Mableton

Mid August, I spun around on the local trails for a while, which would normally not be worth mentioning. But, this time there was a train on the tracks, so I couldn't just cross them. Instead I had to drop down and go through the tunnel.

In doing so, I got my first really good shredding of the year.

And I realized I'd ridden a lot of manicured trails lately. I couldn't remember the last time I'd experienced proper Adventure.

There was also an explosion of wildflowers along Nickajack Creek.

...which actually looked a lot more amazing in person.

Stone Mountain Lake

My brother Daniel and his fiance Kristen were in town this past August. In addition to eating some really good food in downtown Atlanta, and seeing a comedy show, we also went paddleboarding on Stone Mountain Lake.

Well, Ksenia, John, Kristen, and I were on paddleboards. Daniel was in a pack-raft.

Kristen had never been on a paddleboard before, but she figured it out really quickly, and we had the greatest time!

We basically paddled up and over to this little waterfall...

(which I actually recognized from hiking to it 10 years ago)

...then just floated around for a while, eating and drinking, occasionally swimming, and generally having a good time, before eventually paddling back.

I want to say we were only out there for like an hour and a half, but it was really great to hang out with everyone.

Also! I managed to not get sunburned. A first for me on the water.

Blankets, Rope, and Toonigh

The day after riding Noontootla, I felt like staying a little closer to home, so I put in some lazy-ish miles in Woodstock.

I started the day out over at Blankets, hitting Mosquito Flats, Dwelling, and the various Flow Trails. Just crusing and shredding. Having a blast.

I then jumped out on the road and headed over to Rope Mill, where I rode everything on the Mill side, only to find that the non-Mill side was closed. In fact, the Mill side was actually also closed, but since I'd come in from the back way, I just hadn't encountered any signs.

Yikes!

Well, as much as that sucked, I could still splash around in the water for a while.

Toonigh Falls...

I'd been there a while back on Paddleboards, and kinda wanted to visit it again.

I jumped off the cliff-of-doom a bunch of times, climbed all over the rocks, and sat on a ledge and let the water pour over me for a while. I met a bunch of cool people too, including this one chick from Brazil, e eu falei com ela em portugues por um pouco.

I eventually left and it was a bit of a struggle to get back to the road. There were a million people on the trail, both coming and going. Popular place!

When I got back home, I got on the scale...

IDK if I've mentioned this here before, but every time I go to the doctor's office, I get on the scale, and my weight goes into their computer. Since they know how tall I am, the system does some math, decides that I'm overweight, and I start getting automated emails suggesting that I walk briskly for 150 minutes a week. It's an automated system though, so I can't just tell it to follow me on strava. It's become a bit of a joke among with my friends. They want my weight to be a maximum of 158.

Ha! I need to send them this photo, I guess. If I ride 20 miles in the hottest part of the year, and sweat off an ungodly amount of water, I can apparenty make weight!

Noontootla

In late July, I rode Noontootla/Winding Stair again. It had been a long time since I'd done anything even decently long or with any reasonable amount of climbing, and that felt like a good place to get back into it.

I remember passing a bunch of geese on the way in. I don't remember exactly where though. They were just walking slowly across the road, as geese do, and I had to almost stop to let them by. Funny what memories stick with you.

I parked in the Jake Lot and almost immediately noticed that my front tire was super low. I'd had to plug it a while back, and it just wasn't holding. I had a tube in the rear already, for the same reason. Looked like it was tube time for the front as well. Yay. Extra weight.

I remember that it had rained recently, thus riding Noontootla rather than Bull, Bear, or some other singletrack. And it was probably the right choice. The roads were pretty much perfect. Nice and solid. The gravel stuck to them, and you could glide on top of it.

FS28-1 and Cooper Gap went by really quickly, I made quick work of the rollers on the ridge, and really bombed down off of Hightower Gap. Turned out later that I set a couple of PRs on that descent. The road surface was perfect.

I tried to get a photo of Rock Creek Lake, but this was the best I could do.

Just way too leafy.

I managed a better photo of the fish hatchery.

Not so leafy over there.

When I got arond the back side out of the sun, it was far less ideal. There were a few puddles.

Almost all of them you could wall ride the inside rut for a second and stay dry, but a few of them were like this one, and I had to either splash through, or find some way to tiptoe around them.

The far end of Old Rock Creek Road was as nasty as it gets, and I walked a bit to keep the bike clean.

It's almost all paved along Doublehead Gap Road these days, which is arguably less fun, but I guess it's marginally easier to get good photos.

On the climb up along Noontootla Creek...

...I remember doing a weird triple-pass with two cars. One was coming up behind me, and another coming down the road. We all passed each other at exactly the same time. What are the odds?

I want to say there were rangers at Winding Stair Gap, but it's a little fuzzy at this point. I really need to make a better effort at journaling quickly.

I do remember that the descent down Winding Stair felt really fast, and it turned out that I set multiple PRs there as well.

I grabbed some food at Shane's Rib Shack on the way back, and I remember the guy behind the counter going "Why is it spicy?" in this weird voice when I ordered my chicken tossed in spicy bbq sauce. He seemed to think I'd get it, but I didn't. It was apparently from some meme that I'd never seen. ...And still haven't. I guess I should look it up.

Yeah, a great day at Noontoota!

OCR King Compound

Mid July, I made it back out to Cody's place to wreck my upper body some more.

We did "16-to-1" that day, and it was absolutely brutal.

Basically, you do all 16 obstaces on the board for the first round, remove two, do 14, remove two, do 12, etc. For a total of 16+14+12+10+8+6+4+2=72 obstacles. The rig stuff eats me up, so I elimiated those as quickly as I could, then the stuff that takes a long time, like the run and tire carry. Even still, I think I only made it through 4 rounds. Wet, sweaty, slippery hands made everything take like 15% more energy, and my grip was gone before I knew it.

It was good training for the race in October though.

Big Creek

A little after that last ride, I went for a ride at Big Creek.

I can't remember the last time I rode there. Ages ago, it seems. I wanted to have a great time and re-explore everything, but I felt terrible. No energy. Legs felt tired and heavy. Look like I titled the ride "Just Not Feeling It" on Strava. Yeah, that really says it. Looks like I rode 4.74 miles and packed it in.

Turned out later that I wasn't sick or anything, it was just a bad day.

Chattahoochee Hills

Goodness it's been a busy couple of months. It appears that the last time I wrote anything was back in July.

Well... Better late than never?

A little after that last post, I went for a pretty typical Dirty Sheets ride, which wouldn't normally be worth mentioning. However, on a previous ride, I'd noticed some ruins that I hadn't seen before, and on this ride, I checked them out.

Turns out there's an old and busted house, still standing, on Old Wooten Road.

I love how bent it is.

I didn't dare venture inside. It looked like one wrong move would bring the whole thing down. Wild that it's still standing at all, honestly. Wild that I'd never noticed it before, either.

It made me wonder if there are any others. I guess when the leaves fall, I'll be able to see.