept switching back up the hill. Any minute now... It turned out we were not on Kettle Bottom. I had a map and the signage out there is very obvious and highly descriptive...

...so you'd think we'd have a hard time getting lost, yet we still managed it.

Fortunately everything loops back on itself so we were on Kettle Bottom soon enough and hit the first long run-out of the day. It wasn't crazy-steep but it was long and fast and fun with good views, a lot like the Pinhoti in the Cohttas.

At the north end there was an impressive Tire Pile.

More tires had been dumped up closer to 5 Points too, and there was also a Great Bottle Pile.

Some of the bottles were really old and interesting. I have this duality about trash. By rights, trash should be cleaned up, but if there isn't much of it and it's old enough to be unfamiliar, and it somehow escapes the clean-up process then maybe a piece of trash can become an artifact and maybe it makes a more culturally and historically valuable statement left in place. Even if that statement is negative, like "People used to dump trash up here", it is still historically accurate. Me and Travis discussed this a bit while we rode back up to bomb down Hanging Wall and Foot Wall.

Iz called me on the climb. It still amazes me where I get mobile phone coverage. She'd lost her thumb drive. I didn't know where it was but if she'd just keep things a little more organized...

Hanging wall and Foot Wall were fun. A lot of the trail sits on an old, narrow roadbed.

But a good bit is purpose-cut singletrack too.

It looked like they used the old roads whenever they could but when they were below grade, or when they just ended, they cut new trail. There was substantial variety in the scenery and the character of the trail. It wasn't just the same 100 yards, ten thousand times. I love that.

I don't remember exactly what trails we rode next. Somehow we worked our way down to the southern end and discovered the old, buried Torino.

Somebody went through a lot of trouble to ditch that hulk. The apparently hauled it out on the old road that is now Backend, pushed it over the side and then piled dirt and rock all over it so it couldn't be seen from the road. The trail runs right by it though, so it's easy to see from the other side. I bet if you unbury it, there are bodies in the back seat.

Again, with the trash. I hope they leave that one in place.

We rode all over the south side trails.

There are two called North Hogsback and South Hogsback that were even gnarlier than Tailings but ran over the same kind of terrain.

There's just NO way that's natural.

Still not realizing what it was, we debated it further. Travis suggested that they might be the remnants of civil-war era earthworks. There were battles galore fought throughout that area and you can't preserve them all as historic sites. I could totally imagine that and for a while, it was our operative theory.

We made it to the Ascalon Road Trailhead where I used the facilities, then we headed back up for two more loops back to 5 Points and back. The only really technical part of the whole system is on the Caprock trail where you have to crawl over lots of exposed rock a la the Pinhoti on Dug Gap Mountain. There's even a loop where if you screw it up, you can loop back until you get it right. I never got it right. There was this tricky ledge I couldn't get over, and in the other direction I managed to get my bike to rebound out from under me once. Woohoo!

Travis's tire had been leaking down and he had to juice it, once up by the old Turino...

...and again down lower right before we headed back to the lot at the end of the day.

While he was attending to it the second time, I waited about 50 yards down the trail at the next intersection and ran into a group of hikers that we'd seen earlier. It was a couple, their kids and one of their mothers. Three generations of family out hiking together. I love it. I talked to them a bit and it turned out they lived nearby, had for generations, had walked all over the mountain for years and knew the history really well. Post-civil war it had been a coal mine and all that weird terrain was, in fact, mine tailings. The coal was mainly shipped to Chickamauga by rail but the older lady's father used to buy coal from the mine and resell it locally. She'd gone there with him to pick it up several times. The ground was always warm, the coal was always scattered in thin piles everywhere and it steamed constantly. To her, it seemed like the entrance to the pit of hell. The coal was originally dug out by hand but later they brought in steam shovels and it was eventually abandoned in the late 1800's.

What are the odds that I'd run into the one family out there hiking, right when I'd be stopped otherwise, and that they would be that closely tied to the history of the mountain, which we just happened to be curious about after noticing the weird terrain that probably nobody else would think twice about. What are the odds!?

Incalculable.

It had been a long day, and a slightly cold day too. It probably never got higher than 40 degrees and I'd been wiggling my toes for hours. Somehow though, it didn't seem nearly as bad as it did on the road a few days earlier and it was over ten degrees colder.

Back at the lot we asked some locals about good places to eat. They suggested two allegedly great Mexican joints but Travis wanted a burger. He was attempting to consult the internet when a guy came over and suggested the Pigeon Mountain Country Store. His directions weren't that accurate but oddly enough, I knew where it was. I'd ridden by it twice this past summer trying to beat the sunset back to my car.

They were always closed when I'd ridden by and I told myself "Someday I'll be up here early enough to eat there" and lo, the prophesy was fulfilled.

They make burgers from locally-raised grass-fed beef and serve them on an onion roll and man it hit the spot. Man! I'm eating there next time I'm up that way and you should too.

In the parking lot on the way out, I observed a custody swap. Can't un-ring that bell. I see them everywhere.

Satisfied! That's how I felt on the drive home. It was all smiles and satisfaction. I had a two and a half hour drive back but I definitely got my money's worth. New trails, great trails! A long ride, good food, and it was great to ride with Travis again. I almost can't wait for next weekend. Maybe I can do it all over again.

Dawsonville

2011-12-10T16:35:00.001-05:00

Oh man. I've been working 16 hours a day for a week now, writing a SQL parser and translator. If you understood that sentence, you just earned several nerd points. Computer programming is the opposite of exercise so in an attempt to balance it out, I tried to get out on the road for a few hours early in the week. It didn't work out.

Yesterday though, I finally managed to get out for real. It was about 1PM when I left and about 55 degrees. The only clean jersey I had was sleeveless, so with the armwarmers I was looking all NBA.

I set the timer on my phone for 2 hours and headed north. Not 5 minutes north of town my front derailleur cable broke.

I debated turning around but that would be the second time in a week. I didn't NEED a big ring.

A little while later my chain was getting really creaky. I guess that's what I get for riding in the rain for so long that last time. I considered stopping at a store to see if they had some kind of oil behind the counter when I noticed a bottle on the side of the road.

Thanks litterbug. Sort-of. I guess.

The bottle felt empty so I turned it upside down and let it all run down into the cap. It wasn't as empty as I thought though and when I unscrewed the cap it poured out all over my glove. That's OK though, I didn't NEED gloves either.

My chain was the quietest I've ever heard it. Good old 10w30. Maybe I'll use that from now on.

After a long run up Hwy 9 I reached Dawsonville...

...and hung a left. I'd been up that way before but I didn't have much time and I didn't get much further. This time I made it out to 186, all the way up Keith Evans Road and even a bit up Bailey-Waters. Local mountain bikers might recognize those roads, as they are in the general vicinity of Bull Mountain. In fact, I'd hoped to make it to Nimblewill Church but my alarm went off just north of the Kangaroo place.

Darnit. I was still a few miles south of Nimblewill. It's a net climb on the way out so the return trip is generally faster but it gets dark right at rush hour these days and I didn't want to push it.

On the return it got substantially colder. When I got home my face was pale, my eyes were bloodshot, my big toes were purple and wouldn't reprofuse and I had a splitting headache. How am I going to stand it when it's even in the 30's? Much less the teens?

How!?

Cumming

2011-12-06T15:01:00.001-05:00

This morning I could barely even remember that last road ride I'd done and I tried hard to get one in today but it was like God didn't want me on the bike or something.

It took me a while to find my riding clothes. Apparently I'd left them in the trunk last weekend. If I'd done that in the summer, I'd have asphyxiated sometime last week upon opened the car door but being fall, they just hung out back there, unnoticed.

So it was tough to get out of the house but once I did, everything went well for a while. I rode around my house, ran by the Dutch Monkey for whatever meal you want to count that as and eventually rode over by Reality Bikes to pick up a pair of road tubes. I'd only had one left and it looked like it was for my wife's Townie and probably wouldn't fit under my tire.

Franklin told me how just last weekend he was riding at Chicopee with a buddy and he'd flatted, the spare had a hole in it and then the secondary spare blew too so they just walked out. Something like that. "Terrible luck." I thought.

Then I wasn't back on the road for more than 5 seconds before flatting too. Ha! I changed it, ran back to the shop for another tube and CO2, realized the tire was sliced, bought a new tire too, aired it up and "Bang!" blew that tube too. I'd gotten it pinched under the bead. I'd even checked my work, three times. Don't trust me to fix your bike.

Chris had been walking by and joked "Don't blow that one up." Yeah. I ended up buying a tire, four tubes and a CO2 today.

Also, it rained the whole time. Did I mention that?

Hey, I still got to ride for a couple of hours and it was fun and I needed a new rear tire anyway, so I can't really count today's experience as negative. I just hope the next one is a little less interesting.

Jackrabbit

2011-12-03T22:17:00.001-05:00

Jackrabbit is awesome. Riding with my dad is awesome. Today I did both. Woohoo!

The last time we tried to ride there his rear hub self-destructed and we only got in about 10 miles. This time things went a little better.

There were a bunch of cars in the lot and people coming on and off the trail. This boded well. It had been below freezing at my Dad's place and we were worried it would be a little cold but when we got there it was up around 60 degrees.

We had a blast, all day...

...and zero mechanicals. The only problem we had of any kind was that my dad hadn't ridden in about 6 weeks and the climb up to High Point put him in the hurt locker. In Dallas there's a distinct riding season. Starting in early fall it rains every couple of days, never dries up, the soil becomes thick black clay and nobody can ride in it. I keep telling him to get out on the road...

He did make it up though.

The rest of the ride was fast and fun. The leaves are all gone and we got good views of Lake Chatuge too. Of course, we took a little stroll around Saba Beach.

We spun two laps but left out High Point the second time. I think we ran into a dozen or more bikers, a pair of hikers and two hunters. One group of bikers we kept seeing over and over. They had two dogs with them. One ran behind them but the other was a puppy and a guy was carrying it in a backpack. It seemed odd but the dog looked really happy, like a dog looks with its head out the window. Ha!

On the way home we grabbed some Jordano's Pizza in Helen. Bacon and Pepperoni. Yeah. It was cold outside so we ate in their dining room. I didn't even know they had a dining room. Outside it's all picnic tables and a concrete floors. Inside it's all fancy with real decor and a wood-burning fireplace. Who'd have guessed?

Oh, man, Jackrabbit is great. Too bad it's so far away. If it were down the street from my house and I'd ride there every week.

Gooch Creek Cove

2011-12-01T23:24:00.001-05:00

I've been wanting to go explore some new trails ever since I got back from Louisiana so this afternoon I tried to convince my wife to go for a walk around Vickery Creek. She wasn't going for it though and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to get up in the mountains rather than go running around Alpharetta.

A few clicks and a print later and I was on my way up to Gooch Creek Cove. If you have any idea where that is, you're pretty well versed in obscure North Georgia geography. I'd found some trails in the area years and years ago and I'd once met the guy who owns the little horse farm at the foot of the cove when we were both out for a ride on the road that runs through it. From our conversation, I was pretty sure there were more trails, or at least cool terrain up in there and today seemed like a good day to go check it out.

As soon as I entered the National Forest, I got an interesting surprise.

It was The Great Regravelling of FS80. I actually got passed by two gravel trucks and the grader was parked at Cooper Gap. I've ridden and driven that road for 10 years now and probably put in more miles there than anywhere else and I struggled to remember the last time it'd had any work done. In fact, I still can't remember. I want to say they did a little work a few years back but it hasn't been gravelled in at least 8 or 9.

I drove up over the gap, hung a left on a fairly obscure FS road, parked at Frank Creek and headed off into the unknown.

Actually, part of it wasn't all that unknown. I'd been through there a month or two back during a little excursion up on Frozen Knob and years ago I'd been up along Frank Creek and something up that way had piqued my interest. The first time I was up there it was summer. The old roadbed dead-ended and I just turned around. The next time, it was winter (no leaves) and way up at the end of the road, I saw another old roadbed up the hill. It wasn't clear if it intersected Frank Creek or not and I couldn't explore it then but I filed it away in the backlog.

Today, I still didn't figure out if it intersected Frank Creek or not, but I found where it goes: Low Gap. It was so overgrown though that I couldn't imagine anyone ever goes that way. Apparently I was wrong though.

Right up at the top, there was a US Military issue poncho lying in the middle of the trail. It had been there a while and it was covered in leaves and so full of water that it was suction-cupped to the ground. I was going to pack it out but I figured I'd hang it and let it drain first. After two minutes it was still draining and the water that was left on it would have completely soaked my gear. I left it hanging. The Rangers must go that way, hopefully they'll pick it up next time.

Up on the ridge I found a familiar "trail", headed west and then finally off into the truly unknown.

It had snowed up there earlier this week, the first snow of the year, and on the north-facing slopes there was still a good bit lying around.

The slight angle of the trail against the backslope allowed it to dry out in some places but mostly I had to walk in the snow. The crunch was satisfying but I could have done without the little bits that ended up down the back of my shoes. It's funny, whenever the seasons change, I find myself re-learning everything over again. Oh yeah, snow gets down the back of your shoes. Gotta do the kick-step.

I'd been running sort-of southeast along an unnamed ridge for a while. It was relatively flat, so I was, in fact, actually running for most of it. Off to the south I could see Greasy Mountain and for a while I'd heard a helicopter loitering in the area. I figured it was a Blackhawk from Merrill but when I finally got a glimpse of it, it turned out to be a Life Flight chopper. It was just hovering around the north end of the ridge near Mauldin Gap and it stayed there for a long time. I tried to get a photo but there was just too much brush in the way.

I assumed someone was hurt. A hiker on the AT? A car accident? Did a mountain biker crash heading down toward Hightower Gap? It looked like the pilot was looking for a place to land. I've always wondered if you could get a chopper in at Hightower. I guess not. There's a clearing up on Hawk Mountain but he didn't go for it. I watched for a while, thinking maybe they'd pull someone up in a basket or something but they never did. Eventually they headed north along FS69 out of view. I could still hear them for a long time though. I wonder what happened.

I mentioned earlier that I forget everything about a season until it's suddenly upon me. One thing I hadn't forgotten though is how nice it is to have somewhat unobstructed views.

I'd actually been looking forward to that for a while. In the summer, it would have just been leaves. I like leaves, but I'd been getting pretty tired of them.

Speaking of leaves though... My god. Most of the ridge had been pretty flat but eventually I had to drop down off of a steep little knob and it was like the Old Butt Knob in Shining Rock all over again, except this time there weren't so many rocks to leap between. I can imagine that in the summer it's not so bad, but in the fall... The leaves. THE LEAVES! It was sketchy and treacherous and I slipped more times than I would like to admit to but fortunately it was short, or at least it was short in retrospect. At the time it seemed like it was taking forever.

Toward the end of the ridge the trail became less and less distinct and after exploring around up there for a while I ended up taking a little side trail down to the road.

There were indications that I wasn't the only one who runs around up there.

Mainly glow sticks.

And more glow sticks.

I still haven't seen one actually glowing though, even at night. Do you have to shake them?

At the road I was faced with a quandary. I was parked to the left but it was still very much "day" outside and I though I'd scratched a good bit of the exploratory itch, I didn't want to waste the day and it looked like there was another trail ahead of me. However, should I choose to continue exploring, somewhere down in the cove ahead of me there was private property. I'd met the owner years ago but the chance that he'd remember or recognize me was infinitesimal. The danger is that people don't always mark their borders, especially the ones facing into the woods. I mean really, who's going to be coming from that direction, right? Yeah. I've had fun with that before. The law says that until you're notified that you're trespassing and refuse to leave, you're not trespassing. Notification can take many forms but it has to be clear and authoritative. That's the law and all but sometimes people come up with their own take on the law, especially after a couple of beers. I've had fun with that recently too.

You can't be afraid of the wind though, right? Something like that. And the USFS does mark their borders, with bearing trees and big red stripes, or at least they usually do.

Onward.

I walked for a while and even though I was confident that I was still in the NF, I was diligent, looking for signs, ribbons, fences, etc. Instead, this is what I found...

I know what that is. It was empty, but I know what it is. I'd seen a pair of them up off Rock Creek Road near Stanley Gap once. I've seen photos on the the USFS website. I watched a video of an archer kill a Cinnamon Boar feeding out of one on a hunting show once too. I was definitely still in the NF and as such, the owner might be more than a little upset with me for stumbling onto it. I scanned around for tree stands, simultaneously realizing the futility. I was wearing orange and I'd made plenty of noise in my approach. If there was a sufficiently unscrupulous hunter up there, I'd have long been dead.

I was on an old roadbed and it led along Gooch Creek itself for a while.

At the eastern end of the road there was a nice little fence, clearly marking that end of the property.

Or so I thought. On the way back, I noticed this NF Boundary sign on a bearing tree that somebody had lazily just painted a blaze on rather than painting all the way around.

Wee.

So who knows, I might have wandered onto private property for a little while there. Darn those sketchy borders. At least I know now.

At that point it was actually starting to get somewhat darker and more importantly, somewhat colder. I'd had enough for the day.

It was an easy march back. It was officially dark almost as soon as I got on the road and the moon was only a crescent but I could see and it would have been virtually impossible to get lost.

One thing that did suck though was the pain radiating out of every joint in my legs. Again, I forget. I get less mid-week exercise during the fall and winter and my legs get stiff. I have to make an effort to stretch or my joints ache when I finally do get out. What else am I forgetting?

Big Creek Greenway

2011-11-27T19:05:00.001-05:00

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.

North Louisiana

2011-11-25T23:38:00.001-05:00

Apparently the CFiTT wore me out. For the next week I didn't touch the bike (either of them, actually) or set foot in the woods. I more or less slept, ate and worked and I really didn't feel like doing much else.

I snapped out of it last Saturday though, or at least went through the motions of snapping out of it, packed the kids and a big pile of outdoor materials into the truck and headed to North Louisiana.

Years ago we'd vacationed for a week with my in-laws in a cabin at Jimmie Davis State park on Caney Lake, near Chatham, LA.

That probably doesn't help much in identifying its location though. Chatham is near Jonesboro. Equally obscure? Ruston? Never heard of it? Yeah, pretty much anything north of Baton Rouge is unknown to the outside world. Caney Lake is in the middle of North Louisiana. That still might not help though because there are actually two Caney Lakes up in the middle in North Louisiana or three if you want to get really technical. The park we stayed at sits on the southernmost Caney Lake.

The last time we were there, except for the 100+ degree heat, we had a great time. This year, we hoped to reprise that great time, only instead of doing it in the middle of the summer, we chose the Thanksgiving holiday. We hoped for cooler weather, but we figured that it would still be relatively warm because, hey, it's Louisiana and Louisiana is always warm, right?

Not really.

Sunday morning, the lake was beautiful but it was also freezing cold. The night before I'd slept right up against one of the outside walls and I really could have used one more blanket than I had.

We weren't deterred though. The weather can always change.

There's a church at the end of the road that leads down into the peninsula that the park sits on so we hit their 10:30 service. As fate would have it, they were having a potluck lunch, had tons of food and invited all visitors, including us to join them. I didn't go for the casseroles but there was ham and turkey and pork tenderloin and several kinds of rolls and it was all very good though I think the pork tenderloin was the best.

After church we ran by the Wal Mart in Jonesboro to get our fishing licenses and a few supplies. These days, Wal Mart doesn't screw around. Employees are all but forced to take breaks.

You will take your break.

We were in the middle of checking out and our cashier had to go find another cashier to finish ringing us up.

By the time we got back to the cabin the weather had indeed changed entirely. It was still chilly but the sun was out and it looked like it could turn into a nice day.

We went for a little boat ride.

We even did a bit of fishing later in the day but we didn't catch anything.

For whatever reason, that entire day, from my waking moment, I'd had a splitting headache and I was ravenously hungry. It was like the second day of that Shining Rock adventure from a few weeks back. Everything took tremendous effort. No matter how much I ate, I couldn't fill the black hole in my abdomen and no matter how many little naps I took, there was no shaking the fatigue. For some odd reason I had to pee like a half gallon every 20 minutes or so too. Yeah, that's gross, but it would be conspicuously absent if I didn't mention it. And, no, I didn't drink 3 cups of coffee or a dozen cokes. I'd had zero caffeine for days. I have no idea what was wrong but the spaghetti dinner Kathryn made that night finally fixed it. It was weird. Within an hour of dinner I felt substantially better and the next day I felt normal.

No idea.

The next couple of days kind of ran together as every good trip should.

It rained Monday night and part of Tuesday I think but otherwise the weather was comfortably warm and beautiful.

Each morning my father-in-law Don, Isabel and my wife's brother-in-law Ryan (He's my wife's sister's husband. Is he my brother in law too? I think of him as my brother-in-law but now I wonder if he technically is or not.) would get up early, eat some cereal, head out on the lake, fish until lunch, then head back in. Everybody else would be up by then. We'd eat, play Dominoes, Scrabble, Yahtzee, Uno or some other game. Then everybody else would go out fishing for a few hours. When they'd come back we'd play more games, eat dinner, play even more games and eventually fall asleep.

The games were fun. The food was delicious. There were football games on TV some nights. I found an extra blanket. It was great.

I don't remember which day but on one of our earlier fishing excursions, I caught this little bass.

It was only noteworthy because it was the first fish of the trip. Later that same day, we all ended up hooking a few each but they were so small that they couldn't really even get their mouths around the worm and nobody managed to actually land anything.

Don did catch this tiny guy near the end of the trip. Again, it was noteworthy because at that point, anyone catching anything was a victory.

He threw it back though.

Though we didn't catch much, our outings on the lake were still interesting in other ways. One morning we watched a red fox skulk around somebody's backyard. We also saw several deer, one of which waded into the water, then swam across the lake about 500 yards ahead from us. There were also, of course, a million birds: coots, mallards, diving ducks, blue herons, egrets, red-tailed hawks, crows to harass the red-tailed hawks... We even saw a couple of pelicans which I didn't think ever made it that far north.

Toward the end of the trip, Don and Kathryn had better luck and did manage to catch two more food-worthy bass. On the last night we grilled them up with some Tony Chachere's (pronounced sash-er-ees) and ate them. They were delicious but they definitely provided fewer calories than we burned catching them.

We only grilled out a few times but every night we built a fire, roasted marshmallows and made smores. I say we, but I'm not that big of a big fan of roasted marshmallows, so I had fun building the fire but I left the marshmallows and smores to the rest of the crew. Wal Mart sells these gigantic marshmallows now that are designed specifically for smores, but they were apparently really, really nasty and nobody liked them.

