Long Bike

Cycling 16.5 miles / 1:25

Well, this wasn't what I had in mind today. It stormed in the night and besides keeping me up, causing one of our daughters to visit us, and making the neighbors scream and hollar (??), it made a mess of the trails.

The first 5 miles were spent picking my way over small tree branches that had fallen on the trail. At one point, what I thought was just water on the trail ended up being mud. I nearly lost the bike - thank the Lord I didn't.

There's one portion of the trail that is called The Tunnel. It's build from abandoned rail road tracks, so it's way down in a gully and covered over by...trees. A whole big limb was down in my way and I barely had enough room to go under it. It was at that point that I switched to city streets. At 5:30am on the south edge of town, there wasn't much traffic.

I had intended to ride 2 hours, but at the 1 hour mark, I was 10 miles from home and there was lighting on the horizon. I got rained on just a little bit and cut my ride short by going around Holmes Lake. Riding on those city trails in the pitch black is NOT for me. I'll take my chances on the streets on the way out, and ride trails on the way back after the sun has a chance to come up!