4th of July Rides

[HillSlugger]

Kalidurga, MDHillSlug, Regina and her husband, my neighbors Anna and Julie, and I did a 9.75 mile MTB ride in Rosaryville State Park. As usual, it was great fun. This was MDHS's first ride in the woods, on her new Jamis Coda Comp with knobby tires. I overcame my jitters after about 3-4 miles, as this was my first MTB ride after my face plant a few weeks ago.

Yes, my first dirt ride and boy did the bike look it. I had to hose it down before I took it into the house.

I was an absolute newbie, riding the least competent bike of the group.

I also had the distinction to be the only one to fall, twice, (but we won't talk about the first one). I have a bruised right hip, but my left ankle came through it all fine.

Check out these dirty legs!

[Jo-n-NY]

I rode with my bike club in the towns parade. It is sure hard to ride at 2mph lol.
I have to say this was a lot of fun. We put the American Flag on our bikes and gave bike pins to all the kids.

I rode to there from home so at least I got to some regular riding in there also.

~ JoAnn

[SadieKate]

Sorry for the grainy quality. I had to just shoot at the portion of the field she was in and hope for the best after a lot of trimming. I was strategically positioned in front of our new Peets Coffee so as to catch her after the ride, baiting the trap so to speak.

[SadieKate]

Easy to get in the mood around here in July.

[tygab]

did a 26 mile loop around our house and we took some new roads (not a preplanned, we just went). It's been nice to expand our riding territory this year. Today's route was much flatter than what we've been riding the past several times out but we still managed to log decent elevation gain. There were no dirt roads today... the sun was out and it was very warm for the early part of the ride so we eventually worked our way back to more backroads with trees. Phew. Had a good ride overall.

We got back to the house, changed, and got our kayaking gear together as we met up with friends and headed out for a few hours of paddling. During this time it got overcast and rainy, but we all had rainjackets and it was still a great time. The nice thing about kayaking in the rain is it drives a lot of people away. We had many sections of the water all to ourselves. It stopped for a while, and then just as we hit the boat ramp it started again.

So, a tale of two activities, two types of weather, and all in all perfect.

Oh, in ref to above comment... we've been "finding" dirt roads on a lot of our more exploratory rides recently... the below is a pic of me on one from Sunday's ride. This one was not rideable, but luckily we knew it was a short connector to pavement and just walked it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/m750/684951499/