Also, it would seem that my mother-in-law didn't get to play with fire often enough when she was a kid and must have developed some sort of latent pyromania. I like building a fire and all but this was another level. She REALLY enjoyed the fire, way more than the rest of us, even more than the kids.

We played lots of games and one that we played most nights was Telestrations. Seriously, if you haven't played this game, you need to go buy it and play it with 6 or 8 of your friends, directly. One person writes a word or a phrase, then the next person draws a picture of it, then the next person guesses what the picture is supposed to be and writes that down, then the next person draws a picture of that, and so on. Sometimes the original word more or less survives but sometimes it diverges hilariously. It's actually more fun if people suck at drawing or guessing. The pictures are usually pretty great too. I don't remember what the word was here, I think originally it was toothbrush, but by the time it filtered through a couple of kids it had become Moustache Comb and here's Sophie's rendering of that:

Yeah, that's right. Moustache Comb.

We were all pretty impressed with both the girls' drawings actually. They must get it from their mom. I definitely couldn't have done as well at their ages.

I'd brought my mountain bike and both of the girls' bikes so on one day, I think Tuesday, Sophie and I went riding around the park.

The roads were quiet and there are only a few miles total.

We rode around the various camping loops and down to the beach.

It's a little hilly in North Louisiana, but nothing like most of the stuff the girls and I ride in Georgia. Still, Sophie was having a really hard time. I didn't know it then but she was coming down with a pretty bad cold and that was the first sign of it. She forced a bit of a smile here but she was miserable. The idea of even riding back to the cabin from the beach seemed impossible.

Poor little girl.

On Thursday she was too sick to do much of anything and slept most of the day. She's getting better now but she's still not well. I'm still waiting to catch it. It did occur to me though that maybe I'd caught it already and that's why I'd felt so bad that one day. I guess I'll find out in the next day or two.

Ryan's brother Eric lives just north of Jonesboro and owns a piece of land with a pond on it. They have a bunch of ducks there now and we went over to feed them.

I actually got to see them mating. It was interesting. There were definitely a couple of males who were confused about their sexual identity. They are still a little young though, so hopefully they'll figure it out soon, one way or the other.

We also fished for a few hours and I caught a few that were even smaller than the one from Caney.

I showed Isabel and Kathryn how to fish with a plastic worm though and both of them caught bass within minutes of their first cast. Woohoo! We didn't keep any of them though, we kept thinking we'd have better luck later. Hah! Little did we know.

I think it was on Wednesday that I went running around in the woods for a few hours by myself. The last time we were there, the kids and I explored the old remnants of a trail system but this time there was a trail head...

...and interpretive signs...

...and an actual, no kidding trail.

The official trail wasn't incredibly long or interesting and it just wound around on flat terrain. There was a little spur though that led down to the lake though...

...and from the signage, I learned what one of the trees I'd seen near our cabin was. I guess because it's at a similar latitude, most of the trees of North Louisiana match the trees you'd see in Middle to North Georgia. There are a few that I didn't recognize though, including some tall bush with leaves like a blueberry bush but with dry, seedy, virtually tasteless purple berries, and another tree with big, leathery purple berries.

I never figured out what the first one was, but the one with the leathery berries is Buckhorn.

The berries have a strong laxative effect. That's good to know. I'm glad I didn't eat any of them.

I wandered all over the park. There are a dozen "trails" that lead from the various camping areas to other camping areas or to the beach. Most of them are either cuts the utility companies made to lay underground power lines or drainage pipes but people clearly use them to get around the park.

I also found the same set of nearly reclaimed trails that the girls and I had explored last time and bushwhacked around a bit too. There's some old homesite or maybe an old cabin or something at the southern end of the park.

We'd seen it from the boat. It's not clear why it was torn down or why the pieces weren't removed. They appeared to have been there for a long time.

I walked all over but for some reason my legs felt like I hadn't walked a mile in my life. I had sore joints and muscles. The soles of my feet hurt. It wasn't cold though. I have no idea why it was so difficult. I kept pressing on, thinking I'd warm up but I never did. When I got back to the cabin, all I wanted to do was lie down. I'd only been out for a few hours but I felt like I'd been walking all day.

I'm not sure but I think I took a short nap and got back up around 4 or 5. I remember feeling normal again around then.

That evening, Kathryn and I sat on the dock and watched the sun set.

The next day was Thursday, Thanksgiving day. We'd done most of our celebrating the night before though. We'd even eaten a deep fried turkey and stuffing. I'd planned on taking a day to go ride some of the North Louisiana trails and Thursday ended up being the best day to go do it.

First up: Lincoln Parish Park. I'd last ridden there some ten or twelve years ago when I still lived in Baton Rouge. Back then it was a difficult trail. The climbing was murder and the terrain was so technical that I'd invariably flat or break a chain. Successfully riding two laps was a monumental feat of endurance and skill. Would it still be so difficult?

Only one way to find out.

It was Thanksgiving day but on account of the previous night's celebration, it didn't feel like Thanksgiving day. I'd be surprised to see a store or a restaurant closed, then I'd remember, but then I'd forget again after driving a few more miles. As such, it surprised me when the park gates were open but there was nobody at the front office.

"What? Thanksgiving was yesterd... No. It's today!" Free admission!

Woohoo!

I parked down by the beach.

Lincoln Parish Park is just north of Ruston, Louisiana and therefore by some pseudo-associative/transitive property that I'm inventing right now, Lincoln Parish Park is also just north of my alma mater, Louisiana Tech University. So, not only had I ridden there several times when I lived in Baton Rouge, but during my pre-mountain-biking college years, I'd played frisbee on the beach, grilled out in the picnic area, swam and fished in the lake and so on. In fact, if you added it all up, I've probably put in twice as many hours doing that kind of stuff there as riding.

When I arrived there were several groups of riders coming off of the trail. They all appeared to be done with their respective rides and heading home. It was like 10 AM and I worried that there might be something going on that I don't know about, but no, they were just out early, probably getting a ride in before heading off to visit the in-laws.

The first few miles of trail were just what I remembered. You skirt around the outside edge of the park...

...then dive into the woods and twist around and around...

...before popping back out and running along the edge again. Occasionally you cross a stream or a road or run into a feature of some sort like this weird gas contraption.

I guess that it has something to do with natural gas exploration, or at least that it used to in antiquity. North Louisiana is oil and gas country and there are wells everywhere. This one is in the middle of the woods but I'm sure at some point it wasn't. It may still be in use for all I know.

The terrain was as technical as I remember but the hills seemed a lot more shallow. The only one that lived up to the memory I had of it was Tomac Hill:

You drop down that hill then roll across the flat into a jump. The hill was as steep, fast and fun as I remembered but the jump used to be much more of a launch ramp. I barely caught any air this time and I was trying.

I shouldn't say that was the only hill that lived up to its memory. At the very end the trail dives down off of the dam that forms the lake into a dense stand of pine, turns around and runs directly back up the same steep hill. In the past, I'd never been able to climb the hill and again, I was unable to climb it. I had plenty of energy but it just gets so steep that I ultimately couldn't get traction. I'd have had to have built up more speed lower down. Maybe next time.

After spinning a loop on the "XC" route, I spun another on the beginner route which is really just the same as the XC route with detours around the really technical or strenuous stuff. After that I took a paved trail around the lake. I don't remember that trail being there before.

The lake. Heh. In '98, my roommate let a bunch of Black Convict Cichlids go in there.

They may still be there. There are definitely large carp in the lake that probably started out as pet goldfish, or at least there were in the late 90's.

I rode around the various park roads too, just to get GPS data for them. Gotta get data for the roads too, I mean come on.

Driving out of Lincoln Parish Park, I felt both satisfied and disappointed. Satisfied because in the 12 years or however long it's been since I last rode there, I've improved enough that the trail wasn't all that difficult. Compared to the difficulty of the Middle-to-North Georgia cross country trails that I do 6-hours on, I'd say it was a little below average. Tons of fun, but only moderately difficult. I was disappointed though, for kind of that same reason. The trail used to feel epic and monumental; you struggled up every climb and were rewarded with long, blazing descents, assuming you could manage to find the right line and hold it through all the crazy twists and turns. It just wasn't like that this time and now I'll remember it differently. I guess a lot of things are like that though. It's like when you take your kids to Disney World. It's still fun but you remember it being so much bigger. I guess I can't reasonably be upset long term but at the time it made me sad.

Next up: Lake D'Arbonne (pronounced dar-bone). There were allegedly 5 or 6 miles of trails, all "easy" and "scenic". Sounds good.

I headed northeast to Farmerville and began searching for the park. There are actually two Lake D'Arbonne State Parks, or at least two properties belonging to the park. The one nearest to town didn't look like anyone had been there in months. Leaves all but covered the road and limbs had fallen all over the playground equipment. I kept looking.

Ahh. Much better.

The lady at the front office was on the phone and continued to talk after I drove up, then went outside and rearranged some cones while she talked. I had all day so I didn't really mind, but it was unusual. I waited at least 5 minutes before she even acknowledged that I was there. She was otherwise very friendly though. It was odd.

I got a map at the front office, drove all around the park looking for a trail head, eventually decided there must not be any particular trail head and just parked at the Visitor Center...

...in front of a big awesome sculpture.

It looked like a semi-decomposed artifact that had been dug up and partially reconstructed. I'm sure if I knew the history of the area, it would speak to me in some particular way but, I was at a loss. I'm also sure that if the Visitor Center had been open, I could have asked. "Dangit, why is it closed? Oh yeah... Thanksgiving."

The map showed a big loop running around the outside of the park and several trails that cut across the diameter. I figured I'd spin a big loop then zig zag back and forth to pick up the rest. First though, I had to find the big loop and that turned out to be a lot more difficult than I thought it would be.

The map showed it "right there". I should have been able to see it.

My first attempt put me on a fishing pier. The views of the lake from the pier were gorgeous.

Caney Lake has very little of the Bald Cypress that I generally associate with Louisiana but Lake D'Arbonne was shot through with it.

Beautiful views or not though, I needed to find the trail. I'd seen big, huge signs all over the park where the various trails crossed the various roads, why was it now so difficult to find the trail from the lot in which it would seem most visitors would park?

After literally 10 minutes of searching around the parking lot and behind the Visitors Center, I finally realized that the trail somewhat anonymously crossed the squiggly little paved trail that led down to the fishing pier. It was literally in the first place I'd looked. I'm a genius.

Once I was on the trail, it was hard to lose. There were little arrows every 20 yards or so. In some places, you could look ahead and see 6 or 7 of them. And it was good that they were there because the trail didn't appear to get much use and in a lot of places, the trail itself was indistinguishable from the surrounding woods.

I did manage to get lost a few times. Once I kept misreading an arrow and ended up looping back on myself over and over. "Oh, I have to go RIGHT, not LEFT." Wee. Another time though, it honestly wasn't my fault. The signage is big and easy to follow:

Except when it leads you 90 degrees in the wrong direction. Those arrows should be pointing to the right. Straight ahead there's just a playground. The Yellow trail does cross the field beyond the playground but at right angles to the direction you'd be going and the white trail is dead to the right.

I think that was the only error though. Otherwise the entire system is well marked.

D'Arbonne wasn't all that exciting. The singletrack was kind of soft and slow and virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding woods. The doubletrack was like this:

There were some hills though. I climbed and climbed and there were several long run outs, so it was fun but it was also pretty anonymous. A sign by the Visitors Center alleged that there was some diversity between the trails. I'll give them that the yellow trail was somewhat different at the south end, and that the white trail where it runs through the various campground and close to the lake is interesting, but otherwise, it felt like I rode the same 300 yards of trail ten thousand times.

It wasn't bad though, it just wasn't great.

I'd had two more trail systems on my list, just in case I somehow managed to get through Lincoln Parish Park and Lake D'Arbonne early but it was closing in on 6:00 and I'd be out of daylight in an hour. I packed it in.

For about half a second I thought of grabbing some good local cuisine in Ruston, maybe at Ponchatoula's but then I remembered again: "Thanksgiving." Heh. I headed back to the cabin.

That night we cooked the fish in the manner that I mentioned earlier and burned the last of the firewood. This morning we packed up our gear and headed back.

The fishing was a little disappointing but everything else made up for it. It was great spending time with everyone and it was nice to have a trip where we mostly rested and relaxed. Usually I'm either walking or riding or at least driving around all day and it was a nice change of pace. Who knows when we'll get the chance to do it again but I'm already looking forward to that day.

CFiTT

2011-11-14T12:24:00.001-05:00

The Cross Florida Individual Time Trial (or CFiTT) is a mostly off-road mountain bike race along a 180-ish mile route around central Florida, organized by the Naked Indian, the Singletrack Samurai, Karlos Bernart, who I know from the 2010 TNGA. The route changes every year. Sometimes the direction changes. The spelling of the title seems to change too, specifically, which letter is de-capitalized. This year we would spin a loop through Croom, head north to Santos, east through the Ocala NF, then south through Paisley. The distance was reckoned at about 184 miles.

The CFiTT is a gateway drug. It's longer than most long rides or races that most people do but if you've done a long ride or if you've done 6 or 12 hour lap races then it doesn't seem inconceivably long. It is remote though, so you have to treat it like a bikepacking trip, but it's a short bikepacking trip. And it's in Florida, so no climbing, right? You figure: "I got this." Then you do it once, get hooked and before you know it you've moved on to the harder stuff like the Huracan, TNGA, CTR, AZTR and ultimatly, the Tour Divide.

Or, at least that's the idea.

I had some goals for the ride. I planned on riding straight through, or at very least making only short stops. I might grab a nap on the side of the trail, but I would not camp. I hoped to be able to finish in less than 24 hours. I would also enjoy the terrain and scenery. Everything in Florida is completely different from everything in North Georgia and I've been jonesing to get out of my element lately. My final goal was sustainability. I wanted to be "fit-to-continue" at the end; to finish without a limp or a non-functioning brain or a pile of broken parts. I didn't want to just barely make it in.

Thursday night I packed up my gear. Friday morning I hit the road.

I started the day off with a Chocolate Chip Twist from the Dutch Monkey.

No better way to start the day, except possibly with a different Dutch Monkey donut.

I left around 10AM so the traffic through Atlanta had died down already. South of town I got off the road for some reason that I forget now and there was a lady on the corner handing out flyers for a new restaurant which had the best name I've ever heard, ever: "Immeasurable Chicken and Waffle"

Immeasurable.

If I'd been the least bit hungry, I would have eaten there, just to have done it.

The rest of the trip was about like you'd think. Long, straight, fairly uneventful.

At the rest stop just south of the Florida border, I parked in front of this sign.

First time I've ever seen that. I imagine snakes come out of the woods to sun themselves on the pavement and some of them are poisonous. I actually hoped that I'd see a snake but disappointingly, there were none around.

I got to DeLeon Springs in good time but it took me forever to find Karlos. I was supposed to meet him at his girl Edith's house but the address he'd given me was one number off. Ha!

I did eventually find him. He and his son Kailin (hope I'm spelling that right) were rushing around like mad, getting everything ready. He had to replace the windshield wipers on his truck, and print out maps, and run by the store, and get the trackers working, and, and, and... It may seem like these events just pull themselves together, but that couldn't be further from the truth. It's crazy what you have to go through sometimes.

The trackers had arrived that afternoon. If you move them more than about 500 miles, you have to go through this undocumented reset procedure.

Eventually they started showing up on the map.

Derek Bentley and Jesse Durrance arrived shortly after me. Derek is a multiple Tour Divide finisher. I think Jesse is still in college or just out of college, had started riding recently and had done like one cross country race and one 6-hour race, total in his life. Something like that. They both live in Gainesville (FL) and drove over together.

We packed up our gear, ran by the Winn Dixie, staged our cars at the finish and headed back to town to meet Edith, her daughter Shelby and Karlos' other son Edward at Chili's. I'd met Edith at the Huracan, but I didn't get to talk to her much because I fell asleep immediately after they picked me up. It turns out they're a great family. They're all nice and friendly, fun to talk to and fun to be around. If you spend time with them, it makes you feel good.

Me and Derek and Jesse crashed out in the extra room at Edith's place. Sometimes I struggle to sleep the day before an event, but not this time. I was out like a light and got a good, solid 5 hours of sleep before the 3:30 wake-up call.

All we had to do was throw the bikes on the truck and roll but there was some complexity associated with getting Derek's bike on the rack.

Maybe he had a Lefty but left the bracket in his van? I don't remember. They figured something out.

During all that, I had an opportunity to verify the appropriateness of my attire. It was supposed to get down into the low 40's or high 30's Saturday night and it was nearly that then. I was wearing a standard summer bib, jersey and gloves with a summer base layer under the jersey but I also had arm and knee warmers, a fleece cap, shoe covers and a set of Dri Ducks to keep the wind and rain out, should they be necessary. With all that on, I was comfortable walking around. The wind was blowing too but I couldn't feel it with the jacket on.

All right.

We arrived at the Croom trailhead a little after 6AM. The rest of the gang showed up over the next half hour. I think there were 13 of us. There were a bunch of people I'd never met, but also some people I recognized from the Huracan like Lynne Daniels and Jeff Tomassetti. Jeff had since finished the Tour Divide and was there with his nephew Jack. I got to meet Chris Tompkins too, who'd signed up for the TNGA but then gotten injured and couldn't make it.

We had a quick riders meeting and Karlos handed out maps. Before hitting the sack, he, Jesse, Derek and I had highlighted the routes through Croom and Santos the night before. Most of the route was easy to follow, but the trails through those systems are complex and even with GPS, it wouldn't be hard to take a wrong turn.

Derek had said earlier that Florida is weird, it cools down over night like everywhere else, but for some reason that he explained but didn't get fully recorded in my still-sleepy mind, it reaches it's coldest point at 7AM before warming up quickly over the next few hours. At 5 minutes to 7, I was still comfortable riding around in the gear I had on. No last-minute change was necessary. In fact, in anticipation of the start and subsequent warm-up, I even took off my Dri Ducks.

I felt good. I felt prepared. I had no idea what tumultuous adversity lay ahead.

Go.

The start felt like the start of the second lap of a 6-hour where everyone is still bunched up, nobody is hammering but everybody is conscious of their position. It was like that. 7 or 8 of us formed a train and pulled away from the rest. A few miles in, I washed out in a sandy corner. I'd washed out in the same corner during the Huracan too. I even recognized it, swung wide and STILL washed out. Woohoo!

I was getting my money's worth though. There are no corners like that in North Georgia.

Five minutes later, I had to pee. I'd had a Dr. Pepper on the way over to help wake up. Everybody else had 3 cups of coffee but I don't drink much caffeine. I'm even drinking a caffeine-free Coke right now. As such, my tolerance to diuretics is what you might call "low." Over the next 20 miles I stopped to pee again and again and again and every time, it was biblical. I drank and drank to keep up but it was terrible. So, new rule: no more pre-ride Dr. Peppers for me.

Croom ends at the Withlacoochee rail-trail which is virtually identical to Atlanta's Silver Comet trail.

I took that north towards Floral City and Inverness.

Karlos came flying by me as soon as I got on the trail. He'd apparently taken a wrong turn at some point in Croom but he was back on track and making up for lost time.

I was incredibly sick at my stomach. I don't know whether it was the early morning wake up call, the caffeine, the 100% junk food breakfast or what, but I'd been on the verge of throwing up for the last few miles of Croom and the rock that kept forming in bladder had only made it worse. Thankfully, the Withlacoochee was smooth and delicious and after a few miles, my stomach calmed down.

It was starting to get warmer so I ditched the arm warmers and fleece hat. I may have even unzipped my jersey a bit.

For the Huracan, I'd borrowed a lightweight, bar-mount GPS from my buddy Tim Winters. It was very light, but its battery only lasted 11 hours and having to recharge it ultimately led to it getting stolen. As such, I vowed to use a AA-powered unit next time. I'd considered getting an E-Trex or something equally cheap and light but eventually I just settled on using my trusty old 60csx, bulk-monster though it may be.

You have to special order a mount for it though and I by the time I discovered that, it was too late. I ended up rigging something up with a mount for the E-Trex, part of a road tube and a bunch of zip-ties. Yeah. Engineering.

Anyway, I was looking down at it like I had for the past 20 miles, but since the trail was flat and straight and featureless, I started fiddling with it, zooming in and out, trying to find the right level, and it occurred to me. I hadn't reset the odometer. I almost always forget to reset the odometer and the kids are always asking me: "How far have we gone?" and I never know but for whatever reason, it occurred to me then and I reset it. I didn't know how far I'd already gone, but it couldn't have been more than 20 miles, but suddenly I had all kinds of stats to geek out over - average speed, average rolling speed, stop time, and so on. I could see if I was on track to finish on time, I could project my ETA. The joy of Information... It was almost overwhelming.

The first checkpoint was the Inverness Caboose.

There were 10 checkpoints, and you had to take a photo of either the thing itself, or your bike in front of the thing. In this case, it had to be your bike in front of it. As I rolled away, I caught up with two of the other riders, Luis and Scott. They had just finished taking their photos too.

We rode out the rest of the Withlacoochee together and took the pavement toward Potts Preserve. I say "rode together" but the ride was supposed to be an ITT and there were very specific no-drafting rules that we had to follow. We had to stay 6 bike lengths apart or 5-feet to the side of each other. If you wanted to pass, you had to get it done within 10 seconds. So we "rode together", but not like you'd normally think.

After a few miles we got back off the pavement on Dee River Road which is an excellent example of a Florida dirt road.

It's hard-packed sand, mixed with crushed limestone and the surface is very hard, except for where it's VERY soft. Sometimes the limestone gets ground up and forms a powdery little pile, or there will be a stretch of just pure sand. It takes a keen eye to spot the trouble ahead and pick the right line through it. I'd sort of gotten a feel for it during the Huracan, but it took a few miles to remember.

As we rolled into Potts Preserve, I stopped to take photos of the trailhead and a map of the trail. I've got some GPS data for Potts that I want to dump into my trail site, but I'd like to have photos and real trail names to go along with it. It would only take a few seconds and I wouldn't have another opportunity, so I let Scott and Luis go and took the precious photos.

Florida is dotted with dozens of little natures preserves. They're mostly owned by the state and the roads and trails through them are only open to bikes, horses and feet except during organized hunts. Potts is just one such preserve.

After Potts, you ride along a canal for a few miles and the grass just sucks the life out of you.

