Dave 1.3

Well, it's been a while. I've been refactored several times since the last time Adventure was imminent and I'm currently running Dave version 1.3. Adventure isn't exactly imminent these days but it's not impossible and what I can fit in might be worth journaling for future recollection. So, here goes...

All's Well That Ends

I heard that somewhere. I don't remember where or who said it. And it's not missing another "Well" on the end, that's the entire quote. I've thought long and hard about it over the years and I guess it really means two things. Nothing should last forever, but also that independent of the manner in which something ended, the thing itself was worthwhile. I'm not sure which the original author meant. Maybe both. Maybe I missed the point altogether. That's what it means to me though and I've been keeping it in mind for as long as I can remember.

I've been many things: a skateboarder, a freestyle bike rider, a guitarist, a student, a Texan, a Louisianan and probably other things that don't come right to mind. At the time, I thought of myself as being those things. They were who I was, not just what I did or where I lived, but now they're just old chapters in a big dusty book, each with it's own end, each worthwhile.

More recently I've been a Georgian, husband, father, computer nerd, general outdoor adventurer and volunteer. I'm not sure how many of those things I'll be in a year but I think it's safe to say fewer. That dusty old book will probably be a few chapters longer.

However it goes, for the time being, adventure is no longer imminent.

I don't think I'll have much to write about for a while.

On the upside, with all this journalling, I'll be able to live vicariously through my former self. My teachers always told me to keep a journal growing up. I'm glad they did. I guess this is why.

Maybe someday Dave 2.0 will have something to write about, or maybe slightly refactored Dave 1.1 will. For now though, all's well that ends.

The End.

Silver Comet

Well, I'm hanging out in Cobb County these days and I might be for a while, so this past Sunday I figured I'd hit the Silver Comet. Might as well, it's right here. I've long wanted to ride it all the way to Anniston, stay the night and ride back. I didn't have time for that, but I figured I'd at least try to get in 6 hours or so.

Not 5 minutes into the ride I jumped in with some guys heading west as well and we flew through Cobb and Paulding Counties.

They were training for a triathlon or something and turned around near the Tara Drummond lot. I still had a long way to go though. Paulding Forest is a lonely stretch on your own. I was passed by the occasional random rider in the other direction but I don't think I saw anyone heading west at all.

Through Paulding Forest, the old railbed cuts deep into the surrounding rock and between the perpetual shade and general ability of rock to suck every last degree of warmth out of the air, it was a might chilly for a while.

I passed through the Brushy Mountain Tunnel...

...and into Polk County. From there it wasn't far to Rockmart where the trail diverges back and forth from the original railbed. Entering the city proper, it dives down and runs along a beautiful little creek.

But it also floods sometimes and with all the ran we'd been having, there was a ton of mud under one of the bridges. I guess it was appropriate though, as the Cyclocross Worlds had been going on that same day. Yay, I got some cross in.

In Rockmart, I figured I'd headed west long enough and I milled around the little square. There was an impressive Armed Forced Memorial.

There was also some gnarly old building that Kathryn would love.

Some day soon a sculpture from Ed Baltes, a former team mate of mine from the Bicycle Outfitters days, will grace that same square, right by the trail. Maybe I'll get to take a picture of it too.

In the distance, some flashing letters caught my attention. O... P... E... N... Open! Somebody's open. A restaurant! An Italian Restaurant!

I was a little hungry. All right!

Frankie's is great. If you ride out to Rockmart, you should eat there before riding back. I had a 10 inch pizza and it was delicious. There's also a big painting of the trail at the Brushy Mountain tunnel on the wall, BRAG jerseys hanging everywhere, hundreds of photos of recreational cyclists who'd apparently stopped in for a bite, just like me, and thousands, literally thousands of signatures of cyclists who'd come through at one point or another. Frankie herself sat down and chatted me up for a few minutes about a ride they have going on in March 23rd. "More Butts on Bikes" I think. It's $6 and you get food, beer and an organized ride to the Alabama border and back, or something like that. Sounds fun.

I kind of wanted to sit there all day but I had a long way to go and eventually I made my way out.

