It’s a word now, baby!
Yesterday I greatly anticipated a rare event indeed–a correct forecast from the Magi known as weathermen.
Alas, the temp never got to the 49 degree promised-land but I was not to be altered. I hadn’t ridden my mountain bike in almost 3 weeks and to say that I was getting a bit antsy would be an understatement. I needed to get out on the trail–for my own safety and the sanity of others who would be around me! It hadn’t rained in a couple days, so I checked my handy-dandy twitter for Sherman Branch and discovered that it was OPEN!
YES!
So off I went at about 37 degrees to get in about 20 miles of pure heaven.
When I arrived I noticed only a few cars and thought it would be an even better day. I might have the entire 11.5 mile trail virtually to myself.
Could this get any better–I submit that it could not!
Well, you better submit my statement right back to me because it was HORRIBLE! Quite possibly the worst mountain biking experience I ever had (minus the time I hit a particularly gnarly root and did an endo!). About a quarter of a mile in I noted that the track was looking kinda muddy (read here: “a mud bath”) and I was slipping around more than usual. A quick glance down at my tires confirmed what I feared–mud was beginning to accumulate on my decidedly non-mud tires–a bad sign this early in. Still, I persevered. And after pulling off all the mud from the critical places I set out again to salvage what I could of my ride.
For approxamately 30 feet.
Then, the harder I peddled, the harder it became to peddle! It was man against machine against mud. Both machine and mud teamed up against me…and I lost. Bad.
I ended up carrying my bike eventually because it would not move–an inch! And the entire time I was fuming about the people (or person) who make the call to open or close the trail.
- Was this really a difficult call?
- Did anyone actually see the trail or did they just make a call sight unseen?
- True, there hadn’t been rain for 24 hours but that didn’t mean the trail was in good shape. It wasn’t!
Truth is, the trail was unequivocally, undeniably, absolutely, UNRIDEABLE!!!
There’s that word again. But it’s true. You couldn’t ride it–at all. Oh, you could stop every 30 feet and demud your bike, but you would take 3 days to ride 11.5 miles! And you could cut back to the front of the trail that was a little less muddy but the damage was already done. I couldn’t get the mud off without a hose. Maybe I could have just sat there and waited for conditions to change, but that would have taken days.
Nope, no matter how you slice it, this trail was unrideable–best to cut my loses and call it a day.
So I did.
And it took a while to stop fuming. Know what did it for me? This message on twitter (just a few hours ago today)…
“@sbmtb: Sherman is closed. It’s really wet in many places, and drying will be slow due to Freeze/thaw
Now they tell me!!
Actually that’s not what did it. It was what God showed me through the whole misserable experience.
I’ll share it with you tomorrow.