Remember trying to ride your bike across the grass in your front yard when you were a kid? It's like that.

I stopped at a gas station past the north end of the canal and grabbed some lunch: an ice cream sandwich, part of a crunch bar, a soda, some chips...

I also grabbed some provisions for the ride ahead.

Lately, I've been making sure to keep plenty of sugar in my on-the-bike diet. Gotta keep the brain working and the brain runs on pure sugar. When my brain gets depleted, I swear it makes up problems that aren't really there. "My knee hurts. My elbow hurts. I've got to go to the bathroom..." Stupid brain. Here's your candy bar. Leave me alone.

Checkpoint two was the sign at Stumpknockers, just up the road a bit.

I'd tried to eat there during the Huracan but the entire state of Florida was there at the time and it was hopeless. Scott and Luis were there taking their photos too and I ended up rolling out ahead of them.

Next up: the Halpata Tastanaki preserve. It's basically just like Potts but bigger.

Somewhere in there I caught and passed Derek and got caught by Scott and Luis again. We ran into several groups of friendly equestrians near the end.

There's a dirt road leading into and out of Halpata and you have to jog right for a few hundred yards before turning onto another trail. The next checkpoint, the Pruitt Memorial, should have been somewhere in that general vicinity. The waypoint in my GPS made it look like it was way off to the left and behind us but Scott and Luis were confident it was a ways on down the Greenway. Long ago I'd seen a map of Halpata and from the map, I remembered the memorial being in the general direction of the waypoint. Also, I hadn't seen any memorial when I rode the Huracan so I was pretty sure it wasn't on the Greenway and went back to look for it. At the Halpata trailhead, I ran into Derek again and a couple out hiking. The couple didn't know where the memorial was. Derek had gotten coordinates off of Google Earth, which, as it turns out, were also wrong and just led us to a circular sidewalk at the equestrian trailhead. The actual memorial was, in fact, a ways on down the Greenway. We passed some equestrians on the way and they confirmed that. I should have trusted Scott and Luis.

Apparently, Pruitt was an aviator who died in a crash near that spot. It made me kind of sad to read the story. Somebody put up a marble plaque and a big circle of stones in memorial. I've seen similar plaques and memorials at Nimblewill Gap and at Chicopee in Georgia. Sad.

In other news... I don't pretend to understand the dynamics of sand yet, but I'm learning. If it's loose, you have to gear down and spin but you also have to predict it or you'll just suddenly lose all your speed and be in the wrong gear to do anything about it. If you try to just fly through it, that can work, but only if it's a short enough section. The big patches of loose sand most often seem to form in low spots that are highly exposed to the sun. It hardens a bit if it gets wet, even from dew. Also stuff is constantly trying to grow in it and a little bit of growth makes it substantially harder.

The Greenway afforded me ample opportunity to study every aspect of sand in great detail.

The next leg of the journey would take me all the way across Santos.

The Santos trail system is huge. There must be 50 miles of trail there and there is no such thing as a representative photo. I started taking photos but soon I realized that I'd have to take dozens of photos and I just didn't have time for that. The terrain, foliage and trail layout vary dramatically from mile to mile.

For example, these photos...

Both taken at Santos.

I picked up the relatively new "Earn and Burn" trail at the Ross Prairie trailhead and started winding through the first semi-technical singletrack of the day. I'd ridden plenty of singletrack at Croom earlier, but none of it was twisty or technical. Earn and Burn was very twisty though and whoever built it ran it up, down and around all kinds of bluffs. It was a lot of fun, but it was difficult to keep any kind of speed. I did my best to just stay off the brakes, flow and recover. I'd been pushing the pace earlier and it did me a world of good.

About halfway across Santos, the GPS track put me on some limestone doubletrack trail. Right as I turned onto it, an owl flew down and glided next to me for a long time. I actually had time look over, determine that it was an owl, look carefully at it, get tired of looking at it, look away and get interested in it again before it changed course. I'm pretty sure that it was the only wildlife that I saw on the entire ride, and oddly enough, in the section most heavily trafficked by humans.

Eventually the limestone trail led away from the GPS track. Upon noticing this, I pulled out the map to double-check but whoever had highlighted the route on the map that I got had failed to highlight that section!

This is classic for me. If you and I walk into a store pick identical items off of the shelf, there is a substantially higher chance that the one I grabbed is defective. This has been a constant throughout my life. I often joke that with all the bad luck I have, in order for the universe to balance out, I must be narrowly avoiding death every day, without realizing it. I guarantee that everyone else's map was complete.

No matter though, I'd traced the route on 6 or 8 maps myself the night before, I knew where I was supposed to go and I backtracked to the previous intersection. Derek was standing there, digging in his pack, looking for his map. He had noticed the error too and we got back on track together.

Just past 49th street there was another error. The GPS said to go straight but the map wanted us to take the Canal Diggings Trail, which was infinitely twistier and longer than the map alluded to but in the end, turned out to be correct.

Checkpoint four was a little drawing of Waldo. Where's Waldo? He's hanging out at Landbridge.

Landbridge takes you over I-75 and I stopped for a minute to have a look at the highway.

It's always weird to me when a bike ride crosses some major thoroughfare. It seems unnatural. It's definitely interesting, but weird.

On the west side there were a couple of mountain bikers and a lady on a horse. One of the mountain bikers had a Weimaraner that she called "Banks" which was odd because I'd encountered a couple with a dog earlier in the ride and they called their dog "Banks" too. It's such an odd name and it just made it odder that there were two dogs with that same name in Florida and that I'd run into both of them that day.

I stopped at the trailhead nearby to fill up my bottles and have a bite to eat. I filled up in the same bathroom that I'd lost my GPS in last time.

There were a bunch of boy scouts there that appeared to have been hiking the Florida Trail and I had to wait for all of them to wash their hands before I could use the sink. Their adult supervisor was kind of a dick and kept saying strange things, implying that the kids were doing something wrong, like: "Watch it there slick, don't go too far. I'm not letting you out of my sight. I know what you're up to." Stuff like that. It was weird. He seemed like a weird guy.

The next checkpoint was at Greenway Cycles, about 10 miles away via more twisty, though mostly-flat singletrack.

As I arrived, Jesse was leaving and Derek was about to leave.

"It's Dave Muse! Look everybody, it's Dave Muse!"

"With my tiny wheels!"

"They're so small!"

It's hard to explain why the "It's Dave Muse" part is funny but it had become a bit of a joke the night before and we kept repeating it all day. The tiny wheels part is because I'm still running 26'ers and out of 13 riders, only one other rider wasn't running 29's. This also became a bit of a joke.

I grabbed an ice cream and a soda at the bike shop and ate the rest of my Fritos. I also took off my base layer and shoe covers. It had to be in the low 80's by then. I left the knee warmers on, honestly, because I was too lazy to take them off.

Rolling away, my rear wheel felt funny. It had felt loose earlier but I just figured it was because of all the sand but now it felt funny on the paved parking lot too. I'd gotten the hub rebuilt about two weeks ago and with Chris King hubs, if you take them apart and put them back together, you usually have to ride for about 50 miles and then tighten them up again. Prior to the start of the race, I'd only ridden about 25 miles, but that day, I'd already ridden 88 more. It was definitely time to tighten it up. Fortunately I was at a bike shop and it was no problem.

At Baseline Road I jogged south for a quarter mile to hit a gas station. I would be entering the Ocala National Forest soon, and though there were a couple of places I could get water, from that point on there were no more opportunities for food. I wasn't sure if I'd need to camp or not, so I grabbed two "meals" worth of food and a couple of snacks to get me by in between.

Walking out of the store, I noticed a kid looking pretty closely at my bike. When he saw me he turned away and kind of jogged out into the parking lot. It seemed odd but I guess he might have thought I'd be mad that he was so close to my bike. When he saw that I wasn't, he walked right back over. I'd accidentally left one of my water bottles inside on the counter and when I ran back in to grab it, he even held the door for me on the way out. Nice kid.

However...

As I rode away, I noticed that one of the zip-tie straps was missing off of my GPS. It was definitely there when I'd gone into the store. The whole thing had kind of started flopping to the side and I'd adjusted it right before I'd gotten off the bike...

Holy crap.

That kid had tried to steal my GPS. Suddenly, his behavior made sense. He'd gotten the first strap off, but the second strap is much harder to get off, he couldn't manage it before I walked back out, almost got caught and played it off real cool. Bravo on that acting job, sir. You fooled me.

What the hell is up with Floridians trying to steal my GPS? That's two for two now. Fortunately this kid didn't succeed. Can you imagine having to abandon twice, in as many rides, for the same ridiculous reason? Unbelievable.

The strap that was left held it on to the mount but just the minor bumps on the road made it keep twisting to one side. It would never do on singletrack. Fortunately, I was carrying duct tape. With enough zip ties and duct tape, I can fix anything.

Ta-da!

Well, it's hard to tell in the photo but I put a piece of duct tape across the back and it was actually better than before. The zip tie had been directly across the screen and obscured a bit of the route sometimes. The duct tape obscured nothing. Nothing!

Yeah, try to steal my GPS...

The Baseline trails were paved but they led to the unpaved Marshall Swamp Trail which was probably my favorite part of the entire route. There were towering Palmettos on either side with even more towering Cypress and I think maybe Black Gum sticking up out of them. It was other worldly. This photo doesn't come close to doing it justice.

Every now and then there would be a little bridge or culvert over an open, swampy, expanse, shot through with cypress knees.

It was beautiful, and I hit it at just the right time of day too, the magic hour, about an hour and a half before the sun went down.

About 2/3rds of the way through, I encountered a couple, walking back toward Baseline. Upon seeing them, I stopped, completely, about 10 feet away and said: "Hey, how's it going?" The guy just smiled and replied: "Pretty good." The lady shrieked and answered, with a pissed off tone of voice: "Just trying not to get hit." And with that encounter I now, finally, have a personal experience to support my theory of the hiker/biker conflict which has been alleged to exist in North Georgia.

I encounter so many hikers that it would barely be a stretch to say that I encounter them perpetually, and I can't think of a single instance, except now this one, that I would describe as "conflict." However, I've kept an open mind and I have heard and read descriptions of encounters, and presuming that they are accurate, I got the distinct impression that in a few cases, the biker legitimately acted irresponsibly, but that in most cases, the hiker simply got startled and then drew conclusions about the encounter which were based more on how they felt than on what actually happened. Such was the case here. Nobody was in any danger. I had no problem stopping and left plenty of room between us. The guy wasn't even startled. The lady behind him was though, and then concluded that she'd been in danger as a result.

I mulled this over as I rode away but it wasn't long before I got distracted by the scenery and forgot entirely about it.

The sun was officially down at the Marshall Swamp trailhead. It wasn't dark yet but I couldn't tell which direction was west without looking at the GPS. There was a bathroom there so I topped off my bottles but I didn't need to eat.

From having looked at the route over top of aerial photos and USGS maps, I expected that I'd soon be delving into the deepest, darkest, most unpenetrated woods in the world, but instead I ended up on a series of paved roads with wide shoulders and cars passing me every 20 seconds.

The further I went though, the fewer cars went by and after a while I did, finally feel like I was in "the woods".

This gruesome discovery helped to affirm that feeling too.

The head was gone and the legs were scattered about. The upper portions had been stripped but the lower parts hadn't been touched. They were all meat and fur and hooves, lying all over the place.

The sun was still down, but the light just refused to die off. I kept thinking "10 more minutes" but I must have thought that 5 or 6 times.

To either side of the road there were various gated dirt roads and one of them had an 80's Cutlass Sierra or something with a super clean candy red paint job and 26 inch chrome rims parked right up against the gate. I've seen Escalades in the woods before and little hatchbacks, but I've never seen anything that looked as out of place as that particular car. It was like Lil Wayne had taken up big game hunting or something. I love seeing stuff like that.

After a while, I did, finally end up on an actual dirt road. Along the length of the road there were dozens of hunters standing to either side, next to their trucks. The first truck I passed had a deer in the bed but that's the only one I saw. I later learned that at the end of the day, on that road at least, the game warden drives through and checks you out. That kind of made sense but then why was everybody that didn't get anything still hanging around? I'm sure there's a good reason but it eluded me at the time.

I gave everybody I passed a wave and a nod and got the same in return. Karlos warned me not to talk to anyone in the forest at night, but it wasn't officially night yet and everybody was all smiles and friendly gestures so far, some even gave me a "hi" or some other pleasantry.

The road itself had an odd feature, or perhaps series of features, depending on how you think about it. There were potholes here and there, and in many of them, somebody had placed a big block of concrete. For the most part, they appeared to have selected chunks that were sized and shaped to fit the hole but even the best-fitting chunks didn't fit all that well. In a truck, you might not even notice it if you ran one over, but on the bike it could be disastrous. Potholes can really sneak up on you, and these were like potholes with landmines in them, so I was extra vigilant.

I'd had my headlamp on since Marshall Swamp so oncoming cars could see me but it wasn't really illuminating my path. Longest sunset ever.

Before long I was back on pavement. I rode that for a few miles, started to get that low-brain-fuel feeling and stopped at some random intersection for a snack. My pack was a veritable pantry.

There were carbs and protein in there but I really just needed sugar and the crunch bars were calling my name. The temps were starting to drop too so I put most of my winter gear back on.

Back on the road...

It was really close to what I think of as "dark" but not quite. A few cars passed me. One of them made the closest, fastest pass I've ever had in my life. I was in a curve, way over on the shoulder and a car passed me with both passenger side wheels to my side of the white line at what had to be 70 miles an hour. I got the impression that he was just taking the curve way too fast and drifted over. It didn't seem intentional. I doubt he saw me at all. The craziest part... The car belonged to a church. There was a big gold cross sticker on the back glass with scripture to either side. The name of the church was written across the trunk and I could even kind-of make out a big sticker on the door. The guy driving it had a big fuzzy hat on too. Crazy.

The next checkpoint was the Solid Rock Bible Church. I had to take photos of my bike in front of the sign. Oddly enough though, there were two signs. I took a photo in front of each. This turned out to be the correct one:

Across the street, there was some kind of wild paaartay going on. I couldn't tell what kind of establishment it was though. There was no sign out front that I could see but back a bit on the property there was a building and a covered patio to the left of it with two winches like the ones used to weigh deer at a game check station. There must have been 50 cars parked around the property and they were playing loud country music. It looked like a good time but I never figured out what was going on.

My bottles were mostly full but I figured the church might have a spigot and it wouldn't hurt to fill up so I made a lap around the building, looking carefully for a hose or something. I've never seen a building with more pipes and conduits and valves on it. I kept thinking I'd found a hose, only to discover it was part of the AC or something. Finally, in the very last 5 feet, I found a hose. If I'd gone the other way, I'd have found it immediately. Ha.

It was now dark, truly dark, and a few miles later I was back on dirt, heading north.

I zoomed the GPS out, looking for the next turn but the map never looked any different. Was the button broken? I checked the scale. No, the scale kept getting bigger. What the heck? Oh! Wow. There was nothing wrong, the road was just really, really, really long and really, really, really straight. There were some slight bends to it but they were obscured by the scale. That's a new one for me.

Being dark now, I couldn't just look down at the GPS any more, the screen was just a black square on my stem. If I wanted to see anything, I had to hit a button to trigger the backlight. I can't accurately describe how long that road felt. I'd ride for what seemed like an eternity, hit the button and discover that I'd only gone about a fifth of the way. It never failed to amaze me how much further I still had to go.

My headlamp has 4 settings. The lowest setting should last for 11 hours but I've never actually tested it. Just to be safe, I figured it would be a good idea to conserve the battery wherever I could. I've ridden on plenty of dirt roads in the dark before and this one seemed like an ideal candidate. It was wide and solid, I hadn't seen any potholes. I switched off the light and when my eyes adjusted, it was uniquely beautiful. The moon hadn't come up yet, the stars were dense, the road was a ribbon and the forest to either side was low brush with trees sticking up out of it on 30 foot centers. There was no color though, only black and white. It felt like I was watching an old movie except that it was real.

It did get old after a while, but as long and potentially boring as the roads around the Ocala are, riding directly across it would be a lot worse. In the dead center, there's a gigantic Air Force bombing range. Even if it was legal to ride through it, I still think I'd choose to go around.

The next checkpoint was at Lake Eaton. There's a short loop leading from the road to the shore and three overlooks. We had to take a photo at each overlook.

The lake looked beautiful. I wish I could have seen it during the day.

Oh yeah, also, right as I got on the trail, I passed a small pile of bear scat, still steaming. Yeah. For the next few minutes I was all "Hello bear! You can stay wherever you are. I don't really want to run into you. Just keep up whatever you're doing..." Still steaming! I never ran into the bear though.

The next leg was another long run across the top of the "hammerhead". Together, the roads we took through the Ocala sort of make the shape of a big hammer or maybe an anvil. Karlos called it the hammerhead. It looked like the stretch along the top would be even longer than the one up the west side. Ugh.

There's some kind of groove that I settle into though when I get well into a long ride. I think early on I'm keyed up and I over-spend a bit, then later I get recovered and then after all that, my body tunes itself down to a pace that I can hold for as long as have fuel to keep going or until I hit some hard limit like lack of training for some particular muscle or lack of sleep or something. I was definitely in that groove and the miles just flew by.

The roads up there are hard packed, they might as well be paved, and there are just endless rollers but they're really shallow and you can just plow right through them. I alternated between a couple of different positions. When one set of muscles would dwindle, I'd switch. Standing up, it was amazing. It didn't even feel like riding a bike. I had the sensation that I was leaping down the road in massive strides, 30 feet each. Actually, that description doesn't even do it justice.

The moon was up and nearly full, and though everything was still black and white, I could see a lot of detail. The forest alternated between prairie and woods. Occasionally, when there was prairie on both sides, a blanket of fog would hover a few feet above the brush and as the road dove down into it, the temperature would drop substantially. Sometimes I'd crest a slightly taller hill than usual and I could see the road stretching out ahead of me forever. Forever! I fathomed brand new meanings of the words "vast" and "expansive."

If it hadn't been for what happened next, I would recommend a night crossing of the Ocala to any serious mountain biker.

After an eternity of dead straight miles, I crossed a couple of roads and made a couple of turns. Finally, after the last turn I was heading south again. Almost immediately, a road intersected from the right and a pair of headlights appeared at the intersection. I flipped my light on so they'd see me and they did. I gave them the standard nod and wave.

At first the guy was friendly: "Hey buddy, are you lost? Need a ride?"

"No thanks, I'm good. I know where I'm going."

"Ok."

And I kept moving. But then the guy's tone changed dramatically.

"You know it's dangerous out here, someone could gut you... kill you. A bear could eat you! Fucking Crazy!!"

The guy's tone was odd too. It was a mix of incredulity and contempt, like: "I can't believe what you're doing, and now I've become angry at you for confounding me." The further he got through his little speech, the louder and more distorted his voice got. People yell crazy stuff at me on the road every other day, but it's usually one unintelligible word at 50 miles an hour. This guy had an oddly specific set of things on his mind and since I had to climb a loose, sandy hill after the intersection, he had plenty of time to express himself. It was a little unnerving but they headed off north and I was headed south so I more or less ignored it.

A few seconds later though, they turned around and floored the truck. From the top of the hill I could see their lights heading my way. They might just be looking to scare me but a very compelling instinct kept encouraging me to avoid the encounter altogether. There was a water turnout right there. Ok. I jumped off the bike, walked down to the end and obscured myself in the brush. I'd already turned out my lights.

They drove by and kept going, periodically revving the engine hard. The motor had a distinct sound so I waited and listened for it to die off. Eventually it faded into the background. They'd either gotten tired of screwing with me or maybe it was an odd misunderstanding and they meant to go that way to begin with. Who knows? People are crazy.

I climbed out and got back on the road, heading south. And there they were, headed back toward me with the lights off. Instinctively I flipped on my light, not really thinking, just not wanting whoever it was to hit me on accident. When I did, I could see that there were 3 of them. The driver had this intent look and when he saw me his whole face lit up. He tried to turn toward me but the road was too sketchy right there and he almost ended up in the ditch. After recovering from that, they headed down to the next good spot, spun around and came back after me.

"You've got to be kidding me." I actually said it out loud.

Again, I hid in the woods and let them pass. This time they came by more slowly, with the lights off. It didn't seem like they were up to casual shenanigans any more. I thought hard about it too. Were they just running up and down that road, spotlighting deer? That would explain some of their behavior, but not all that wild revving of the engine or trying to turn toward me. Ultimately all I could say was that I didn't know what their intentions were. I couldn't be certain that they were malicious but given what the driver had said earlier, I couldn't really rule it out either.

I was in a small clearing with really dense brush and a few trees around the edge. I could get way back from the road, there was a bunch of debris in the clearing and I was obscured from both directions. I didn't feel "safe" per se but it was a good spot.

I had the sound of the motor down now, so I listened. It never went away. In fact, it got louder and quieter as if they were driving up and down the road. They were searching and it was a persistent and methodical search.

The next section of trail was at least 10 miles away and they were between me and the trail. I didn't know the roads in the area. The prairie was incredibly dense and I couldn't realistically push through it. I considered hitting the 911 button on the SPOT but then it occurred to me that my phone might work. Yep, 1 bar. How do you like that? A stroke of good luck for once. Should I call the cops? I still heard the motor in the distance. They'd been searching for about 15 minutes already and they were still at it.

Yep. I should call the cops.

I had a hard time explaining the situation to the 911 operator. She kept wanting a street address. Eventually she understood though and handed me off to Lake County PD. I did a better job of explaining it to them and ended up giving them my GPS coordinates so they could figure out what road I was on. Apparently it was FS65. They eventually handed me off to Marion County PD and the Lake County officer explained the situation in like 5 seconds using the power of police jargon. Marion County dispatched a deputy to meet me. He'd be coming toward me from the south and he'd probably call me when he was close. For most of the call, I could still hear the truck driving back and forth in the distance but toward the end it had faded out. The officer said to call him if they came back.

I sat and waited and listened. I hadn't heard anything for about 15 minutes and started thinking about heading south to meet the deputy on the road. Maybe the bad guys had given up. Nope. Right then, the motor cranked up. They'd stopped to the south, killed the engine and waited. I called the cops back and I was on the phone when the truck passed back by. Not 10 seconds later the deputy arrived in another truck. He had a lot of lights and it looked like the sun coming down the road. I didn't get out in time and he drove right past me. The officer on the phone said they'd get him to spin back and they did but it took a few minutes.