On the way back I got a little more cross in.

The trail was desolate through Paulding County again. I mean, I literally didn't see a single rider until I was within a few miles of Cobb. Somewhere soon after I started seeing people again I jumped in with two guys heading east. They didn't seem to understand the concept of drafting but also didn't seem to mind if I did.

I eventually made it home and sat around for the rest of the evening watching the Superbowl with my folks. Great game. Great day. Who'd have thought the Silver Comet would have been so much fun?

Jones Creek Ridge

Last Saturday was the monthly Bull/Jake work party and this time, oddly enough, we got to work on the Bull Mountain side. Jones Creek Ridge to be exact.

It seems like an eternity ago now that the Jake trails were realigned, rerouted and generally re-awesomed. Bull proper got some attention last year but sadly I've only ridden it once or twice since then. Jones Creek and the general Booger Holler area are next on the list. Taylor, Isabel and I flagged the reroutes last year but the plan is to still use a good bit of the existing trail. This past Saturday while Debbie was out flagging some small realignments, I took a crew up to Jones Creek to slang some actual dirt around.

For whatever reason, I ended up with a tireless, highly capable and relatively experienced crew. We did heavy deberming, cleaned out a dozen old turnouts and established several new ones in problem spots.

I was shocked how much work we got done. I kept having to run up the trail to rough out new spots. The crew just kept catching up to me. It was amazing!

There was this one guy from the Bent Tree Saddle Club named Bobby DeLay, I think. He was great. He had this long, white beard and he must have been in his 60's at least, but he probably did the work of 3 younger men. I watched him. He didn't seem to be working harder, he just did it really efficiently. It was like he did more, but smaller shovel-fulls or something. I wish I could have watched him longer to get a good idea of the differences between how he worked and how I did. It would have been a valuable lesson.

There's a big food plot and a road leading up to it from FS77. We worked from that road south to within an 8th of a mile of the reroute, and that entire 8th of a mile is really flat and didn't need any specific improvement. I wish I could take that same crew to Jake proper and Beaver Pond, we'd probably finish them up in 3 days.

At around 12:30 we knocked off and started hiking out and at an intersection I noticed an odd side effect of the prescribed burns they do up that way. One of the trees we'd nailed markers into was totally burned up and the markers were warped and twisted.

Ha! Wild.

Back at the trailhead, lunch was served.

The weather had been great all morning; sunny and not terribly cold. Many of us had remarked about what a nice day it would have been to ride. We hadn't seen anyone riding but we did see a lady walking 4 dogs and when I got back to the lot, I ran into the same lady with her small dog that I've seen hiking up there 3 or 4 times before. So, indeed, it had been a nice day to get out in the woods. Unfortunately all of that was about to change.

Clouds moved in first, then the temperature dropped precipitously. At first I thought I was just getting cold from standing around, but no, it was just getting COLD. Then it started snowing. A little at first, but then eventually big fat flakes that stuck to the gravel in the lot. We were all enjoying it but I was in my mom's truck, had to go back through Ellijay and I figured I'd better get home before the roads got bad.

Unfortunately I didn't quite make it out in time.

Not far west of that the roads had become icy and there was a long traffic jam on a steep hill. I expected to make it through but the car ahead of me started sliding and stayed on the road more as a result of good fortune than of skill on the part of the driver. In the other direction people were driving too slowly and losing traction over and over. No one got hurt but the whole situation was sketchy. I parked on a flat spot, jumped out and tried to dig up leaves to cover the road with but there was nothing under the snow but dirt. It was time to turn around.

It took forever but I made it home by going the other way. It hadn't even rained at my place, much less snowed, but later in the day, it poured. Ha ha! We got our work done just in time.

Man, I love a good work day.

Oh, Bull and Jake Mountain, may your trails some day stand, a glorious monument to cooperation and to the trail building technology of the late 2000's. Long may you live.

Long may you live.

Reality Group Loop

What is it about winter that makes a cyclist lazy? It's not even all that cold but I just can't make myself work hard. I'm content to spin up over Sawnee Mountain and all but fall on the pedals all the way up Elmo Road.

