Man. It's been a wet spring. The trails up here in Western New York
have been swamped for weeks, and are only now getting so they can be
ridden without damage. My wife and I were out a couple of weeks ago at
Ellicottville, and we ended up bagging the singletrack and doing some
fun, high-speed flying on the fire roads instead. Too muddy. Saturday
was better, and we hit these trails:
http://www.wnymba.org/trails.php?trail=2#description
Really first-rate stuff. Even JD might approve. We did a nifty loop,
Race Loop to Porcupine to Mutton Hollow to Buzzard's Breath, all
singletrack once you do the 1 1/2 mile climb on the fireroad up. Muddy
in spots, and soft everywhere, but it was as long as we rode smooth
and light. Marvelous, delightful, transcendent to finally be on
singletrack again after a too-long winter. The hardtail was in fine
form, smooth and nimble and wonderful.
Yesterday we hooked up with some roadie friends and knocked off 35
miles, they on their carbon-fiber wonderbikes, we on our trusty
fixies. We managed to keep up. The fastest rider of the group is a guy
who is racing Cat 2 this year because he's out of shape... yikes.
Luckily, he took it easy on us. Kinda sucks when you spin out at about
27 mph on the fix, though.
Starting to get back in shape. I was able to do another 25 road miles
on the fix this morning with heavy headwinds, and I didn't feel
yesterday's ride too much. Be nice to make the NYC Century this year,
and finally get the chance to do it on a singlespeed. We shall see.
Ride on.
CC