I headed south along the road. The bad guys were north of me. The deputy would eventually find me. Worst case, if they eluded the cops and came back south, I'd at least hear them coming and just hide again. Woohoo. I headed south. A few minutes later the deputy came back and I waited. It turned out it was a lady, not a dude, like they'd said on the phone.

Had the bad guys abandoned the search? No. In fact, they'd driven up the road past me and parked with the lights off again. When they saw the deputy they flashed their lights at her for some reason, then fled. She was going to chase but she got the call to spin back for me right then.

I talked to her for a while and explained what I was doing. I half-expected a blame-the-victim attitude for being out in the woods so late but instead, she was friendly and intrigued. That's the reaction I usually get when I run into people on a ride longer than about 50 miles. We were even talking about it in Karlos' car the night before. People are generally friendly and sometimes they offer you help. What you're doing sounds amazing to them and they're eager to be part of it.

I've never had anyone act very suspicious before. I've certainly never had anyone try to chase me down before. Still, I would bet that despite this instance, that kind of thing is still exceedingly rare. That is my lot though and I can only hope that by absorbing all these 1-in-a-millions, somehow it prevents them from landing on my friends.

It doesn't sound that bad when I tell people about it or even when I re-read what I've written here, but at the time, I feared for my life. I really want to believe that there's some relatively innocent explanation that I'm just not getting. Maybe there is. I'd sure like to hear it.

The deputy followed me out to Hwy 40 and then down the road for a few miles.

The rest of the ride was less eventful but still worth relating.

The next checkpoint was at Buck Lake. On the way to it I had to walk about halfway around a different lake through some deep, loose sand. It was hard to even push the bike and I ended up carrying for a while. Then, immediately afterwards, there was a mile or more of downed trees.

The Buck Lake checkpoint was an old water pump. Karlos said it was on the left, but wasn't much more specific and I didn't trust the waypoint. As soon as I was near the lake I scoured every little mini-clearing to the left of the trail. Eventually I found the pump, in the middle of a campground, with a sidewalk leading directly to it.

There were tents all around and it was the middle of the night. I tried hard to be quiet and invisible but I needed water and the pump itself made all kinds of racket. It was comical. I tried pumping faster but then it just made an entirely different kind of loud noise. Fortunately nobody woke up, or if they did they didn't make any noise. I heard one guy sort of half-snore when I first walked up but that was all.

There were bathrooms by the road so I made a pit stop and sat down in the lot for a "meal". Zingers, Doritos, crackers. Delicious calories.

The next section of trail was ridiculously overgrown. Ridiculously. I walked the bike. My light kept getting hooked on branches. I lost my glasses.

I've been trying to lose those glasses for years now. Several times I have lost them, only to find them again, miraculously. I paid $24 dollars for them at Performance Bike. I've lost several pairs of $100+ Smiths for good but the $24 ghetto shades just kept coming back to me. Not this time.

I think I heard every coyote in Central Florida around then too. They were barking and howling all over, non-stop. For at least an hour, it was perpetual. They always seemed to be a long way away though and I never saw any sign of them.

The Paisley Road Sign was the next checkpoint. I just had to take a photo of the sign itself.

All I had left was the Paisley trail. I wasn't sure how far it was to the south end but I felt as strong as I had all night and I had plenty of time left. Unless something really bad happened, I could still finish in under 24 hours.

The Paisley Woods itself reminded me of Croom but the brush between the trees was shorter. It was actually tricky to follow the trail sometimes, as it so closely resembled its surroundings, especially in the dark. There were reflective yellow markers on the trees though and I did ok.

Long stretches were flat and straight and I stood up and bounded across the landscape like I'd been doing up on the hammerhead earlier.

About halfway through, I saw a house or a building or something off to the left and heard some people talking. There was a strip of yellow caution tape across the trail right there too, with a thing of red reflective dye like I've seen the Rangers use dangling from it. I paused but I needed to keep moving so I just kept an eye out for the next mile or so. There was no obvious reason for the tape. It was a mystery.

The last few miles flew by. For some reason though, all the climbing in the entire trail system seemed to be concentrated in the last mile and a half.

Rolling up and seeing my truck parked in the lot was one of those elating, joyous, uplifting moments. Derek's van was there too but I didn't see his bike on the roof. I was sure that at least 5 riders had finished ahead of me, including him and Jesse. Maybe his bike was inside. I thought about going over and peeking in but that would have been creepy so I decided against it.

I almost forgot to take a photo of my bike at the trailhead kiosk; the final checkpoint.

It was 5:22 AM. It had taken me 22 hours and 22 minutes, well within my goal of 24, I had ridden straight through without camping, I had definitely enjoyed the scenery, and for all intents and purposes, my bike and I were both fit to continue an I still feel fine now, two days later. Miraculously, I had achieved every one of my goals, and I was way less tired than I expected.

The night before, I'd left a stash of Dr. Pepper, Beef Jerky, Twix and Corn chips in the back of my truck along with a pillow, sleeping bag and air mattress. I cozied up, pigged out and crashed.

Not two and a half hours later I hear: "Dave Muse is here! Dave Muse!" It was Jesse. He and Derek were up. They had apparently come in before me. Derek was asleep in his van. I have no idea where Jesse had been. We all packed up and headed back to Edith's place.

I really needed a shower. My hair was disgusting. That's the one thing that really struck me. It was just coarse and sticky and disgusting. I shampooed it like 3 times, just to be sure.

Karlos was already there. He'd had some kind of dizzy spell that got so bad that he had to call for a pick-up. I hope that doesn't turn out to be anything serious.

It was hard to tell who finished when or in what order. Some people forgot to reset their trackers. Some people forgot to take photos at some of the checkpoints. The results will shake out over the next few days. I was shown to be in 5th but I think it was really more like 7th or 8th. We'll see though, you never know.

Edith cooked us french toast and bacon and sitting there eating, the sleepies really started kicking in. I needed to get going though. It was nearly noon, I had an 8 hour trip ahead of me and I wanted to get home at a reasonable hour so I said my goodbyes. It was Shelby's birthday so I wished her a Happy Birthday too, and hit the road. Two Mountain Dew Livewires kept me awake all the way back and I even made it home in time to put the kids to bed.

God, what a ride. Thursday night I joked flippantly about Epicness and "everything Central Florida can throw at me." What is it they say? "Be careful what you wish for?"

Yeah. Be careful what you wish for.

CFiTT

2011-11-10T22:13:00.001-05:00

There's another big pile of gear on my living room floor.

It can mean only one thing.

Epic ride, coming soon.

This time it's the Cross Florida Individual Time Trial; 184 miles of whatever Central Florida can throw at me, starting Saturday morning. The last time I was down there, I rode about that far, stopped for a nap and somebody walked off with my GPS. Not this time!

Wish me luck.

Oh yeah, you can watch my little dot ease it's way across the state at Trackleaders.

Cohutta Pinhoti

2011-11-09T00:05:00.000-05:00

This past Sunday was Andrew Gates' birthday. Happy 24th Andrew! In honor of, there was a group ride up at Mulberry Gap with chili and chicken wings afterward.

There was no way I was going to miss that.

I'd set my alarm for 7AM but when that time rolled around it was surprisingly difficult to get up. I did some sleepy math, realized that I didn't really need to get up until 8, provided that I didn't screw around getting out of the house, and reset my alarm. An hour later it was still impossibly difficult to get out of bed. I grabbed my phone to find out exactly how long it would take me to get to Mulberry, thinking maybe I could sleep another 15 minutes. When I did though, the time on the phone read 7:00. The alarm clock which was still in my field of vision read 8:00. What? Oh yeah. It was the end of daylight savings time. "But that's not supposed to happen until Sunday night at 2AM..." Heh. This did not compute to my tired brain and it took about 10 seconds to figure it out. Last night WAS Sunday night at 2AM, or technically Sunday morning at 2AM, but either way, 2AM on Sunday and that's when I was supposed to set my clock back.

I felt dumb for not having done it, but I also felt great for not having done it because I reset the alarm and slept for another hour. Ha! I'm dumb but I still win!

I finally did get up though, didn't screw around getting out of the house and made it to Mulberry at about 9:45.

The ride was supposed to start sometime between 10 and 11 so I had plenty of time to get ready. There were lots of people there but nobody seemed to be in a hurry to go anywhere. Andrew himself was nowhere to be seen. The few riders that were kitted up seemed to be riding on their own. I talked to some of them. One was Linda whom I'd ridden one stage of the TNGA group rides with a few years back. Another was Brenda whom I'd never met but I've seen her name a dozen times in various blogs as one of the riders that either caught the blogger or got caught by the blogger during various races and then podiumed with them.

I also met Vic Palmeri and his wife who's name slips my mind because I'm embarrassingly bad with names. They'd gotten married the day before, at Mulberry Gap and they were headed out for a ride a little later.

Eventually Andrew and Kate showed up. Richie had been out shuttling some folks to some distant point and he arrived not too much later. Diane mentioned that a bunch of people had confirmed, then bailed on the ride. Two had gotten sick and one actually had a death in their family. Man. Those are good reasons. Matt Smith was still coming though and around 11 the 4 of us rolled out.

When you ride out of Mulberry, in the direction of the Pinhoti's, you can immediately tell whether it will be a good day, bad day, long day, etc. The first hill up to Mulberry Gap proper (the gap itself) is steady and steep. Matt was recovering from both a crash and illness and he could tell right away that it would be a long, bad day. Before we made it around the first switchback he was out. Man, I've been there. Poor guy.

So now it was just me, Andrew and Richie. We trucked it over to Bear Creek. I was feeling good but the minute we turned onto P1, I could tell it would be a long day for me too. Andrew and Richie both ride singlespeeds, in the Cohuttas. Andrew even has this bad ass belt drive system. They were cranking it up P1 and I struggled to hang on. Really struggled. I should have dropped back, spun up and caught later but I kept pushing tall gears figuring I'd warm up or something. There was no warming up though. I was already warm. Those guys are just strong. Eventually I cratered and had to recover. There was no catching, except when they waited for me.

In the off-season I usually carry around an overstuffed camelback with about 12 pounds of crap in it. It's nice to have the gear when I'm out all day but it's also just good for building strength. Figuring it would be a group ride with a bunch of people of various abilities, I was dragging it around again that day too. In retrospect, I probably should have left it in the truck.

On the P2 gravel road we ran into Vic and his wife again and a couple of backpackers who were just getting done. Their truck was parked at the end of the road. I talked to them briefly and it reminded me... It's a uniquely wonderful feeling to see your vehicle again after being out in the woods for a long time and pushing hard to get back to it. For a second, I imagined myself in their place, seeing my truck as I walked over the hill...

I didn't have any trouble keeping up on the P2 grasstrack climb which is a lot more gradual than anything we'd been climbing so far. That made me somewhat happy, I was worried that I'd be lagging behind all day.

We paused at the top and Richie called somebody.

It's amazing where you can get cell coverage these days. Way back up in the woods, my phone rings sometimes and I end up talking to somebody for 20 minutes about some problem with some piece of software or something from the top of some random mountain. Ahh, technology.

The P2 downhill was a blast, as usual. Andrew can ride it like nobody else too. Well, maybe like my brother or Eddie, but few others. It was tough to keep up with him.

About half way down we ran into the guys that Richie had shuttled out earlier. There was a big group of them, up from Florida. The day before they had gotten somewhat lost and had to call for directions back. This time they were still on track. "Hey Richie! We're not lost! Yay!"

Richie, coming off of P2:

Another thing I probably should have done differently is eat. I'd only brought a Snickers mini and two Clif Blocks. That's pitifully few calories. I'd eaten the Snickers before we hit the Bear Creek singletrack and finished the second of the Clif Blocks waiting for Richie. My stomach was growling. I didn't have the pangs yet, but they were coming. The pangs.

At the bottom of P3 there were a bunch of riders hanging out, waiting for the rest of their crew to come down off the mountain. They were all staying at Mulberry too but they were locals, or at least local to Georgia.

On the climb up P3, I did what I should have done on P1; let them go and catch when it flattened out. The catch part of that strategy didn't work out as well as I'd hoped but it worked well enough. They only had to wait up a few times.

There's a short section of downhill on the way up to Hwy 52 but my front tire was getting low for some reason so I didn't get to enjoy it all that much. It wasn't flat, just low, but it seemed like it was holding so I didn't mess with it. I figured I'd fix it at the top.

We turned left on 52 and headed over to the Cohutta Overlook. The last time I was up there was at the CMBAR last year. I'd mistakenly thought it was to the right and drug Hirsch several miles the wrong way before finally turning around and finding it only a few hundred yards to the left.

Cohutta Mountain:

Grassy Mountain is the tallest peak on the left. Straight ahead is the ridge that the Windy Gap trail runs down. To the right of that are Tibbs and Emery Creek. Bear Creek is out of frame to the right. The entire Cohutta Wilderness lies on the other side of Cohutta Mountain.

To the southeast...

Those taller mountains are near Blue Ridge. The tallest is Cold Mountain, I think. The distant ridge is the Blue Ridge proper with Springer Mountain and the southern terminus of the AT.

Apparently when we'd stopped earlier, Richie had called Kate and Matt and they met us at the overlook with some warm, delicious cider.

We screwed around up there for half an hour or so.

Richie threw down some calendar-worthy poses.

Dead sexy.

"Would you buy a Mulberry Gap calendar Dave?"

"Uh... Heh. Maybe. Depends who's in it."

My front tire was definitely low. There was a thorn in it. Chris had just put a new tube in it the previous week too when I brought it in to get the hub rebuilt. What a drag. For whatever reason, the front tire was incredibly difficult to get off the rim. I can usually just pull a tire off with my fingers. I don't know if it's by design or if the colder weather had something to do with it, but it was virtually impossible. Usually if I can't get the tire off by hand, I can use the trigger from my CO2 inflator as a tire lever. Not this time. It snapped the trigger right off. There's barely even enough left to push on now. Andrew had a Topeak Multi-Tool with tire levers in it so I borrowed it. A minute or two later I realized that I had the exact same multi tool, with me, in my pack. Why that didn't occur to me earlier, I will never understand.

Eventually I got it fixed and we headed back down. I'm not used to the leaves yet and they were playing tricks on my eyes. I overran several switchbacks - not off into the woods, I just went further past the apex than I wanted to. I just couldn't see them. I was looking for them and I still couldn't see them. Darn leaves. In a month my eyes will be adjusted but still, darn leaves.

When we got back there was chili and cornbread waiting. I was ravenous. The last little kick over Mulberry Gap proper had made me weak and shaky. Ginni was cooking up chicken wings but I ate so much chili that I only had room for 1 wing when they were ready.

Richie made me try the "Tuong ot Shriracha" or whatever it's called. Some kind of vietnamese hot sauce, I think. I've seen it at Doc Cheys for years but I never tried it. They've had a bottle on the table at MGap the last few times I'd been there. It's apparently pretty popular. It tastes like ketchup at first, then gets really vegetabley, then decks you in the jaw with devastating hotness. Waaah! It didn't taste anything like I expected.

We must have sat there for an hour after eating. I needed to get home but I was tired and it was cozy and there were friendly dogs running around and it was nice to talk to everyone.

Richie was telling me about a new trail system up near Cloudland Canyon called 5-Points. I'd read part of an article about it a while back. I need to get up there and check it out. It's brand new and there are about 25 miles of trail. Sounds great. It sounds kind of like Dry Creek actually and I love Dry Creek, so 5-Points is now on the list.

It was tough, but I finally did motivate myself to stand and start heading toward the door.

Oh yeah. One more thing. There are Mulberry Gap stickers now. I don't like to plaster my car with stickers, but I've been known to fly one or two if they are worthy.

This one is worthy.

This place is worthy.

...one of my favorite places in the world.

Happy birthday Andrew! I hope I can make it up next year too.

Moss Creek Trail Work

2011-11-06T23:14:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday, the girls and I headed up to Jake Mountain to put in a little work. It was the last work party of the year. Last month's had been cancelled - we just couldn't get enough people together. This month, we made up for it.

I think there were 24 of us before it was all over. Equestrians, mountain bikers and even a couple of hikers this time. I couldn't even get everyone in the same shot.

Debbie gave us our safety briefing, we loaded up, headed over to the old game check station and hiked out to the work site on Moss Creek.

I gave a quick deberming demo which, of course, didn't go as well as I'd planned. I picked the one spot on the whole trail with tough soil. My longitudinal plowing technique worked, but not super easily like it usually does. I managed to get it plowed though and the girls pulled the soil downhill. We demoed the soccer ball test too and then sent everyone off down the trail.

It was a good crew. There were some folks down from Tennessee that really knew what they were doing. Eddie knows what he's doing these days too, as does Greg Holland. We had Kathleen Tokuda with us too, who got some kind of award for number of hours of trail work way back when we were riding in the GAP series. Of course, Debbie and the CTHA folks have been doing this for years too. We really got it done. I mean Done. I checked the finished sections with the soccer ball and very few of them need to be touched up.

The soccer ball doesn't lie. It's your best friend and your worst enemy.

We got the trail finished to the intersection with Jake Mountain and called it a day.

I don't know what happened or when, but I've got a tear or an adhesion or something in one of the muscles in my left shoulder. It only acts up when I'm swinging a pulaski or carrying it home. It's not disabling but it's annoying as hell.

Post-work we were treated to some delicious chili. Sophie even liked it, especially since she could put cheese in it. She loves cheese. There was apple cake too. Mmmm. Apple cake.

The folks from Tennessee had their horses with them. Technically they had two horses and one mule. I'm bad with names, so the only one I remember was the mule: Henry. The girls and I pet them and fed them apples. Feeding them seemed like a great idea to Sophie until she actually tried to do it, then it was terrifying. Their owner tried to explain what it would be like...

...but it didn't help. Eventually his wife held the apple and Sophie pushed her hand up to the horse's mouth. Then she laughed because the way the horse stuck out its lips to pick up the apple seemed hilarious to her.

Kathryn was out all day, so when the girls and I got home we sat on the couch and watched TV. I took a nap for a few hours too.

It was a great day.

Shining Rock Wilderness

2011-11-03T00:08:00.001-04:00

Kirk and I went backpacking in the Smokies a while back and it was one of the best trips I've ever been on, ever. Since then, he's been trying to get me to go somewhere else and every time I'd think I could, something would happen to cast a really dark shadow of doubt on the whole thing. I could never guarantee that I'd be able to go and in the end I just had to commit and do my best to make it work. As usual, at the last minute, all kinds of things conspired to prevent it from happening, the biggest thing being that between work, racing and the trip, it looked like I'd leave my house in mid October and not see my family again until early November. They alleged that they were cool with that though, so that's just about what I ended up doing.

Kirk drove to Asheville from Chapel Hill and picked up his friend Don from the airport. Don had flown in from Baton Rouge. Kirk and Don went to med school together. I'd only met him once before but Kirk's told me various stories about trips they've been on over the years and I have an odd tie to him too. When I worked at the pet store in high school, I acquired a 58 gallon aquarium which was home to several artificial reefs and a pair of perpetually breeding Salvanis before I finally gave it to Kirk. He used it for a while then eventually passed it on to Don. So Don owns an old fish tank of mine. An odd tie to be sure, but that's how it is.

I met the two of them at Brixx Pizza by the Biltmore REI. If you ever eat at Brixx, I highly recommend their BBQ chicken pizza. After lunch, we grabbed some provisions at a local Ingles and hit the parkway. After an interminable drive we parked at the Graveyard Fields.

Long ago there was a vast, uninterrupted stand of spruce, entirely covering the higher elevations of the Shining Rock Wilderness. A tornado or something ripped through the Yellowstone Creek Valley back then, snapping off trees and and uprooting them, left and right, as tornadoes are prone to do. The overturned trees, covered in moss and spruce needles resembled a graveyard for years, but in the 1920's, a fire swept through and burned it all up. In the aftermath of the fire, grass grew back in and very little else has taken over since. It doesn't look much like a graveyard now, but the area still bears the name.

We got our gear together.

I generally pack pretty light. I've got a UL pack and UL gear and I usually just cook over Esbit tablets, but this time I brought lots of extra clothing, a camp stove and an extra can of fuel, just in case. The last time Kirk and I went backpacking, one day it rained on us, then froze, then then temperature dropped into the mid teens. I didn't have enough clothing, got very cold and used almost all of my fuel drying out what little clothing I did have. I didn't want a reprise of that. I also brought a pair of Nalgene bottles rather than a water bladder. I've had trouble with the tubes freezing in the bladders and I'd been wanting to try out the bottles, heavy though they were.

The heaviest thing I carried though, other than water, was food: 12 meals, plus granola bars for breakfast, plus a bag of miniature nestle crunch bars. Again, I've been stuck out without enough food a couple of times. Didn't want that this time.

It looked like Kirk had his weight down a good bit too. He'd recently acquired a Seedhouse 2 tent, 32 degree down bag and an Air Light mat just like mine. I didn't inventory his entire pack, but it didn't look too stuffed. He was using a water bladder too. He might have been carrying less than me.

I couldn't tell what all Don had. He was almost entirely packed up before I thought to look.

It was about 4PM when we walked away from the truck.

There are 3 waterfalls in the Graveyard Fields area. We planned to check them out then head over towards the Shining Rock Ledge and camp somewhere.

The Upper Falls was about a mile and a half west of the trailhead. When you first get to it, it looks pretty good, but unless you climb out onto the rock itself, you don't get to see the real upper falls.

The Real Upper Falls:

I half-scaled the rock to get to the top, but Kirk and Don found a trail that was substantially easier to negotiate.

I took the trail back down. As much as I suck at climbing, I really suck and down-climbing and the route I had taken up didn't look remotely negotiable from the top.

Heading back east, we discovered that we'd made an error in our navigation. We'd meant to take one trail out of the lot but ended up on another and the way it crossed the creek and teed into another trail made it seem like it was the one we'd meant to be on. We made another error later and ended up at a campsite by the creek rather than on the trail to the Second Falls but that one was more understandable, as the intersection was unmarked and the trail to the campsite looked much more heavily traveled than the correct direction. Woohoo. I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again. Don't trust me to get you anywhere.

Being almost entirely grass, the Graveyard Fields are shot through with campsites, little trails leading to them and connectors between the main trails. I guess, in order to keep people from making dozens of such campsites and trails along the creek itself, somebody put up a fence along the trail from the first campsite until it went back into the woods.

