April 29 Ride Reports

[Kalidurga]

I drove up to Pennsylvania today to ride a new loop I put together around the battlefield at Gettysburg National Military Park. This was the first time I've dared to go off the park roads (aside from a short stretch through side streets of the town), so the route's still pretty short. The great thing about riding through the battlefield, though, is that there are so many roads that it's easy to loop back around through various sections to increase the mileage or get more hill practice, or just to take a look at a particular monument that I sped by the first time I ended up doing a total of 18.5 miles. One of my goals for this summer is to get to know the roads around the battlefield so I can create longer routes.

The other thing that's great about riding through Gettysburg battlefield is that it's a pretty little town smack-dab in the middle of some gorgeous countryside (if you ignore all the tacky little tourist shops, of course). It's also good for practicing dealing with un-observant drivers and pedestrians (i.e. tourists), and has a handful of killer hills. And on top of all that, there's the incredible history of the place. Definitely one of my favorite places to ride.

[mimitabby]

Well, X and Kit got to my house last night and before we were all tucked into bed for the night, I found out that my stepfather had fallen and got a concussion and a broken jaw. We're not sure why he fell. He's 80 something and it could be his diabetes, his BP, or perhaps the newly discovered heart valve problem. I found this out at 9pm and DH went down to the hospital to take my mother home; they'd been there since about 4pm and she was without car (they went in an ambulance)
So, i didn't sleep well last night.
In the morning, Teigyr called me sounding just llike the people you see in Nyquil commercials, she couldn't ride.
So the three of us went to the park in X's cool jeep and started the ride.
It was nippy out, and tried to rain on the way over, but as the day progressed, so did the weather, it was absolutely gorgeous. We rode 26 miles on the burke-gilman trail with a side tour of the University of Washington campus.
Kit tried to teach me how to jump my bike but I couldn't do it, and a squirrel tried to race with me. We turned around at Logboom park, and went back to Lake Forest Park (not a park) and ate subways for lunch.
I cut the ride way back because i had to go to the hospital. My mother drove down there but was too tired and stressed to drive herself home. We went down there and visited my stepfather too, who is feeling a little better. It looks like his jaw isn't so bad, they wont' have to wire it or anything.

[Shiraz]

DH and I rode to the next little town and back approximately 33 miles. We had a nice ride out stopped for a bathroom break and fluid refill then started back home. The wind pick up and made for a slower trip home but still very nice weather and time with DH. We realy are fortunate to have very little traffic and lots of farm ground. Can't beat it!!

[yellow]

What a superfun mountain bike ride I had today!

I've been overanxious about the Wine Country Century coming up next weekend, because, well, I've been running a lot and not riding much at all. So I thought I'd cram for the test this weekend. Stupid, I know. I'm mostly trying to get my butt used to sitting on the saddle again.

So yesterday I did a moderate 40+ mile road ride, flatted, and got sunburned in that space that only gets exposed when you are wearing a sleeveless jersey and are leaning forward. I had planned to do another long road ride today, but when I called my riding buddy in the am, I declared it a mountain biking day. I just really didn't want to ride on the pavement. I mumbled something about a "long easy-ish ride".

Well, it wasn't technical, but it qualifies as "epic" in my book (I'm not a very talented mountain biker). 20.13 miles, 4,136' of climbing, average grade of 11% (which explains why I feel so tired this evening). And it was hot (for Park City at this time of year), though I only almost melted down once. We started out on one of the standard trails and ran into a guy that was high on life and very chatty. He told us about a new trail, just opened this year, unmarked but open to ride. So we found it and went for it. The climbs were long but not really tough, so we chugged along. And the descents were a blast. What a great ride! But for meeting this guy, we would have ridden right by it and had to battle with the gagillion other people out on the more familiar trails.

[KnottedYet]

Trek and I didn't do the ride with Mimi, RaleighDon,Kit, X. Other things to do. But we ran into them at our beloved LBS: Recycled Cycles.

[alpinerabbit]

50 miles on Saturday, to my parents house, and 50 miles back on Sunday....

with overall negative elevation, and without getting lost, on the way back, we were 2 hours faster...(we didn't detour on the way there, just wasted time at intersections guessing what the map was telling us)