NM - South Boundary Trail

[Aggie_Ama]

Irulan - The shop did nothing wrong until we returned. The owner told us no less than 10 times we were the only ones who have ever gotten lost. We felt like she wanted us to feel stupid since she just wouldn't drop it. It is possible they didn't offer the map that other places had which documented the forest roads, I should have asked but we didn't anticipate the trail being as difficult to follow.

The only problem I had with the map was the roads you would easily end up on were omitted from the map. There was very few points of reference which made it hard to get back on track. But I also know a lot of people who have made maps of trails and how big of a pain it was. And again it was our personal problem until she told us "everyone thinks the map is great". Which it may be, we didn't trash it to her, just said we had trouble following it. I wasn't a fan of the format and vulgar language put on the map, that is my problem and I know that.

I don't fault them for no signs our bike shops in Austin don't even put signs up, but she made sure to tell us "There are a lot of signs, you didn't see them?" No, there were not. Then her own mechanic admitted people vandalize and take down the signs regularly, so maybe we weren't crazy the signs might have been gone from the section we did. That is not the shops fault by any means but treating us like we were the only idiots who get lost (majority of riders are from out of town) was the part that made this the worst experience with a bike shop ever. Maybe Texans really are a friendlier culture, I don't know.

My husband is very hard to offend and incredibly patient so if she managed to make him feel bad she really worked hard at it. Again they did nothing wrong UNTIL we came back and she wouldn't stop reminding us we were the only people who get lost. My opinion is most people prepay the shuttle (the guy running it didn't want to power up the register so we could not) and if they don't have to come in, they probably don't come in to admit being lost. Or maybe they don't have a huge thunderstorm rolling in where they are not able to keep wandering in the forest until they get back on track. Again they did not make us get lost, she just made us feel awful for saying we got lost. Worst cycling experience I have ever had out of town and we travel for cycling a lot. So it is just a bummer that we built our trip around it and had the shop experience. I had already come to accept cutting the ride short and was not feeling awful about it until we went into the shop.