We eventually passed the trail that we'd originally meant to take and beyond that found the Lower Falls, also known as "Second Falls."

There was a photographer there who was very impressed with one of the photos he'd taken earlier and really wanted to show it to everybody. He was also pissed that there was a guy climbing on the rocks below the falls, totally ruining his shot. Seriously pissed.

Beyond the Lower Falls, we picked up the Mountains to Sea Access Trail and eventually the Mountains to Sea Trail itself where we found Yellowstone Falls.

It then occurred to me on why Lower Falls is also called Second Falls. Yellowstone Falls is actually lower than Lower Falls.

There is no access trail to Yellowstone Falls. We only saw it from a nearby outcropping of rock. I'd found a trail that might lead to the top but getting to the bottom looked like a lot of work, so we left that for later.

The sun was already getting pretty low and we had a long way to go before we could camp, so we headed west.

It looked like the Mountains to Sea Trail got less traffic than the other trails in the area and appeared to have been built more recently than the other trails as well. It followed the contour and there were grade reversals and other modern trail features, but I didn't get to admire them for long. The sun was setting and it was dark before we even got to the west end of the Graveyard Ridge. The Mountains to Sea Trail was a piece of cake in the dark but when we turned north on the Graveyard Ridge Trail it got a lot more difficult.

The trail was clearly an old roadbed, or more likely an old rail bed, and it was really, really chunky. It was easy to see which direction to go, but very difficult to see what you were stepping on, and we were mostly stepping on big, loose rocks at odd angles to each other. Kirk and Don flipped on their lights. Darnit. I'd brought a light with me but forgotten it in Kirk's truck. If you've never walked or ridden behind someone with a light, try it some time. It's harder than walking in the dark. Your eyes adjust to their light, rather than the dark, and the shadow in front of you is a pitch black abyss. All you can do is stay close to the guy with the light, plan your route and hope you don't fall back even a few feet. That's what I did. It wasn't easy, but it worked out.

Along the way, we decided to camp at Ivestor Gap. It had gotten cool while we were walking but as we neared the gap, the temperature dropped substantially and at the gap, the wind was blasting through furiously. We set up our tents but there was no possibility of fire. Kirk and Don hung out in the vestibule of his tent, sheltered from the wind, for about an hour but there wasn't enough room for the three of us. I was fast-flying my tent, so I pointed my vestibule directly into the wind, staked it down hard against the ground and stuffed my pack and other gear in there to seal it up as much as possible.

It more or less worked. I was warm all night and I didn't feel a draft, though the wind knocked my tent around like I've never seen before. I didn't get the best sleep. The wind kept waking me up. Hey, that's camping though, right? How often do you get to be woken up by the wind trying to blow your house down?

The next morning, I awoke to something gross but also very funny. I'd had a bit of a cold the previous week and my nose was still slightly runny during my ride at Chickasabogue and during the race in Albany. I hadn't washed my gloves in probably a month, so I'd been rubbing my nose with very dirty gloves for two days. As a result, the inside edge of my right nostril had gotten raw, infected and swollen. That night, it had apparently oozed and oozed and with the cold temperatures, some kind of frozen oozesickle had formed. When I noticed it, I just instinctively pulled it off, but it didn't come off easily and I ended up tearing out about 7 nose hairs out in the process. It reminded me of a Dirty Jobs episode where Barsky gets his nose hairs waxed. The pain was brief but extraordinary, and I couldn't help laughing at the same time.

There was ice on my rain fly, so it had apparently gotten pretty cold during the night. The wind was still blowing. It refused to quit, but it was way less windy than the night before. Between that and the direct sun, it wasn't uncomfortable to walk around with a jacket on.

I ate granola. Kirk and Don had coffee.

Looking around, I saw two other adults and about 20 kids milling around. We'd seen a few of them the night before but I had no idea there were that many. One of them had apparently lost his sleeping mat. The wind had carried it away and dropped it in the briars behind us. The lee created by our tents may have been the only thing that kept it from being carried off the mountain. The kid who lost it was really excited to get it back. I can imagine. Lately, my sleeping pad has been leaking down slowly and when I wake up to pee at night, I usually have to re-inflate it a bit or else I get really cold. It would have been terrible not to have had one at all. I didn't see any tents either. I think they were all in bivvys or maybe just under a flat tarp.

After breakfast, we hit the Art Loeb trail, directly up over Grassy Cove Top.

Grassy Cove Top is at the head of Greasy Cove Ridge, with Greasy Cove Creek down to the south. It would make sense to call it Grassy Top because it is very grassy, but why Grassy "Cove" Top, when the cove itself is "Greasy" Cove? Is it a just misspelling on the map? Is it a misunderstanding that has persisted over time like Etowah -> Itowa -> Hightower in Georiga? I wonder.

We hiked north to Flower Knob.

From somewhere in there, I think from Grassy Cove Top, way in the distance, we could see a quartz deposit sticking out of some peak ahead of us.

That must be Shining Rock!

When my brother and I were up there a while back, he'd told me that the mountain was covered in quartz and that in the winter, from a distance, it really stands out. He and I had seen blocks of quartz scattered around the west face of Shining Rock and I just assumed that the whole peak was covered in blocks like that one spot. Man, I was wrong! There's a huge outcropping up there, we just didn't get to see it.

The intersection at Shining Rock Gap is confusing at best. If you mean to continue on the Art Loeb Trail, it would be easy to end up on the Old Butt Knob Trail by mistake. Meaning to end up on the Old Butt Knob Trail though, we just stayed right and it worked out, which was fortunate because I noticed that we had gone through an intersection, but didn't recognize it as the confusing one and then kept thinking we just hadn't gotten to it until later. Woohoo!

The Old Butt Knob Trail split, not 100 yards north of Shining Rock Gap. We didn't know which way to go and the map made it look like we needed to proceed directly up the ridge. Both trails were maintained. Thinking we hadn't yet come through the confusing intersection, and that the trail to the right might be the Shining Creek Trail, we went left, up the ridge. This turned out to be wrong, but also awesome.

Almost immediately we were presented with a cliff of pure white, shining quartz. It was Shining Rock. We'd hoped that the Old Butt Knob Trail would take us past it, but we didn't think we were that close yet.

Kirk immediately started climbing the rock and I followed.

It was about like climbing the Chimney Tops in the smokies, but without the driving wind and rain that had forced me down the last time I tried.

We made it to the top without much trouble and took in the view.

Meanwhile, Don discovered a trail that led to exactly where we'd stopped but didn't require any actual rock climbing.

We hung out for a half hour or so and took the trail back down.

Ok, so the other trail must have been Old Butt Knob and the Shining Creek Trail must have come in earlier where we kind-of thought we saw a trail come in but weren't really sure and that intersection earlier must have been Shining Rock Gap. We backtracked and got on course, this time confident in where we were.

The hike over Dog Loser wasn't too difficult. We stopped at Spanish Oak Gap and ate some lunch. Being between Dog Loser and Old Butt Knobs though, Kirk had been calling it Dog Butt Gap.

Speaking of which. When my brother and I last hiked up there, he had the map and I'd only looked at it a couple of times. I'd noticed Old Butt Knob because it had such a funny name, but later on I didn't specifically remember the name. While sleeping on the first night of that trip, I had a dream that we were out hiking in the same area, but on the map, instead of Old Butt Knob, it said "Old Crotch Balls" which didn't seem funny in the dream, but I actually laughed out loud when I remembered it the next day. John laughed when I told him and Kirk laughed when I told him later and then it was funny again on this trip. Sitting there we were joking about it. In a few minutes we would climb up over Old Crotch Balls.

The climb itself was anticlimactic. It was just another random knob without any particularly interesting features, other than the name. I really want to know how it got that name though. Dog Loser is sort of obvious. I imagine someone lost their dog up there, or maybe more than one person did. Old Butt Knob though? Did someone find an old rifle butt up there? I want to know.

The descent off of Old Butt Knob was the steepest, roughest, sketchiest descent I've ever done, hands down. With all the leaves, I would even call it dangerous. You'd think you'd picked the right place to step, then the leaves would slip out from under you. I slipped, probably twenty times, and I was trying hard not to. I had to put my hand down to save at least half of those. I was perpetually concerned that I'd break an ankle or wrist. Kirk was in front of me and he slipped too, but not nearly as often. He was wearing trail running shoes with lots of little blocks on soles. My Keens have much bigger blocks. Until that day, they had not presented a problem, but on that descent, I really wished I'd had his shoes.

This photo doesn't really capture it, but you can see Kirk with Don behind him and how steep the trail is.

The entire drop from Old Butt Knob to Shining Creek Gap was that steep or steeper. Sketchiest downhill ever.

There was one overlook on the way down, on a granite outcropping, and we stopped there for a few minutes.

I've seen trees growing out of rocks before, but usually there's a bed of soil on top of the rock, or the tree has roots going down and around the rock, but not this one. It was growing directly out of the rock itself.

I'm sure there are some roots going down through cracks in the rock, but it looked impressive.

From the overlook we got a good view of Shining Creek Cove.

Later, we would climb back up along the creek, way down in there.

I think it was there that it occurred to me. My impression of the scale of everything was way off. Just looking at the map, the trail didn't seem like it should be as steep as it was and the cove didn't seem like it should be that deep. It turned out that the inch-to-mile scale wasn't confounding me, it was the topo lines. In most of North Georgia, on the USGS maps, each line represents a 20 foot gain in elevation, but the topo lines on the map we were using represented a 50 foot gain, and the lines were about as dense as the lines on the maps of North Georgia. So, just glancing at the map, intuitively, everything seemed to be about the same scale as what I'm used to, but in fact, everything was two and a half times steeper.

Ha!

The mystery was solved but unfortunately it didn't make the descent any easier. Here and there we could see the road below us, but every time, it seemed incredibly far away. At infinite length, we finally made it to the intersection with Shining Creek and collapsed for about twenty minutes, pigging out on snacks.

My Nestle Crunch bag was already running low. We'd gone through over half of it in under a day and a half. Without strict rationing, we would run out. They were so good though. Next time, I'm bringing more, or at least some other huge pile of chocolate.

We tanked up on Shining Creek.

So far, almost every trail had been unfamiliar in one way or other. The Graveyard Fields and Black Balsam areas are very grassy with only sparse balsam, magnolia, rhododendron and other scrubby brush growing randomly. There are a few stands of spruce here and there, but not many. You can see a long way and with the season, everything is brown, and it looks way out of place for North Carolina. Actually, it looks a lot like photos my brother took in California. Shining Rock is covered in spruce, but again, I don't see spruce anywhere in Georgia. Spruce is crazy. It grows all year and it's so dense that very little grows beneath it, and the ground gets inundated with tiny little needles. Beneath a stand of spruce, it looks like somebody cleared everything out and put down a carpet. Very weird if you don't see it a lot.

On the Shining Creek Trail though, it felt very familiar. We were at a lower elevation, I recognized all of the trees and bushes, the trail was an old roadbed, or perhaps an old railbed, and for the first time on this trip, we were following a creek. I love new terrain and new surroundings but it's amazing how comforting it is when you suddenly realize that everything around you is familiar.

As we climbed, various things caught our collective eye and we made several little excursions down to the creek.

Here there was a large pool that dumped out through this little chute in the slab of rock below it in massive surges.

We saw 2 snakes, exactly alike.

I think that's a "brown snake." The line down its back and the crosshatches to either side make me think that, but it could be some other snake that's not found in Georgia.

Don noticed a waterfall when we stopped for a break at Daniel Cove Creek and me and Kirk went up to check it out.

There was a wide falls on the north prong of Shining Creek itself.

As we got higher up though, our interest in off-trail excursions diminished proportionally. It took an eternity to get to the switchbacks near the top, and more than once, we thought we were there, only to discover a few minutes later that we weren't. Short of counting steps, it's very difficult to tell how far you've gone up an unfamiliar valley. There's just nothing to take a bearing on. Yeah, the map shows creeks coming in from each side, but there are more creeks than the map shows and it's easy to mistake one for another.

When we finally did reach the switchbacks, we were all ready to be done and it took a good push to get to the top. By then, it was about 4PM or so and we were all in favor of making camp at Shining Rock Gap. Ironically, it had been 4PM when we had STARTED the day before.

Nobody could remember whether it was OK to make a fire or not. There was a fire ring where we camped, with coals in it. The map had all kinds of info on it but nothing that said one way or another about building a fire. When John and I were there way back, there were signs saying not to build a fire, but I think that was because of a recent drought and we didn't see any such signs this time. We built a small fire.

I say we. I started the fire and got it going pretty well, then suddenly it burned out almost completely. Don was a former scout though and his fire-building skills were second to none. He fixed my busted old fire with authority and within minutes we were swimming in its luxurious warmth.

The night before, I'd eaten a Mountain House meal. I'd bought one at REI, but the rest of my meals were instant potatoes and noodle sides. I just reused the Mountain House bag to cook them. The potatoes were excellent. They cooked up instantly and were very filling. The noodle sides didn't work out as well. Even after sitting for as long as the Mountain House meals, the noodles were still hard and already getting cold. Plus, they weren't nearly as filling as potatoes, and slightly heavier. No good.

As night fell, the temperature dropped precipitously and the wind picked up just as it had the night before. I want to know exactly what phenomenon is responsible for that. If the temps fall, then yeah, the wind would blow from whatever direction is still warm, but why so suddenly and why so hard? Is it just like that at this elevation, this time of year? You tell me! I want to know!

We had camped in a stand of spruce though and we were very well sheltered from the wind. I slept well all night. I don't remember waking up except once, briefly, to pee and re-inflate my mat.

The next morning though, when I did wake up, I had a splitting headache and I felt really weak, like I hadn't eaten enough or had enough to drink. I ate some breakfast and drank as much water as I could, but it turned out that I wasn't that thirsty. It was weird.

The next leg of our journey would take us up to Cold Mountain and back. We left our tents behind and only packed as much gear as we needed. This left my pack saggy and floppy so I took my spare clothes too, just to fill it out.

On the way out, we passed the same blocks and blocks of quartz, strewn about the trail and up and down the hill to either side, that my brother and I had seen before. If we'd gone straight uphill it would probably have put us at the foot of the big deposit.

The trail followed another old rail bed for a while but diverged at the foot of Stairs Mountain. I think the Ivestor Gap Trail, the Graveyard Ridge Trail, The Shining Rock Gap Trail, the Art Loeb Trail between Shining Rock Gap and Stairs Mountain and at least part of the Greasy Cove Trail were all old rail beds. They're dead flat, wide and fairly straight. The back of Kirk's map indicated that some of the trails follow old rail beds and that there were once saw mills at the Sunburst campground and the Daniel Boone Boy Scout camp. Both of those, however, are at the very foot of the mountain and all these trails are way up at the top. How did they get the logs down? The Little East Fork Trail follows an old roadbed and leads from Shining Rock Gap down to Daniel Boone, but it's incredibly steep. Did they unload logs and skid them down to the sawmill? Was there a flume? Did they use geared locomotives and really, no kidding climb the Little East Fork? It has about a 20% grade. I know the geared locomotives could climb grades in excess of 10%, but what about 20%? Hell, it's a tough climb on foot. If it really was a railway, man I'd pay good money to see a locomotive climb it.

Stairs Mountain was much easier than I remembered it being. It was nothing. For some reason I'd remembered it being really tough.

I tried to take a representative photo of The Narrows but it didn't really work out that well.

The Narrows is a thin ridge running from Stairs Mountain to the foot of Cold Mountain and the trail winds back and forth over it from one side to the other. You can often see off both sides at the same time. The views are spectacular, though not much different from the views off the side of any other trail we'd been on. When my brother and I hiked it, it was totally foggy and we couldn't see 10 feet. This time, we could see for miles. The drops to either side weren't as steep as I'd expected though. I half thought that I'd be scared to walk along the ridge but it was fine.

We paused at Deep Gap and snacked. My headache had gotten worse but I wasn't dehydrated. I'd had to pee several times already. I only felt a little hungry. It was weird. I still felt a little weak, like maybe I had low blood sugar, but eating the last few crunch bars had no effect except to completely deplete my stash.

We pressed on. The trail up Cold Mountain is long and steep. It mostly leads directly up the fall line, and as you might imagine, is deeply below grade and full of chunky rocks.

We passed God's Finger, which I'd remembered being on Stairs Mountain and had been surprised not to see there.

Maybe it was Cold Mountain that I'd been thinking of as earlier as being so difficult. Maybe I just had it and Stairs Mountain confused.

It took forever but we eventually made it to the ridge that leads to the top. The trail along the ridge is much more overgrown than at lower elevations. Most of the time, you're walking through a narrow tunnel of brush and constantly getting touched on both sides by bushes and small trees. It wasn't comfortable, but it was way better than when my brother and I were up there with fog condensing on every leaf and the walking shower that ensued.

The trail near the top was even steeper and rockier than below...

...but eventually, we made it...

...and for our efforts, got a good view of the ridge we'd walked along earlier that day.

It was definitely lunch time and I ate the hell out of some potatoes.

Man, did I eat those potatoes. I think I like potatoes better than any other camping food. Maybe if I added some crumbled up beef jerky, they'd be even better, but really, salty, slightly buttery, but otherwise plain potatoes taste so good when you're hungry. I'm getting hungry right now, thinking about them.

The descent back down off of Cold Mountain was the fastest I've ever gone downhill on foot. We steadily leapt from rock to rock, almost jogging, all the way to Deep Gap. Whenever it flattened out a bit, we did jog. Still though, despite the lower elevation, less work and having eaten, I still felt weak and my head was still splitting. Kirk joked that it might be altitude sickness, but we were only around 6000 feet and I didn't have most of the symptoms. It hurt and it sucked. That's all I can say.

The trudge back to camp was just that. A trudge.

When we arrived, we packed up and I ate the spare noodle side that I'd brought "just in case", but I felt no better for having eaten it.

I had another problem to manage too. All that rough descending had started some nice blisters. Fortunately, the walk out was comparatively flat.

Unfortunately it was really, really wet.

Flat or not, we kept having to leap from rock to rock. Ugh.

Also! Like almost everyone else in the world, Kirk and Don are slightly taller than me, so their stride is slightly longer. I can easily keep up when we're climbing or descending, but when it's relatively flat and we're marching, I have to stretch out each step. That or every ten steps I have to jog a few. It's funny being short. Now that I think about it though, I'm not sure that I don't just have an unnaturally short stride. I noticed in New Orleans that it's hard to keep up with my dad when he's walking and I used to call my brother "Johnny Long Step." My dad is only a half inch taller than I am and John is actually shorter. Maybe it's just me. Whatever it is, I really noticed it on the hike out that day.

We walked out all the way to the Black Balsam Parking Lot and made camp in a small stand of spruce to the north.

A lady and her husband were grilling chicken or something over their fire and a forest service guy was talking to them. He didn't say anything about their fire, there was an actual metal grill on top of theirs too and there were several rock rings scattered about so I figured it must be OK. We would build another fire.

Firewood was difficult to find though. There were plenty of little bits for tinder but nothing substantial except an entire tree that someone had cut down, lying right next to our ring. It was hard to find anything else. There were stumps everywhere though and plenty of dead trees in the stand. It looked like people had just started cutting them down. Every branch within arms reach had been torn off too. All the way around the stand there were thick briars, but there were a couple of "trails" through them and eventually we found enough large branches to make a decent fire.

A decent fire:

Decent. Ha! Our fire was monumental. It rivaled the Great Burn that my brother, Kirk and I achieved at Tsali, in 2000. Again, I got it started, failed to keep it going and abandoned in disgrace. Don then brought his unrivaled skill to bear and constructed the raging inferno pictured above.

I can't believe how badly I suck at getting a fire going. I don't remember having that much trouble in the past. I hope that I'm just out of practice. Whatever it is, I took good notes this time and maybe my next fire won't suck so badly.

We put the end of the tree that had been cut down into the fire and it blazed forthwith. Periodically we had to advance the tree.

"Advance the tree!"

"Advance the tree. Aye! Advancing the tree."

That night I slept as well as the night before. Somehow though, my mat got turned sideways so much that both of my feet were sticking out from under the fly. Of course, I also had to re-inflate it halfway through the night too. It only leaks down a few breaths but it's surprising how big of a difference it makes to have it fully inflated. Again, for whatever reason, the temperature dropped significantly and the wind howled through the trees like a train whistle. I'd list that as a problem if I hadn't slept completely through it.

The next morning the sun shone in directly onto our tents and though it was in the low 40's, the direct sunlight made it warm enough to sit around comfortably. We sat in the sun and ate.

My feet felt a lot better; the blisters had flattened out. Even better though, my headache was gone and I felt strong again. I don't know what it was but it was totally gone.

We packed up some light gear and headed over to Sam Knob.

Sam Knob is right by the lot and not that much of a climb, but the views from up there rival anything we'd seen yet. The topography is much more complex at the south end of the Ledge and the foliage is much more diverse.

For the first time in days there were clouds in the sky. On the horizon, they even looked dark.

There had been a 0% chance of rain all week, but that day, there was a 50% chance.

A huge pile of young teenagers were hanging out at the top and we more or less followed them back down. Between them and the kids we'd seen at the beginning of the trip, it made me think... Why aren't they in school? Kirk said that the school his son Jack goes to takes nature-based field trips sometimes and maybe that was the deal, but the first group had been out for an overnighter. Maybe they just have better field trips in North Carolina. Like so many things on that trip, it made me wonder.

I'd seen this on the way up, and I stopped to take a photo on the way back down.

"Wildness." Every now and then, I see graffiti that makes me chuckle a little. I guess technically, there is wild-ness all around, as it says, but I'd bet that the word the artist was looking for was actually "Wilderness", with an "er" in the middle. Even then though, Sam Knob is actually located outside of both Shining Rock and Middle Prong Wilderness Areas, so actually there is only Wilderness proper to the south and west. E for effort though.

At the bottom, we caught up to the group of kids and the adult that was with them struck up a conversation with us.

"Where you guys from?"

"All over - Chapel Hill, Baton Rouge, I'm from Atlanta."

"All right! Well, at least you all speak the King's English."