I guess there is something to it though. I remember having this same feeling last year. There's something deeply emotionally satisfying about a long easy climb. "I've got this." And hearing the tiny heart drum in your head. I wish I could describe the sense better. Everyone should feel that good sometimes. I want to remember it.

I've probably said it before but I'll say it again, optimistically. "Of all things, I think that will be one of the last I shall forget."

Cumming, GA

A week or so ago I fell down some stairs while carrying some boxes. At first I thought I just got my ribs, but it turned out they weren't so bad. The broken blood vessel in my arm though, that was a mess. Cold, pressure and heat resolved the golf-ball sized hematoma the first night, but whenever I'd get my heart rate up it would blow the vein out and the golf ball would come right back.

Ugh. Nothing worse than sitting around nursing an incredibly fragile wound that doesn't hurt.

Finally, today, I felt like I could probably ride without blowing it out again.

I needed a floor pump though. Mine's at my Dad's place. My front tire was flat. Thanks Tim.

I spun a lap around the Reality group ride loop. It was bitter cold. I didn't care. The wind was punishing. I didn't care about that either. I probably didn't exceed 15 mph. Again, I didn't care.

The road is freedom. Tolerance of weather is freedom. Health and fitness are freedom. Being the engine is freedom. It's all I cared about.

Freedom.

I savored it.

May I savor it again soon.

Jake Mountain

Yesterday we had our monthly work party at Jake Mountain and it was a good one. I think it was 21 degrees when we started but it warmed up quickly.

Debbie and Nancy and Jess took their horses down Jake to the switchbacks to transplant some young pines in an attempt to discourage crosscutting. Cindy and Val drove over to Bull to fix some signage and do some general cleanup.

Me and my kids, Kathleen, Emil and Neal had a couple of jobs to do.

First up, gravel patching.

Where the trails tee into FS 28 and 83, the last 10 feet of trail require regular patching. We have less to do each time, but there's always a little. Maybe 5 years from now it'll be totally solid.



We also restored the drainage at the top.



It had been getting filled in and channelling water down onto the gravel. We worked the turnouts all the way up the hill too until the soccer ball approved.

Oh, soccer ball! We love you so.

We had a pretty decent crew. Neal is a certified crew leader with RAMBO, Kathleen, of course knows what she's doing. The kids couldn't take the cold though and their contribution was less material than usual.

Cold children notwithstanding we made quick work of the gravel patching and, with two hours left before lunch, headed over to Beaver Pond to continue the finishing work over there.

For some reason there were a pair of port-a-potties across from 28A. No idea why. Who put them there? The rangers? Everybody but me used them. Iz joked about whether the contents would be frozen or not. This made Sophie run away with her hands over her ears yelling: "Disgusting thoughts! Disgusting thoughts!"

Crazy kids.

We hiked in forever. Like a mile or more. When we got to where we'd left off last time I did some rough deberming, Kathleen and Emil cleaned it up behind be and the kids sort of helped, a little, maybe, sometimes.





It was beautiful.

Everybody in the world was up there for one reason or other. A bunch of riders passed us including a group with Terry Palmeri.

Terry!

Once again, it proved impossible to do anything in the mountains without running into someone I know.

I haven't ridden my mountain bike since the CFiTT. I love trail work but oh, how I long to shred....



Shred!

The lot was full of mountain bikers and equestrians alike. The campground was packed. There was a line of cars parked at the church. The little turnouts along 28 were full. I even saw the lady with the blue truck and the cute little white dog that hikes up there all the time.

Bull/Jake was the place to be, for everything. As it should be.

Cindy provided her usual glorious lunch spread and we all sat around for an hour eating and talking, mainly about the status of the move to address the parking situation.

While discussing this, we watched a lady drive up pulling a horse trailer, contemplate whether she could get it into the day use lot, decide that she couldn't, continue on and park in the campground.

Ha! Firsthand. It does happen. We seriously need a pull-through horse trailer lot.

Pronto.

It was great to see everybody, great to work with them, great to have Neal and Emil join us. Thanks everyone. Thank you so much.