I've heard that idiom before but I don't know what it means. Thinking about it now, I guess it means something like "Well, even though you're not from exactly where I'm from, we're all countrymen. Therefore I like you." But, at the time, the first thing I thought of was kind-of racist and I felt bad for thinking it. Why did my mind even go there? You tell me. Here's what I thought... A long time ago, Kirk mentioned to me that one of his friends, it might have been Don actually, had either spent some time in India, or knew somebody from India really well, or something like that, and when the two of them first visited North Carolina, they noticed that virtually every small hotel in the state was owned and operated by an Indian couple. As such, Kirk's friend was all "Let me handle this..." and he haggled with the owner, in formal Indian tradition. The owner was so delighted to have anyone even attempt to haggle with him, that they did so, excitedly for like 10 minutes. In the end Kirk and his friend got an incredible deal on the rooms. They then repeated this all over the state with similar success. Since then, I've noticed the Indian hotel owner phenomenon myself, and though I've been reticent to actually haggle, it has crossed my mind, over and over. At any rate, when this guy said this thing about "the King's English" I immediately thought "As opposed to the English that you hear at every hotel in this state. Am I right? Eh? Eh? Ha ha!" Thank god I had the presence of mind not to actually say that, but why did it even come to mind? Why?! To return balance to the universe, each of my Indian friends are now required to denigrate me in some clever, semi-racist manner. Have at it.

The Sam Knob trail is an old road bed. It didn't strike me as a rail bed because it was highly variable in grade. It was however a really good example of how big a difference the canopy makes in a wet climate. I've hiked and ridden dozens, possibly hundreds of old roadbeds, some recently, which were really sandy, in Mobile, but none were even nearly as eroded and braided as Sam Knob.

Rain just hits the trail full force. A couple of trees go a long way.

Back at camp, we packed up our tents and headed up to Black Balsam. The former route of the Art Loeb that leads up to the top it's in as bad a shape as Sam Knob, for the same reason. It has been rerouted but people still go the old way. I guess it's just not intuitive to go any other way. It could really use some signage or something.

I've been up on Black Balsam before so I didn't see anything new at first other than the weather that was really starting to move in from the west. But after looking around a little, I happened upon this grave marker.

I certainly didn't notice that the last time. 2009 though. It may not have even been there. Who was Annie? I've seen markers for dogs before - there's one at FATS and another on the Wagon Train Trail near Brasstown Bald, but 1964-2009 is 45 years. Was Annie a horse or a mule? That's even old for a horse or mule, and horses and mules aren't allowed on Black Balsam. Maybe they were though, way back. If it was a person, I'd think they'd put her last name on the marker too. So, who was Annie? So many questions on this trip.

Kirk had a list of objectives for the trip and as it turned out, we'd accomplished all of them a day early. We could either camp near the car for another night or just head out. It looked like it might storm on us later, we were all a little tired of camping and we all had at least minor blisters so we decided to head out.

The Mountains to Sea Trail took us back to Graveyard Ridge, which we then took back toward the lot. We ate lunch somewhere along the Mountains to Sea Trail. I could barely force down another bag of noodles. They tasted like they were flavored with pure salt. No more noodles for me. Potatoes forever!

Eventually we picked up the trail that we'd intended to take out on the first day. It crossed Yellowstone Creek near a little shoal or something.

"You want to drop our packs and go walking around on the rocks?" Kirk asked.

"Yeah... I mean, I do. But also I really don't." I replied. But then, as if I had no specific control of my body, I found myself walking out onto the rock anyway, carrying my pack, gripped by curiosity. I'm sure Kirk thought that was odd.

We walked all over the rocks.

It was an interesting little shoal. Several feeder creeks poured off the hill onto the rocks, right there. It also turned out that just downstream was the top of Second Falls.

No doubt our climbing around pissed off another photographer on the landing below.

The climb up to the lot was very steep, but it was also paved so it was easy to keep a tempo. As Kirk stepped into the lot, he exhaled really loud and amused a group of day hikers standing nearby. They asked a few standard questions. Where are you from? How long have you been out? Did you see any wildlife? Thinking about that last one, it occurred to me... Other than birds and squirrels, we'd only seen two snakes, a dead mouse and a dead shrew the entire time and I'm not sure those last two count as "life." In retrospect, it was kind of disappointing. We'd seen a lot of stuff, but not much wildlife.

A storm was definitely gathering on the horizon.

We trucked it out of there. Don had a flight out the next day so he and Kirk got hotel rooms. We all showered. Not together, in case that's what it sounded like. You know how when you're showering, sometimes the water will turn sort of brown as it runs off when you're scrubbing a particularly dirty part. The water running off of me was perpetually brown or black for the entire shower. It got especially dark when I washed my hair. I didn't realize how dirty I'd gotten until I started to get clean.

And so ended the great Shining Rock Adventure. I put on the spare clothes that I'd been carrying around all week but hadn't needed and we grabbed some lunch at Brixx again. The pizza was as good as I'd remembered. No offense to Mia's, but I wish there was a Brixx somewhere in Atlanta.

The drive home was uneventful. I only got rained on for a few miles. I'm not sure how bad it was up in the mountains, or if it ever got bad. I had over 1000 emails when I got back, though most of them were from a malfunctioning monitoring system. Still, there were at least 100 that I had to pay attention to. I stopped at the gas station and while I was there, I got a coke. Mmm. Coke.

I say this all the time. I love the outdoors but the outdoors makes me really love civilization. It's hard to believe how good a warm shower or a cold coke or a friendly email can feel sometimes.

The things we take for granted.

Buford Hatchery and Windermere Park

2011-10-29T23:26:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday, I got home after the race in Albany around 2PM or so. The next morning I was leaving for North Carolina to go on a backpacking trip that my buddy Kirk had been trying to put together for a year. I'd been gone for a week already and in the half day between trips, I really wanted to spend a little time with my family.

We ended up going fishing first, or at least the girls and I did.

The weather was cool and nothing was biting when we got to the pond, but around 3:30, things improved a bit and Iz and I both caught a few.

Poor Sophie didn't catch a thing.

While sitting there, waiting for a bite, I noticed that daddy long legs like hot dogs but they don't like to share.

I had no idea.

The pond closes at 4:30 so we took off around then and went to Windermere Park to play ball for a while. Sophie is sort of ambidextrous. She writes with her left hand but she does several other things with her right. She bats well left handed but she throws much better with her right. We got her a right hander's glove a few weeks back and she's does way better catching with it and throwing with her right hand than the other way around. She still naturally wants to step forward with whatever hand she's throwing with though. Whenever anyone says that someone throws "like a girl" that's usually what they mean. I've seen boys do it too though, so I'm not sure how that saying came about. Maybe classically, boys who did it were taught to do it right and girls were just allowed to keep doing it wrong because it was cute or something. I wonder.

We had fun with that until we were too hungry for it to be fun anymore, then we grabbed some dinner. I wish I could remember where but it was over a week ago now and I have no memory of that meal. It must not have been that good.

Ha.

Chehaw Fat Four

2011-10-29T18:44:00.002-04:00

Yes, the Chehaw Fat Four.

I've been looking forward to this race all year. Why would I be looking forward to a mountain bike race two hundred miles south of my house in the middle of the flattest part of South Georgia? Well, in part for reasons alluded to in that very question. While still an endurance mountain bike race, it should be a very different set of challenges from the ones I'm used to. The race is shorter, but still not short in the absolute sense. The course will be unfamiliar. The competitors will be different. The terrain will be different. The very soil and trees will be different.

"But it's so flat." Yes, but a flat course is no easier than a hilly course. On a flat course, you're always on the gas. Always. You get no rest, at all, for 4 hours. You just have to go as fast as you can and still make the turns. The draft is operative, even on dirt. It's very, very different.

Another reason I was looking forward is because the race was being organized by a bunch of friends of mine from South Georgia Cycling and I'd get to hang out will all of them in one place, all weekend. Various of them show up for various races in North Georgia at various times, but it's rare that I see everyone together.

I did have some concerns though. I'd spent the previous two weeks not riding, working all day and night, and sick. However, I'd gotten plenty of rest the night before, almost kicked the sinus infection and gotten in 5 hours at Chickasabogue. I'd planned on being home for a few days before the race, so I didn't have all my gear, but after a quick inventory after Chickasabogue, it looked like I had just enough to get by. My concerns might be unfounded. There was only one way to find out.

I reached the vicinity of Albany at about 11:00. Just then, Steve called and asked where I was. I wasn't sure. To my left, a team of baggage handlers was unloading an idling UPS cargo jet, not 300 yards away. "South of Albany... The airport?" Thinking I'd driven in from Atlanta, he and the rest of the guys became fairly concerned and weren't sure how I'd managed to drive past the park and end up south of Albany. We straightened that out though, they gave me better directions than Google had and within half an hour I was knocked out in Vonnie's trailer.

The next morning it was cold. Colder than it's been. I've been saying for weeks that it's trying to be fall in Georgia, but that morning it had decidedly arrived. Man, I didn't want to get out of bed, much less put on bike clothes, especially given that they were still slightly wet from having ridden in them the day before.

I did get out of bed though, and eventually got dressed, checked in, and warmed up, though I had to wear my jacket for all of that because it was cold, cold, COLD!

I think Clark took that picture. It's weird having photos of myself. I never recognize me.

I was number 100.

Do you like the smiley face with dreads? I did. Apparently I was the first person to sign up for the race, thus the number 100. I told you I was excited about it.

The finish line was crazy. For the Chainbuster 6-hour series, we wear RFID anklets and have to dismount and run across a carpet with a sensor in it. For races where you don't have electronics, there are usually chicanes or some other mechanism for slowing down the riders so their numbers can be read by the officials. In this case, perhaps in honor of the cyclocross season which we are now in, there were wooden barriers that you had to dismount and negotiate. These were no ordinary wooden barriers though, they were pine logs, freshly cut and custom-flattened on one side at the local saw mill.

It looked dangerous. I could imagine tripping in later laps. I'd have to watch out for that.

After getting warmed up, I rolled around for a while, checking out the place. They have a wild animal park, lots of camping, a lake, a river, a disc golf course, a bmx track, miles of trail... Oddly enough though, it was the Spanish Moss that kept grabbing my attention, hanging from every tree, swaying in the breeze.

Mmm, Spanish Moss.

Everybody gathered for the pre-ride meeting.

Vonnie gave us the run down.

We'd start at 10. It would be a LeMans-style start. It would be a true 4 hour race a la the Chainbuster series too. If you came in at 2:00:01, your last lap wouldn't count. And so on.

We lined up and I looked around to size up my opponents. The SGC crew was working the event so I didn't have to worry about those guys crushing me. Wes Garland had come down. He's good friends with the SGC boys too. He used to give my brother the business back in the GAP series, ages ago. There was a guy up from Florida named Daniel Vu who was allegedly pretty hard. I met a guy from Savannah named Nick who looked pretty strong but he wasn't in my class. I think he ended up winning the XC-3 class. There were a dozen or more riders from Robin's bikes in Florida, but none of them were in my class either. Suzy Neal was riding. She and Clark and I ride and hike together up in North Georgia. Ha! Me and Suzy were lined up on each other in the same race! That seemed cool to both of us.

"15 seconds!"

Oh, I'd better quit screwing around.

"Go!"

We took off running. The little bit of running that I've done over the past few years has been just enough to make these running starts not suck horribly. I grabbed my bike, and believe it or not, made it into the woods ahead of everyone. This has never happened before. I found myself in the lead with only theoretical knowledge of how to sustain it, and apparently that knowledge was tucked away in some dusty old tome in the very back of my mind.

I didn't have time to go rummaging around in my mind-library though. The trail immediately began twisting back on itself dozens of times. I was so keyed up and it was so twisty that I'd underbrake, overrun the turn, have to brake again, and then have to power back out. It was terribly inefficient. I just hoped that the riders back were having the same problems.

The first few miles alternated between crazy twistiness and long straightaways. Wes was behind me. The rider behind him was the first place guy from the next class down. I attacked the straights and rested in the twisties. After about a mile, I started remembering how to ride them. Do all your braking before the turn. Get way back and way low. Weight the outside foot going in. Swing through. It should throw you forward on the way out if you do it right. Use that momentum to get your pedaling started, but you've got to pick the right gear for that to work. So many details. It had been a long time since I'd ridden such a twisty trail. That's a perfect example of why I wanted to ride there. I was getting my money's worth.

We'd mostly been riding through fields of tall grass so far, with only brief little bits of woods, but soon we were just in the woods the whole time and the trail got way less twisty. Some sections of woods were really dense, others reminded me of my grandparents front yard - huge pine trees, scattered 40 feet apart with grass in between them. If somebody had gone out there with a rake and piled up the needles against the trunks it would have been identical.

We crossed a couple of roads. Some course marshals were standing on the far side of one of them so we turned left and pinned it.

From way in the back though, I heard someone shout: "Wrong turn!" Oh no! We'd taken a wrong turn. We were supposed to go between the course marshals. This is the first bike trail that Albany has ever had though, and the first race ever as well, so it's reasonable that the course marshals weren't exactly sure what to do. That's bike racing. These things happen.

Wes and I looped back. Daniel Vu had caught up right then too, so, Wes, Daniel and I rode together for the rest of the lap. At some point, we determined that we were the only XC-1 riders.

The trail wasn't entirely devoid of elevation. There was a section along the river with two hills, one of which was a tough, steep climb. There was a switchback climb out in a field too, one that ran straight up a hill to an old chimney and a crazy hill with a steep drop off of the back side. The rest though, was flat and in some places, very twisty. The scenery was quite variable though. The course had several different sections, each with its own flavor - grassy fields, piney woods, oakey woods, open fields, river runs, swampy runs... I didn't really start looking at the scenery that first lap though.

At some point, I made a move to get back to the front and actually finished out the lap in the lead.

On lap two, I wanted to see what the other guys had so I let Wes by right as we went into the first grassy field. He was taking it even easier than I had through the twisties and I was getting rested up but I feared an attack on the first straightaway. It wasn't Wes that attacked though. Wes actually eased up to take off his arm warmers. Daniel attacked. It seemed dirty at first, but really, from the back, he couldn't have seen Wes taking off his arm warmers. I had to counter. I held him for the first two straightaways and sat up on the third to let Wes catch. Daniel was slower in the twisties so we were pulling him in. All we had to do was keep the same distance on the straights. I say "all" but there was no "all" about it. Daniel is really fast and after a few miles, it was hopeless. Wes came by to try and run him down. All I could do was hope that the two of them were hitting it too hard, too early. I let them go, recovered and began riding like it was a time trial.

Lap three went by quickly. I was starting to remember details about the course.

At the start and end of lap 3, I asked the time and spent almost all of lap 4 doing the math over and over in my head. I would definitely be able to do 6 laps. I might be able to do 7, but it would be really close.

I didn't have any margarita Clif Blocks or salt of any kind, but I didn't seem to need it. I could feel the lack of recent riding but I don't think it made that big of a difference in my performance. Now that I had it wired, the course was really fun.

I started catching riders on lap 4. One of them joked: "Thanks for making me look bad." My heart rate was too high to do much but laugh at the time, but what I was thinking was... We do a lot of these long races, so it just seems kind of normal to us, but it's really quite a thing to do. If you can ride a bike, at race pace, for 4 hours, without quitting, independent of how you place, I don't think it's possible to look bad.

Elaine Mercer took a photo of me, I think on lap 4.

Again, it's weird having photos of myself. That's what I look like?

Late in lap 5, I finally caught Suzy. She still seemed fresh but I was starting to wind down. At the very end of the lap, the guys said I was one minute behind Wes. At the end of an earlier lap, I'd been 6 minutes back. Apparently I'd made up quite a bit of time.

I stumbled over the barriers at the end of that lap. It was luck that I didn't trip and fall.

Winding down or not, I put it down pretty hard on lap 6. I kept thinking I saw Wes ahead of me, but then it would end up being another rider when I finally caught him, or her. At the end of the lap, the guys told me I was 30 seconds back. If I kept it up, I could make up the time, especially if Wes cracked, but how much time did I have left?

"What time is it?"

"You have 33 minutes!"

"Yeah, but what time is it?"

"Thirty three!"

"Yeah, but what TIME is it?"

"Oh! 1:27!"

I'd asked the time prior to lap 6 too. I could have subtracted 33 from 60 to get the 27 but my feeble mind wasn't up to the task. It took me almost a mile to figure it out, but it had taken me 36 minutes to ride the previous lap and I had 33 minutes left. I really had to pick up the pace if I wanted to finish in time, independent of catching Wes.

I put it down hard for about a mile but that was all I had. There was no way I could even do another 36 minute lap, much less a 33. I was done. I pulled out and rolled back to the start.

It took a while to recover, but I managed to recover enough to cheer on Daniel and Wes as they finished.

Daniel finished with plenty of time.

Wes missed the finish by seconds and his 7th lap didn't count. Nooooo!!!!!

Usually I pack up and hit the road, but I had way better things to do this time. I did pack up though, and this little gecko kept me company while I did.

There was only one other rider who didn't make it in on time, so the podium ceremony was ready within half an hour of the 4 hour cutoff.

Suzy got first in her class, though I think she might have been the only one in her class.

I got 3rd, but I wasn't unhappy with 3rd. I'm happy to get beaten by these guys any time.

You'd think I'd be tired and wouldn't want to touch my bike for a while but I had my GPS with me and if I'm in the vicinity of an unmapped trail, with my GPS, there's a low percent chance that I won't map it. And map it I did. And I took a few pictures.

There's a light gauge train that runs around the park. The trail crosses the tracks twice. There were course marshals at the crossings, but any of us could have had to wait for the train if it had been coming when we were riding through.

There are remnants of old trails all over the park. Many are overgrown, some are used by the new system. This outhouse lay along one of the old, overgrown trails, near where it crossed one of the new ones.

There's a wild animal park near the back. I didn't get a chance to see the animals but the trail crosses the roads leading in and out and runs down the fence that borders it.

One section of trail is interpretive. There are signs identifying all kinds of trees and bushes.

The old, overgrown trail system was apparently an official system at some point. There were even several maps posted along it. This one was posted along a section that is currently used by the new system. I haven't crunched the GPS data yet but it will be interesting to see how the new trail matches up to the old one.

It probably took me an hour to turn that lazy lap. When I got back, some of the guys were going out for a group ride. That sounded fun at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn't want to ride any more. I wanted three things, in this order: a shower, a nap and food.

I put up my bike, drove back to the campground and waited in line for the shower. In the ladies' room, a mom was bathing her 9 year old son who's paralyzed from the waist down and her daughters were showering in the mens' room. I didn't mind waiting. The mom and her son got finished before the girls so I even got a chance to talk to them for a while. The boy had a T-5 injury from a car accident when he was 6. People always say: "It was nice to meet you" and sometimes they don't really mean it, but it was a legitimate pleasure to meet him. He was really polite, he had a very advanced vocabulary for his age, and he asked a million questions, but it was funny, his accent was almost unintelligibly country. It was like when I was talking to the Scottish lady at Disney last time I was there: "I know that's English, so it should be possible for us to communicate, but I just don't recognize those words." It didn't help that the words he was using don't generally accompany that accent. It took me a minute or two to lock on, but after I did, we talked for about 10 minutes about all kinds of stuff. I specifically remember him saying "Is that a yellow jacket? Man, I despise them." as opposed to "hate them", and he asked me "Did you compete?" rather than "Did you ride your bike in that race?" and lots of other lofty diction. I wish I could remember the rest of the things he said. Sophie talks like that too. He reminded me of her.

I was almost disappointed when it was my turn to take a shower, but then when I actually stood in the water, it was as if my whole life had been spent in preparation for that moment. It's funny how getting clean can feel so good sometimes. How did they even live in the middle ages?

Shower accomplished, I trudged over to Vonnie's trailer and crashed for a few hours. I don't remember waking up exactly. I just remember that I found myself walking toward the pavillion in the center of the campground where dozens of folks were hanging out around a grill.

Clark was grilling burgers, dogs and sausage.

My phone doesn't like the word "Grillmaster" so it translated it to "Drillmaster" which ended up being the title of that photo. I thought it was funny so I didn't change it.

The sausage belonged to Stephen Woolard. Clark indicated that he was handling Woolard's sausage and the jokes just began to write themselves. Half of it was jalapeno/cheese and the other was just cheese. My god it was good. The burgers were good too. I didn't try the dogs because I was too full by then.

I have a Chris King headset, bottom bracket and hubs, and now I've eaten from a Chris King Grill. Who knew?

Just in case anyone was wondering, I'm pretty sure it's a different Chris King, I just thought it was funny.

Post grilling we all hung out around the fireplace in the pavillion. The pool was definitely open and though I do not swim, I enjoyed the company of the accomplished cliff divers around me. As the evening wore on we got hungry and warmed the leftover sausage and dogs over the fire using marshmallow grilling sticks. Merritt's dog Zaxby was begging for food from everyone. He's a good dog and he won't take food unless he's offered but poor Bill let his hot dog dangle from his hand for too long in Zax's direction and it must have appeared as if he was offering it to him. Zax was so smooth about it too that Bill didn't notice it was gone until someone else mentioned it. If I'd gotten video, I'd have won $10,000 on AFV.

I slept well that night. I don't even remember going to bed.

The next morning, we were all up early. It was cold again. It's just going to be cold in the morning now, isn't it?

Someone who will remain nameless used the bathroom in Bill's trailer, but Bill hadn't bothered to hook up any water because there was a bathhouse not 100 feet away. He had to take care of the situation on the way out, lest he have to haul the "chocolate hostage" home with him. The jokes just wrote themselves there too.

I headed north around 9AM or so. I hadn't seen my family in a week but they weren't all that happy to see me. Man, I'll tell you, it doesn't take long for people to get used to you being gone, then when you come back, you're just an intruder in their territory. Better luck next time, I guess.

The Fat Four was exactly what I'd hoped for. It's going on my list for next year too. It's not fair that I should podium in the expert class of an endurance race though, so next year you need to come down and push me off.

Chickasabogue

2011-10-29T18:42:00.000-04:00

Man, I hope this works, I'm attempting to use a Blogger app on my phone for this post. And I have doubts about it's abilities. I guess we'll see...

After a few tough days at work, we triumphed over the twin foes of obscurity and obsolescence and I finally got the good night's sleep I'd been hoping to get all week. This was good because I had a long day ahead of me.

I'd missed Karlos in Pisgah already. He and his crew had been up there all week. I'd meant to meet them up there but fate had other plans. Luckily, though, as I'd brought my bike with me, just in case, I would not be denied adventure, entirely.

It was useless to attempt a direct return to Atlanta, I had a 4-hour race in Albany on Saturday. It made way more sense to drive to Albany, shack up there, race, and return to the ATL on that night or on Sunday. AND directly between New Orleans and Albany lies the bustling metropolis of Mobile and it's premier mountain bike destination: Chickasabogue.

The last time I'd ridden there had to be 10 years ago. At least. I'd heard they'd built more trail out there since then, but honestly I didn't even remember the old trail so really, it was all new to me.

The one thing I did remember was sand. Lots of loose, shifty sand. As it turned out though, those memories were only half-accurate. There were a few loose, sandy sections:

But mostly it was packed, duff-covered and grippy. I'm sure the soil has s high sand content, but you don't really notice it, most of the time.

The trails out there are about 70% pure singletrack. The rest are either doubletrack or thin little ribbons on old roadbeds.

The diversity was satisfying.

But I'm getting ahead if myself.

When I first rode out of the lot, I hung a left, crossed the road and aimed for some singletrack, only to stop short, fairly confused at the signage posted there. Something about red and yellow markers... From the deep recesses of my brain, I recalled some vague idea about one loop being marked yellow and the other marked red. But those were all false memories. It turns out that if you're on bike, you follow the red blazes and if you're on foot, you follow the yellow. The trees are marked on opposite sides. Bikes go counterclockwise.

The blazes ahead were yellow though and it took a minute for me to locate the red ones. However, if I'd been slightly more observant earlier, I might have noticed the big sign indicating the start of the loop, directly in front of my car.

First, I rode the Cemetery Loop, then hung a right out under the I-65 bridge over to the east side of the park.

The trails on that side seemed newer and flowed better.

There wasn't much elevation change overall, but the trails wound around through the trees and made good use of what was available.

I'm not sure I'd put some of the trails on the IMBA how-to page but the tread appeared to be pretty well protected by pine needle kevlar and moderate traffic. I saw tire tracks when I was out there but there was only one other car in the lot all day.

Growing up on the Gulf Coast, the woods was familiar. There was a lot of pine, live oak, water oak and cypress. The brush was all some kind of extra tough autumn olive, or at least that's what it looked like. Good lord it was tough. Don't even try pushing through that crap, it'll stab your face off.

I did see two wonderful things though. The first was spanish moss. I forget all about spanish moss, and then I see it and it transports me back to my childhood, specifically to the front playground of Goodwood Elementary. The second was longleaf pine:

Allegedly, way back, it dominated the southeast, up through Georgia and North Carolina. It's long gone from the mountains now but you wouldn't know that from riding around Chickasabogue. It's not everywhere, but there's a noticeable amount.

I saw a turtle on the South Trail. I'm not sure what kind. Maybe it's a gopher tortoise. I don't know turtles.

That and one deer comprised my wildlife experience that day. I didn't even see any snakes. I know it's fall, but I figured I'd see at least one snake.

On the east side of the park, the trails were build as loops off of other loops. The second to last loop was the Black Forest Loop, or the Buck Forest Loop as I first read, or the Black Forert loop as the hike-direction sign indicated.

I want to know exactly how that happened. I mean, they stenciled the letters, then went around them again with a border and then went and hung the sign. I can't imagine that the misspelling went unnoticed at all three opportunities. Somebody had to have realized and just said screw it. Or maybe some kids made the signs, or maybe there's some other story. The misspelling certainly adds to the charm.

I took a little side trail near the Black Forest intersection and discovered some bluffs that had apparently once been ridden and abandoned long ago. All that remained of a trail through them was this feeble, hopelessly overwhelmed water bar.

The noble fellow never gave up his post.

The Cypress Beach trail led to, as you might expect, Cypress Beach.

There was a gnarly old burned up tree right at the edge of the water.

I assume that the water is the Chickasabogue river. I think Bogue even means river. There are also Bogue Chitto and Bogue Falaya rivers in Mississippi and Louisiana had some Bogues too.

Almost all of the trails out there are well marked.

There are one or two exceptions, especially where the Beach and Indian Loops come together. I spent like 10 minutes trying to find a section there that's marked in the map but didn't appear to exist. It turned out that it was marked yellow (hike) but that if you go about 20 yards you start seeing red blazes.

Back on the west side of the park, I picked up some of the older trails again. Many of them lay on old roads, which apparently hold water in the winter. In the mountains, we'd reroute or build rock causeways but neither of those are options in southern Alabama so they build long bridges, wrapped in chicken wire. The chicken wire is impressively grippy. I know some bridges in North Georgia that could sure use some chicken wire.

Way out in the absolute middle of nowhere, there was this hand-powered water fountain, pump-thing.

And it worked. Though you'd be out of luck trying to fill a bottle. You might be able to fill a dog bowl from the drain, or maybe a water bladder.

Throughout the park there were all these wooden half-barricades, chucked off to the side.

They were odd and I remembered them from 10 years ago. Back then, they had them set up across various parts if the trail to route traffic away from closed sections or off of roads. None were in use that day.

The last bit of trail on that side was a little confusing and I ended up riding through what I thought at first was some dude's yard. It turned out not to be but it made me a little nervous at first.

I'd ridden for about 4 hours but I wasn't 100% sure that I'd hit everything. I didn't, for example, remember seeing a beach on the Beach Trail, so I spun down to the front gate to see if they had an official map of the place. It turned out that they did, but before I got there and discovered that, I got distracted by a shiny white cube off to my left.

The cube turned out to be a windowless building that had been a church and a school in former lives, but was now some sort of local history museum.

I'm generally a sucker for attractions like that but the day was kind of wearing on so I left it for next time.

That map that I mentioned scoring earlier revealed that I had, in fact, missed a bit. One section was sort-of difficult to find but led out to this beach which had apparently been Peterson's Landing, some time ago, or so I gathered from a modest little yellow sign on a gate nearby.

The other sections that I'd missed was easy to find. I'm not really sure how I missed them. Two of them led out to camping areas along the river similar to the one above.

One had these berries growing all over. Serviceberries?

They tasted good but I didn't eat them. Until I can positively identify laurel cherries, I'm scared of anything purple and cherryish.

And so ended The Great Exploration of Chickasabogue. I spun a loop around on the paved roads to be sure I hadn't missed anything. It didn't appear that I had, so I packed it in and called it a day.

Later I discovered that I should have looked a little harder. There's apparently a cemetery out there that I didn't see. I should have expected as much, given that the name of one of the loops is the Cemetery Loop. I'm a genius.

Earlier, I'd discovered that the little building at the front gate was also a camp store so I stopped by on my way out for an Alabama Dr. Pepper.

Alabama!

I think it was about 5 when I split. The Alabama DP was good but it wasn't exactly filling so I went scrounging around downtown Mobile for an actual meal.

There are shipyards all around Mobile. I saw a submarine sticking out of a warehouse and a half-built cruise ship moored in the river. They must make them mostly out of aluminum or something because it was blindingly shiny. I almost couldn't look at it.

Downtown Mobile is exactly like downtown New Orleans, if you removed the people and toned it down two notches. The architecture is the same, there are a bunch of streets with the same names, and if the place I are at is any indication, the food is good too.

I ended up at a place called Hophacks which bills itself as a pizza kitchen and taproom, but I think that should be reversed. It's really a bar where they serve pizza, but oh, what amazing pizza it was. I had their Butcher Block pizza which is topped with pepperoni, bacon and little bits of filet mignon. My god, it was good. You should eat it if you're in town, for certain.

So that was it for Chickasabogue and Mobile. I rolled east through the tunnel and past the USS Alabama with its giganticness. I need to take a tour of that one day, but I couldn't that day. Albany was still a few hours away and I had a race to get to.

Next time.

Bonita Lakes

2011-10-21T00:12:00.001-04:00

I've got a race in Albany in two days. A race I've been looking forward to for months. Most people prepare for a race by training, tapering, sleeping well, eating well, hydrating, and so on. Occasionally I end up preparing for a race by parking my bike in the garage, getting sick, putting in long hours at work and getting little or no sleep. Such has been the case, this time.

I can't lose.

This past Sunday (that's 4 days ago, and I've been so busy that I'm just now getting around to writing about it), I drove to New Orleans. In addition to being fellow mountain bikers, my dad and I are fellow computer nerds as well and we needed to finish up a contract for a company that we used to work for way back. He got me a job there during college and I ended up working for them for about 8 years. They needed some work done recently, we know their systems inside and out and so on, but that's another story. This story is just about the drive down.

If you want to get from Atlanta to New Orleans, you can go through Montgomery and Mobile or Birmingham, Meridian and Tuscaloosa. I generally opt for the latter for a variety of reasons, but this time one of them was the presence of Bonita Lakes in Meridian. My buddy Kirk and I rode there about 12 years ago when we lived in New Orleans and I rode there again last year. Last year I explored about half of the system and I'd been hoping for an opportunity to get out and see the rest. This past Sunday I had that opportunity.

I arrived at about 3 PM.

The road through the park leads around and between two lakes.

The North Lake.

And the South Lake.

The whole park is about one minute off of the interstate but it's way bigger than the average in-town park and the lakes are a lot larger too.

There have got to be 20 miles of horse trails on the property but the last two times I was there I didn't see any horses. This time there were a few but they appeared just to be running around in the field near the lot.

They had some barrels set up and a tent. They might have been giving lessons or something. I didn't hang around to find out. I had trails to explore.

The first couple just led around to some stuff that I'd already seen, including a trail to the overlook and its gorgeous view of...

the mall.

The trails there are laid out strangely. I think "laid out" is probably inaccurate too. The horse trails mostly appear to be old roadbeds and connectors between them. They don't really make loops either. There are a maze of bike trails at the north end and the further south you go, the less mazy it gets. It looks like whoever built the bike trails laid out a vague route then made reroutes off of it over and over to get more mileage. The north end has a bunch of older trails, some of which follow ridges or fall lines but they appear to have been rerouted as well. Whoever built most of the southern trails and reroutes seems to have more or less known what they were doing. Unfortunately both the reroutes and original lines are still used today and it makes for quite a spiderweb of trails.

There's probably a route that the locals take through the system and they don't even notice the old turns any more but it was very confusing to me the last time I was there.

Fortunately, this time, they must have just had a race or something because there were signs up everywhere pointing which way to go and mile markers too. After finishing my exploration of the northern section, I pretty much followed the marked route which twisted through almost every inch of trail out there. I only had to make a few side loops to see all of it.

The trail was fast and fun. There were some hills but it wasn't too strenuous.

The trees were familiar. The soil was sandy but it wasn't loose. I had a great time.

There was one very confusing spot on the trail. 5 Points:

The trail leading up to it was marked open to bikes, then suddenly became a horse trail for about 30 yards prior to the intersection but up ahead you could see bike signs again, so it wasn't obvious until you turned around and saw horse-only signs in the other direction.

I think there were at least 6 trails that intersected there too, maybe 7.

The most confusing trail there though led way out past 5 points then just made a bit of a loop back on itself. You just ride out and back I guess. The map showed it that way but I half figured there would be some connector back there that wasn't on the map. Nope though, the map was right.

I spun around for 3 hours or so. My body was really pissed at me for taking so much time off the bike and getting so little sleep. The cool air hurt my lungs and it took over an hour to get warmed up. Later on I felt great, but I think a good bit of that was just getting to ride a new trail.

LSU had played Tennessee either the night before or the night before that and on the way down I'd passed dozens of Louisiana plates with little LSU flags hanging out the windows. I ran into a guy walking on the gravel trail that loops around the lakes with an LSU hat and I guess his granddaughter and talked to them for a while. I thought he might be a fan, returning from the game, but instead, like me, they'd grown up in Baton Rouge but moved away in the early 2000's. He was saying he'd always wanted to arrive to a football game in a boat. You couldn't reasonably do it in Baton Rouge, but imagine cruising up the Tennessee River in a big boat then pulling up behind the stadium, stepping off and going to see the game. That was his dream.

At about 6 I took the gravel trail back to the lot. I still had to get to New Orleans, several hours away.

I think part of that trail might have been a rail bed. A long section of it is really flat and not very twisty and then suddenly it turns and gets really hilly. Also, there's a little peninsula out in the lake with a little island hanging off of it and it looks like they're divided by a cut, rather than naturally. I'd bet if I drew a line along the road and extended it out past the turn into the lake, it would lead straight through that cut.

The horses were getting packed up when I got back and it looked like just about everyone was heading out. I guess we all got the same idea at the same time.

Since then I've been working 13 or 14 hours a day and getting 5 or 6 hours of sleep a night. The first night I didn't get quite enough sleep and never really recovered. I feel like I'm about 20 IQ points short of nominal and lord knows how this race is going to go. It's all part of the adventure though. I spent lots of time nerding out with my dad, slept at my aunt and uncle's place every night and even got to visit my cousin, her husband and their kids. If I didn't do well preparing for the the race, it was only because I did so well not preparing for it.

Tomorrow I'm heading out. I'm hoping to hit Chickasobogue in Mobile. I will likely just drive straight to Albany from there and either shack up with some friends or in a dirt cheap hotel. The adventure continues.

Frozen Knob (Again)

2011-10-14T23:19:00.001-04:00

This whole week the weather has sucked and I've had a cold, so I've just been working 13 hours a day and getting fat. Today the weather looked really nice though and even though my cold isn't totally gone, it was good enough to get outside for a bit. I rarely feel like riding a bike when I'm sick so I just went back to explore more of that same area I've been running around in for a while now.

Today I parked at Williams Gap. Now that I know how everything connects up together, screw driving all the way in to FS69.

The air was a little cool and for the first time in as long as I can remember I had to warm up a bit. My lungs were pissed though and I tasted blood for a few minutes. Fortunately the fall colors were finally starting to come in for real up there, so I had nice scenery to look at while I suffered.

Up on the ridge it was a lot easier going.

Apparently somebody lost a chain of ammo.

I guess it happened some time last week. I passed right by that spot last weekend and I think I'd have seen it if it was there. I guess, not only did the Rangers pass through there since last week, but also at least one non-Ranger passed through too, as another Ranger would have taken it with them. It looks like that trail gets more traffic than I thought.

On the way down off of the ridge to the south, I ran into an orienteering marker.

That's the kind they use for adventure races, not the kind the Rangers use. For a second I thought maybe somebody had forgotten to pick it up after an event and almost packed it out it myself, but then, who knows, there might be something going on this weekend. I left it alone.

On the north end of the Edmondson Wetland area, formerly Edmondson Pond, I walked up on a pair of hunters in tree stands, with rifles. Today is the 14th though, and I'd checked the regs earlier this month. I thought that firearms season didn't start until the 22nd. Today is the last day of archery season and muzzle loader season starts tomorrow, but as far as I know, firearms aren't allowed right now. I imagine there might be some odd regulation though, like it's ok to hunt small game or hogs or something with rifles right now. They could also just have been scouting and their rifles may not have been loaded. Who knows?

They were nice guys and we communicated very effectively, mostly with sign language. I'd planned on heading up the cove a bit but I changed my plans and headed west, away from their location.

Before long I was on good old FS69. There was a campsite right there and though I'd sworn that I'd looked around back in there before, that's what I thought last weekend too when I found that road, so I gave it another look, and lo, another road.

This time it got overgrown after a while though and eventually teed into one of the trails I'd been on last week. It's funny how you recognize stuff. "Oh, I recognize this group of downed trees and the angle that this old roadbed transitions into the hillside. This must be that trail from last week."

The cinnamon ferns were all dying off and this one corner smelled so strongly of cinnamon.

It was nice as I walked toward but it just got stronger and stronger and when I got to this spot was almost sickeningly sweet.

I hoped to discover the source of the trail that led up to Little Frozen Knob from the northwest and I crawled all over the ridge there with no luck at all. I found the ridge that it must descend but it wasn't there. I guess I'm going to have to just go up to the top and follow it down. Woohoo.

Though denied the trail I sought, in its place, I was rewarded with lots of gnarly rock outcroppings.

The photo doesn't do justice to this one. It had all kinds of overhangs, almost like little caves.

From there on, I just wandered around until it got dark, then followed a trail that I know back to the car.

Ok. That was fun. I'm starting to feel like riding the bike again too, which is nice. I'm going to New Orleans for work on Sunday, maybe I'll bring it with me this time and hit some trail on the way down and then another one on the way back up.

Frozen Knob

2011-10-12T02:53:00.001-04:00

This past Sunday, you'd think I'd have done some epic mountain biking but for some reason these days, I feel more like hiking. I go through phases like that, I think. When I haven't done something for a while, I suddenly get a hankering for it, then it's all I want to do for a while, then I suddenly get a hankering for something else, and so on. These days I get that with the road bike, the mountain bike and hiking, but when I was a teenager I alternated between freestyle and skateboarding. Back then I called it the Vander Syndrome after Dave Vanderspeck who was a pro freestyle rider and skater back in the 80's and he talked about alternating between them like that in an article I read once. Google Vanderspeck when you get a chance. He came up with some rad tricks and died an odd death. Bark hard curb dog.

But I digress.

All that Oliver Creek adventuring last week made me want to explore Frozen Knob, which is right next door. I've seen maps alleging that there are "trails" up there and for the longest time I've had little dotted lines on my maps of the area. No longer! I won't stand for it.

I parked at Old 69G and a quick survey of the surrounding area yielded faint signs of human traffic uphill from there. Those led to an old roadbed which eventually led to an actual road. Not like an old abandoned road, but a somebody-drove-a-truck-on-it yesterday road. What? How did this escape previous detection? I really wanted to find out but I suddenly realized that I had neither map nor phone in my possession.

My heart sunk as it has only sunken once before, when I thought I'd lost my GPS. With the GPS though, it was like losing a companion and I felt a much deeper sense of loss. With the phone I was mainly worried that it would cost me a lot of money to replace it and I wouldn't be able to take any photos. The map was a less significant loss, but it meant I might not be able to explore as much as I'd like. I generally like to have a map with me when I'm off trail.

I'd stopped twice earlier. Once on the side of the road, right by my car, to let my GPS sync up, then again later to fiddle with my pack. Perhaps I'd set the map and phone down on the ground at one of those locations and left it. It took a bit of work but I found the spot I'd stopped to fiddle with my pack. No phone. No map. However, as it turned out, for some odd reason, I'd put the map in my pack. Why? I don't know, but I did. Ok, one down. The phone was not there though. I whacked back to the road as quickly as possible but the phone wasn't there either. Had someone picked it up? Had I dropped it somewhere else? No. I'd left it in the car. In the car! I was glad that's where it was, but seriously, that's just silly.

With phone, map and GPS, finally in hand, I hit the reset button on the adventure and made my way back up to that road I'd found earlier. It turned out it led to a campsite one way and FS69 in the other. Maybe somebody had always been camped there in the past and I never had an opportunity to check it out. Ok, mystery solved.

The map alleged a trail around there somewhere, leading up to Little Frozen Knob, but after quite a bit of looking there was nothing to be found. There was supposedly another one to the south though, so I headed that way along the road.

Along the road, as I am prone to do, I got distracted by the sound of rushing water and headed off immediately into the woods to check it out.

Yeah... Good call.

There was an old road there too and either an old bridge or ford right below the falls. It appeared that I wasn't the first to discover it though.

The old road appeared to have been the route used to build the dam that forms Rock Creek Lake.

I couldn't resist following it for a while, nor following the fishing trail that it led to which went almost all the way around the lake.

There were a couple of people camped out on the east side. It's amazing how well voices carry across calm water. From all the way across the lake, I could hear them speaking as if they were 20 feet away.

When the trail petered out I picked up Old 69A and eventually just bushwhacked down to Rock Creek where I reprised my Friday luck and crossed on some fallen trees without getting my feet wet. Ha!

The loop around the lake was a nice diversion but it didn't get me any closer to my objective. I didn't see any distinct trail where one was alleged to be, but I'd long noticed a little trail leading up the hill across from the lake, not terribly far away from there so I checked it out.

Somebody had been camping along it and had apparently heard that you can start a fire with dryer lint.

There was also a balloon nearby, lending further credibility to my one-ballon-per-square-mile theory. This one wasn't mylar though.

A densely overgrown logging road led uphill for a while, then became clear enough for a nice view of the hillside below...

...before ending abruptly.

Grrr. No trail. Fine! No trail. I headed uphill anyway.

I first crossed another old roadbed, but it ended right where I crossed it and led downhill in the other direction. Before long though, I ended up crawling my way up over a series of rocky outcroppings.

The whole western face was strewn with outcroppings and cliffs. It was tough to capture the coolness of it in a photo though.

As I neared the summit, a "trail" appeared, coming in from the northwest. It matched the location of the first one I'd been looking for. I yearned to follow it downhill and see where it came from. How could I have missed it earlier? I say "trail" because it barely counted as a trail. It was more of a "people-go-that-way". I followed it up though and once I had a line on it, it was fairly easy to follow. It led right where it should have too, up and over Little Frozen Knob and east along the ridge.

Unfortunately there wasn't much to see up there. There were a few interesting rock formations, but nothing big and crazy. The views were mostly obstructed by leaves or brush. I alternated between following a well defined trail and just going in the most open-looking direction through the woods. Several old logging roads intersected here and there and a couple of trails looked like they led out along various spurs or ridges. There was very little trash but the bits I found looked like Ranger gear.

Toward the eastern end, I did, finally encounter some points of interest.

This tree had been struck by lightning, had burned almost completely and was barely hanging on by an inch or two of wood at the base and then again halfway up.

I feared that the wind would blow it over before I got the photo.

On Frozen Knob proper, another tree was eating this ancient WMA boundary sign.

While ascending Frozen Knob, I heard what at first I thought was a deer sneezing. As ridiculous as that sounds, it sounded even more ridiculous in my head when I first thought it, but I couldn't imagine what else it could be, unless it was some other animal sneezing. It wasn't a snort. Then I heard it again. And again! I finally just stopped and stood still for a while. It never happened again though and eventually I moved on.

Not a quarter mile later, I discovered a big pile of trees that had just been cut. They still smelled strongly of sap.

I puzzled over the trees for a few moments. They hadn't been dropped across the trail, nor over a campsite. The trees themselves looked healthy. They were of several different sizes and species. There was no paint on them, nor on any other trees in the area. I could not, for the life of me understand why they had been cut. Finally though, I noticed that whoever cut them had tried a few times on each tree before finally getting their cut in the right spot. Maybe somebody was practicing cutting down trees. Hmmm. There was no oil smell though. Maybe they were practicing with a crosscut saw. Maybe the sound I'd heard earlier was the noise made by a crosscut saw. Maybe they were still practicing and had just moved to a different location. Who knows. It made more sense than a deer sneezing, but it remains another mystery.

At Low Gap, I lost the trail and spent a while looking for it. Maybe it ended there. No, I eventually found it. It looked like an old road led over the top of the knob to the east and the trail followed it.

At the top of the hill, there was this ancient orienteering marker.

"Number 2." There are markers all over the place in the woods surrounding Camp Merrill. I've found dozens of them over the years, and posts they've been removed from. This might be the oldest generation of them though. Newer-looking ones are made of plywood and a few years back they started using professionally-made-looking ones coated in reflective paint. I think this one might be the most distant from the camp that I've found yet. And, it's funny, every one of the ammo-box markers that I've found have been filled with acorns.

It doesn't look like anybody goes past Low Gap all that much from the west, or approaches from the east very often. There were a series of old logging roads leading down from the knob to Frank Creek but they were barely passable.

When I got to FS346, it wasn't dark yet, but I didn't have that much time before it would be.

As much as I wanted to backtrack and discover the source of the trail along the ridge, I knew by the time I got there, it would be too dark to follow with any confidence. Oh well, maybe next time.

I jogged along the road for a mile or so before giving that up and just marching. Man, I suck at jogging.

It got darkish in the woods around 7:15 but I made it back to the car before it was officially dark.

Once again, I managed to knock 3 dotted lines off my maps, only to add about 15 more. That's how it is. What would I do if I ever ran out of places to go.

Silver Comet

2011-10-12T00:49:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday was family day.

We hung around the house all morning, then around noon we headed over to my parents' house for an hour or two. They were still in town, but leaving for Dallas on Sunday.

Since we were on their side of town, we took a little ride on the Silver Comet.

Kathryn's got a new Townie. I wasn't too sure when we were first looking at cruisers at the shop but this one has plenty of gears, 700c rims, skinny tires, presta valve road tubes, quick release hubs, and it weighs only slightly more than my mountain bike. In other words, I can throw it around, put it on my rack and fix it in the field without carrying anything else, unlike the girls' bikes which require different tubes, different CO2 thingies and a 15mm wrench to take off the wheels. Not too bad.

We parked somewhere out in Paulding County and headed west.

It was mostly uphill on the way out.

At one point we had to take a little detour.

When my dad and I had been through there on the side-trail a few months back, bad rain had triggered a couple of landslides in that area. The side trail had been crushed and there were plastic fences along the silver comet.

They weren't working on it at the time, but they had put a lot of work in recently. They'd even put in a bench cut about halfway down where I suppose the side trail will be run.

It's funny though, the Silver Comet is a rail-trail and for the most part, doesn't exceed 1% grade, but the detour was steep.

Inconceivably steep for somebody that rides the Silver Comet often. Sophie and Kathryn had to walk but Isabel stood up and cranked it out. Nice climb Iz.

We rode all the way out to the Tara Drummond trailhead, then took a snack break.

According to a memorial there, the trailhead is dedicated to a local woman who died in a training accident while attending the police academy.

There was another family there with 3 little kids. The older boy and girl were sharing a bike and their parents were videotaping them. Meanwhile the younger daughter kept picking berries off the nearby laurel bushes and putting them in her mouth. The parents were preoccupied with the other kids so Kathryn had to mention it to them. They tried to keep an eye on her but if they turned their backs for a second, she was right back at it.

I talked to a guy who had 10 miles left of a 50 mile out-and-back. He looked like it would take everything he had to finish.

There had been a bunch of people in CBC jerseys earlier too. It seemed like every group we passed had one or two in it. I kept wanting to spin back and ask them what CBC stood for but after I thought of doing that I didn't see another one all day.

The return trip went by a lot faster.

Primarily, it was almost all slightly downhill, but also, the girls and I rode an pseudo-paceline most of the way back. The last time we were out there, we'd done it team time trial style but this time we did quick turns and we were really flying. Kathryn declined to rotate and had to yo-yo off the back all the way in.

We rode by a snake and turned around to check it out.

At first I thought it was a rat snake but I mostly see black rat snakes in Georgia so I didn't recognize it. It turns out it's a grey rat snake. I've only seen one of them before and that one was a juvenile, which is much lighter between the spots. I love snakes.

The rest of the trip back was uneventful. Kathryn even had a good time. On the way out she'd been a little uncomfortable but we adjusted her bars and seat at Tara Drummond and they felt good on the way back.

My folks joined us for some dinner at The Italian Oven which is one of my favorite places to eat in all of Atlanta. I usually go for their Pasta Deluxe but this time it was the Barbecue Chicken Pizza. Oh yeah. BBQ and Pizza.

Top notch.

Oliver Branch

2011-10-12T00:09:00.000-04:00

Oh man, I've got a backlog. Too many adventures in too short a time. I'd better get to more writing or less exploring. One or the other.

After a miserable failure last Thursday I went back to the Oliver Branch area Friday evening and made non-stop discoveries until and even after dark. One was so significant that it felt like discovering the northwest passage. That was literally the first analogy that came to mind when I found it. I've been reading a lot of Jules Verne lately.

Apparently there's an old road that runs along the ridge to the south of Oliver Branch. It eventually peters out but there's a "trail" along the ridge too that leads up to good old "89".

I'd been up there from several different directions before but never this one. It's a neat little place.

I still want to know who numbered it 89 though, and why. There's a 59 at FS42 and 42A too. Mysteries.

I long imagined there might be a route in the general direction of the one I took but every time I looked in the past, I just found old overgrown logging roads. This time though, it was the northwest passage.

On the way back down I discovered a shoe.

It was a really old-school running shoe. An animal had eaten the soft part out of the sole. The weirdest part is that I'd seen the other shoe of the pair earlier in the day, torn to shreds and 3/4ths embedded in the ground about a mile and a half away. How it is that someone came to lose both of their old-school running shoes in the absolute middle of nowhere is another mystery. The first shoe was so deteriorated that I'd left it alone. This one though, I packed out.

The woods is full of old cables. This one appears to have once been strung between two trees on the other side of an old ford on Oliver Creek.

I'd bet that in years past there were properties all up and down FS69 like there are along Conasauga Road today. The area beyond the cable is wide open too, with big trees, like maybe it had never been logged. I can only imagine an entire forest like that.

As cool as it was to find a route up to 89, it wasn't really what I was hoping to find.

Ages ago I'd walked out past the end of FS251 for a while but I was a less accomplished explorer back then and didn't venture too far. There appeared to be a maze of old roads back there though and if you look at the topography, it just really seems like one of them ought to drop down to FS69. So far though, I'd found nothing leading up there from below.

I had one last unexplored little spur on my map though. It looked promising but it didn't work out as well as it looked like it might. It led in the right direction but eventually became very overgrown after first becoming so steep that I can't imagine anyone ever driving anything on it. Clearly they must have though.

The view down into the valley was beautiful.

It's trying really hard to be fall.

I looked around and it was clear that people head up the old road then take a left up the adjacent hillside. I thought the old road had been steep but the hillside made it look like nothing. It was hands and feet all the way up. I assume the route is used by Rangers, with their 60 pound packs and unlimited hardness. I struggled with my little camelback. At the top it teed into a maze of old logging roads which eventually led to the end of FS251. Surely the one that used to be the continuation of 251 would go somewhere, right? Nope. It was mostly clear but right before it led into the Mill Creek valley it became highly overgrown. I always wonder how that happens. Did I miss a turn that most people take? Do hunters just walk out, set up in a tree stand all day and walk back? Is it just open as much as it is because of explorers like me? I always wonder.

I'd wagered daylight on Old 251 leading somewhere and when it didn't pay out, I was stuck with two pockets full of dark. Fortunately the moon was full, and for a while I had enough light to sort-of see by. I didn't really want to descend that hillside I'd climbed earlier though so I took another old road down. As fate would have it, it ended up going exactly where I'd hoped Old 251 would go. It was truly dark though. The hillside even hid the moon. I don't know whether to classify the trail as reclaimed or not. It felt overgrown, but in the dark, anything but the clearest trail does. Somewhere near the bottom I lost the path. It had either ended or turned abruptly. After a short bushwhack I found Rock Creek though, and in a rare stroke of good luck, I hit it right where a bunch of trees had fallen across. I didn't even get my feet wet.

In the moonlight, the road was as clear as day and I got back to my car quickly. Some people were setting up camp nearby and seemed somewhat surprised to see me walking by in the dark.

All right. Now that's what I'm talking about. Much better than Thursday. Still though, I'd hoped to be able to eliminate a bunch of little dotted lines from my map but in the end I think I actually added some. Isn't that how it always is though?

Oliver Branch

2011-10-06T23:30:00.000-04:00

Me and Tim's Winding Stair excursion the other day gave me a hankering to do some exploring. There's an area up in the former Blue Ridge WMA that I've wanted to go wandering around in for years. It even looked like there were a couple of trails there and I had an idea where they might go, or at least one of them. Today I drove up to check it out.

Unfortunately I forgot to change the batteries in my GPS before I left and it died about 20 minutes into my hike.

Come on!

I had a map and a compass and I know how to navigate, but I didn't even have a pen so I couldn't plot the trails on my map or crunch the data later, which is about 20% of the fun for me. Blah.

I wandered around for a while but I didn't find anything that went where I thought it would.

For my trouble though, I was rewarded with some interesting sights.

This barrel was apparently discarded long ago and then the tree grew in around it.

I also found a small falls on Rock Creek.

The forest to the north of Oliver Creek appears to either have never been logged, or logged infinitely long ago. It was wide open with big trees. All the trails in the area appear to have been part of a logging network though. Maybe they spared that little section.

The area was interesting and I'm going back next chance I get. Hopefully next time I'll remember to get some new batteries.

Buford Dam

2011-10-06T23:13:00.001-04:00

Kathryn and I went for a walk around the Buford Dam area today. I'd noticed a day or two ago that on my trails site that I don't have photos of a couple of trailheads around there. It's just up the road so it seemed like a good place to go.

We parked at the Lower Overlook Park.

Here's that trailhead.

Exciting, eh?

Kathryn stopped to tie her shoe and I noticed she was surrounded by a veritable forest of poison ivy.

It's all turning red and dying these days, but it was amazing how tall it was growing. The stalks were even thick and woody.

We took the Laurel Ridge Trail down to the Lower Pool Park. It looked like the Corps had done some work since the last time I was there. They'd gravelled a few sections and trees were dropped across a bunch of the little side trails. I can't remember when I was last there, but it must have been a while ago because the trees they'd cut down had already turned old and black.

Here's the Lower Pool Lot.

Again, exciting, eh?

There are some nice sights at the Lower Pool though.

A footbridge over the Chattahoochee River:

The gorge cut to reroute the river through the powerhouse.

There's a parking lot up above the river that has almost never been open. Over the years I've lived here, it and the road leading to it were steadily deteriorating into gravel. At the top of a hill to the east, there was a park with a playground and some pavillions and we'd always noticed that it was deteriorating too. Last year though, everything was repaved and cleaned up and I swear I saw a few cars in the upper lot a couple of times.

Today we walked back along the newly repaved road, but it had a new gate across it at the top. The road leading to the Upper Overlook Park was marked private too and the "Upper Overlook Park" sign was missing.

We looped around and took the trail up to it though. It was all shiny and new looking, but definitely closed.

There were cones blocking the road leading in.

Kathryn said she'd read that several parks around the lake were being closed; there just isn't enough money to keep them open. It actually made sense for that one to be closed. It's up at the top of a hill with no bathrooms and no access to anything but the Laurel Ridge Trail. There are like 5 or 6 other parks within a mile that have direct lake or river access, and trail access, and bathrooms, and a larger lot. I guess it's too bad they decided to close it right after it was fixed up though.

Yay, I got the photos I wanted. Our walk was good too.

Score.

Jackrabbit

2011-10-02T23:25:00.001-04:00

Oh! It's fall. Fall, fall, fall. That means 65 degree temps and beautiful weather. There's nothing better than doing stuff outside in early fall.

Nothing!

My folks are in town and today my dad and I took full advantage of the fall weather.

Full advantage!

I'd told him all about the race at Jackrabbit last week and how awesome the trail was and it piqued his interest substantially. I wouldn't normally ride the same trail two weeks in a row, especially if I just spent 6 hours there, but I've done it before at Dry Creek, and for a trail like Jackrabbit, it was worth making another exception, especially since my dad has never ridden there.

We got a late start but it didn't matter, there was still plenty of daylight when we got there.

I called Clark on the way up but he and Suzy had just finished riding at Yargo. Hah. I was up by his house and he was down by mine.

Every ride has its share of adversity and right off the bat we had a bit to contend with. My dad has lost a good bit of weight lately and his shorts are now sagging down in the front. That's probably the best problem you can have with a pair of shorts though. Tomorrow's his birthday, so maybe we can find a solution.

Jackrabbit is great. I'm not sure what I can say that I haven't before. It's fast, fun, swoopy and well built. Refer to my recent entry about the race there for a full description.

The next bit of adversity we had to contend with began as soon as we rolled out. My dad pedaled forward but his bike didn't go anywhere. The pawls just didn't engage in his hub. Then it worked fine a second later. He thought maybe it had dried up a bit and the cold weather compared to what they've been getting in Dallas was making the grease sticky.

Hmmm.

We proceeded.

Jackrabbit delivered. The weather delivered. We suffered neither sweat nor boredom, nor lack of beautiful scenery.

The overlook.

Saba Beach.

While I was taking pictures, my dad was fiddling with his phone, also taking pictures. I should have taken a picture of him taking a picture of me.

There was a Persimmon tree out by the beach with the biggest persimmons ever dangling precariously from its branches. I picked a ripe one.

Persimmons taste like that Dreamsicle flavor. Kind of vanilla-orange. My dad trusted me and ate part of it. I like persimmons because they're so big and sweet. Most wild edibles are either little berries or some horribly bitter shred of greenery. Even wild apples, or feral apples as they might be more properly called, are usually bitter. But persimmons are big, juicy and delicious, assuming they are ripe. Yum.

That problem my dad had with his hub earlier kept recurring. He'd coast for a few seconds and then it wouldn't engage. At first, he could just pedal quick and it would pick up. After a while we had to shake the wheel. When that stopped working, he had to fling the pedal around super hard to get the pawls to fly out. Eventually that would only work after trying a few times. I've had similar problems with the ring drive in a King hub and when it happens, the teeth wear down really quickly. If you don't stop and rebuild the hub immediately, it's all over. I suspect the same would happen with a conventional hub. We got all the way around to Sneaking Creek before things got dicey and from then on he had to ride the brakes to keep the pedals engaged.

We barely made it out without walking but we did make it out.

Hey, these things happen. It would have been fun to ride another lap but we still had a great time.

It's too bad my dad's not a hiker or we'd have run up the road a bit and hiked Jackrabbit Mountain proper. Instead we headed out and grabbed some pizza at DJ's in Helen.

As old-school as my bike is with its small diameter stem, 3x9 drivetrain, 26 inch wheels, non-tubeless tires and 80mm fork, I am, at least, running disc brakes. My dad though, despite having a bike that is several years newer than mine, is still running V-brakes. Why? Kind of for the same reason I'm running all those old-school parts. They either refuse to wear out or randomly end up being super cheap to replace.

Destiny must be at work here though. In 2001 I bought a wheel set with King hubs, Mavic ceramic 517's and Revolution spokes. I got the hubs for like $100 because they were purple and the guy just couldn't sell them. I loved those wheels but I burned up a bearing in the hub way back, rode a pair of Cross Max while I waited for the bearing to come in and ultimately replaced those with a set of disc wheels that I'm still riding today. As much as I loved the Purple King/517's, it was just not meant to be and they've been decorating my various garages since 2003. Nobody else has ever needed them. Everybody else is running disc. Today I gave them to my dad, along with a box of spare spokes I've been hanging on to, just in case. He can use them as-is or rebuild his rear wheel with the King hub. On the upside, the wheels will be useful again. On the downside, I've helped postpone my dad's transition to disc brakes. Hah. Trade-offs.

He's leaving town on Tuesday and I don't know when we'll get to ride together again, but I'm guessing that the next time we do, it'll be at Jackrabbit.

Jake Mountain

2011-10-02T00:47:00.004-04:00

Today's work party kind of fell apart. I couldn't make it, Debbie couldn't make it. Eddie and Pat tried hard to scrounge up some troops but it just didn't work out.

Iz had her first gym meet of the season today at 8AM. That's why I couldn't make it. But, my folks are in town, they took the kids after the meet and Kathryn was selling some of her wares at a local craft show all afternoon. So I was free to do whatever and I wasn't about to let the work day go completely to waste.

But first things first.

Sleep. I was sleepy after the meet so I took a short nap.

Food. I tried to hit the Dutch Monkey but they were closed. I knew they closed at 1 on Sunday but they appear to also close at 1 on Saturday. Dang. The donut failure left me with a mighty hankering for junk food so I ran by the gas station.

Lunch:

Yeah.

Kathryn had my car so I was in her Fit. In case you were wondering, you can drive a Honda Fit on FS28-1 all the way to the Y at FS77. Also, in case you were wondering, the little road that cuts across the Y is called "High Rock Trail" according to her GPS.

Using the "longitudinal deberming" technique me and Sophie figured out last month, I knocked out 3 of the sections we'd flagged way back. I got a lot done but I'd have gotten a lot more done if I'd had one of them to help me.

After working a section, I laid sticks across the disturbed soil to discourage riders from venturing into it. I thought about just placing a bunch of debris there but I didn't want it to act as a silt trap so I just put a few sticks, in the direction that the water should flow, should it ever rain here again.

It wont be long before it's all covered with leaves but I figured I should do something before then.

While I was working I ran into a guy on a bike with a "Life Behind Bars" jersey. I have that same jersey! He was doing the Chain Buster 6 hour series too. We talked about that for a while. He'd also gotten 10th in his class at Jackrabbit. He rides at Bull/Jake lot and was hoping somebody would build bridges across Jones Creek and Moss Creek so you could ride all winter without losing a few toes. I'd looked into building a bridge somewhere else recently. A licensed, insured engineer, certified in the district must either build the bridge or approve the plans. It's a lot of work. We've got a lot more to do first. That's the only person I saw all day.

I knocked off at 7 after working a little over three hours.

We're going to try to schedule a make up work party later this month. If you're reading this and you ride Bull/Jake, be there!

Winding Stairish Loop

2011-09-30T23:37:00.003-04:00

Oh, it's getting dark earlier now. Before long there won't be enough time for these afternoon road rides any more. It'll be night rides or nothing. To get ready for all that, me and Tim headed up for a Winding Stairish loop this afternoon, with a few diversions.

The weather was cool, especially up on the north side of the ridge.

I haven't felt genuinely cool weather in a while. I almost forgot what it's like. Actually, there's no almost, I did forget what it's like. In a month I'll probably forget what warm weather is like too and when we get an 80 degree heat wave I'll be crying.

One of our diversions led us down by Edmonson Pond. From the road, unless you knew a pond was there you wouldn't know a pond was there and I insisted on running up in the woods to check it out.

My god!

When I first moved to Georgia, the edge of the pond extended right up to the road. Beavers have been attacking it every year though with row after row of dams and the edge has moved further and further back. Somewhere in this blog I have a photo of it from a year or two ago and it was at least 3 times as big. Today it was all shrunk up and only 4 or 5 inches deep. We could see the bottom all the way across. Wild!

As I understand it... A dam, whether produced by man or beaver, is like a big, abrupt water bar. When the creek flows into the pond behind it, the water slows down and drops any sediment it's carrying. A muddy slope forms along the bottom, deep at the dam and tapering up toward the head end. When the pond fills in to 2 feet of depth, which almost always occurs at the head end first, plants start to grow and catch even more sediment. Then it REALLY starts to fill in. As such, man-made lakes have a known lifespan and fill up quickly near the end of it. For a little pond, all you can do is dredge it. Big lakes have a small silt pond at the head end to catch everything and they just dredge that instead of the whole lake.

With beavers on the left and siltation on the right, I'd bet in another year this one will be a creek again, or at least a swamp. They'll have to change the signage to Edmonson Swamp.

Climbing back up to Hightower Gap (or Etowah Gap as I recently discovered it might be more correctly called) our toes got cold. Tim thought his were getting numb from the effort, but no, it was actual cold. What is this "cold" I keep experiencing anyway? How does it work? I have no memory of this thing.

Another diversion shredded my arm with briars.

It looks worse than it is. Thorns must have some kind of anti-coagulant on them or maybe they're just really sharp. Whatever it is, you bleeeeed.

We barely got back to the car before dark. Actually, I'll back up on that. It was dark when we got back to the car, but not so dark that we couldn't see. We barely got back to the car with enough light to still be able to see. Time to start carrying lights I guess.

Sawnee Mountain

2011-09-28T01:04:00.000-04:00

For our walk today, Kathryn wanted to tackle Sawnee Mountain again. It's been years since she's been there and a while for me too. So long, in fact, that the interpretive center had just been built when I was there the last time and wasn't even open but today we parked there and even walked through to get to the trail.

Inside, there was an amazing set of photos of the piedmont to the north from the top of the mountain. The first was from 1927 and the second from the past year or so. The photo mentioned something like "this is what it looked like before all the development" but what struck me was how completely cleared of trees it was back then. It was just tilled fields as far as the eye could see with only tiny little rows of trees between them. Yeah, there are neighborhoods there now but there are also large tracts of woods. I wonder which is better for the land.

We climbed up to the Indian Seats. It's really steep and Kathryn was feeling the burn.

It looked different up top than I remembered. There were scrubby little pines growing all over and big areas were cordoned off with orange fencing and somebody had cleared the ground of debris inside the fence. I'm guessing the idea is to get more of those little pines to grow between the official trails. The soil up there is really thin and it barely covers decomposed granite. Barely any traffic wears away the soil and the crumbly granite is like walking on marbles. I'd noticed in the past that people kind of walked all over the place and the clearing was growing and growing. I guess they've been managing that though. There are distinct little trails now and dense clumps of pine everywhere else.

We sat in the Indian Seats and looked out over "The Whole World"...

...while The Whole World looked back at us too.

When Kathryn's calves recovered we hiked back down. I always contend that a down hike walk down is just as bad, but Kathryn had an easier time coming down because it required less cardio. I forget about the cardio aspect sometimes.

It was cool to get back up on Sawnee Mountain. It's the first real outdoor place I ever took the kids and we got so burnt out on it, but it's all new again. I'll have to go back with them sometime soon too.