The Roller Coaster Ride

Wow, it's been almost TWO months since my last post.  It's not for lack of things going on, but mostly just a lack of time!  But I'll try to hit on a couple of the high points of what's been happening lately.

My good looking kid on the night of the 8th grade dance.

Re-reading the last blog entry I see it was the high water weekend, when I kayaked Bear Creek, and was planning on hitting Deer Creek the next day.  Interesting story there...

I did head over to Deer Creek, and was elated to find that it was at absolutely prime water level for a run.  So I left the boat stashed at the put-in by the hump-back bridge, left the bike at the top of the hill, and headed back to the take-out to park the car. Then it was just a matter of hiking 3/4 mile up the 300 foot tall ridge, getting the bike at the top, and coasting down the hill to the put-in.

Within a couple of minutes I had the bike hidden in the brush, and geared up for the run.  I was fairly upset to find out that I'd apparently left the GoPro turned on the night before when I double-checked to see if it had a full charge - and now the battery was dead.  But the video was just gravy, the run was the meat of the day - and boy was it good!

Deer Creek is about 3.5 miles of class II read and run whitewater, through an isolated valley.  There are 23 class II rapids on the run, so you're always either in a rapid, just leaving a rapid, or just heading into a rapid.  It's a really great run that hardly anyone ever paddles because it's remote, rain dependent and doesn't have a decent USGS gauge correlation.  But it's one of my favorites in the area, and I always keep it in mind when there's a bunch of rain.

My run was pretty much perfect.  I managed to read and run everything, which wasn't too hard because there was barely any wood in the creek.  The creek has a bunch of islands, and I managed to pick the good side every time, and had a blast on all the little rock gardens and pour-overs.  Even though I was fairly conservative at times, I managed to have a good time and even got in a little bit of surfing down on the tasty double surf wave near the end.  I finished the run without incident, packed up the boat, retrieved the bike and headed home, tired but happy.

Coffee Run during the high water weekend.

It gets interesting the next day.  I woke up with a headache, feeling lethargic and kind of dizzy.  But Diana had the day off, so we headed out to do some stuff together.  Throughout the day I felt progressively worse - more dizziness, no appetite, and trouble thinking.  I went to bed very early and woke up feeling slightly better the next day, just in time to go see the doctor.  He took blood, did a bunch of tests, and came to the conclusion that I had a low blood sugar incident, complicated by dehydration.  He added that he has to tell most of his patients to get more exercise, but he told me that I need to remember that I'm 52, and can overdo it a lot easier than when I was younger.

The moral of the story I guess is to pay more attention to what your body is trying to tell you.  I know I have dehydration problems, but had no idea that by burning off a bunch of extra calories and then eating light afterwards I could be shortchanging my system that much.  And I'm sure that my diet that mostly excluded processed sugar didn't help.  But I did find out that I'd lost about 8 pounds in 3 months, so that was good.

In the two months since then I've continued on the diet and exercise regimen that I started in February.  I can definitely tell that I've lost more weight, as my clothes fit differently.  And when the trails are dry enough to ride I notice that my mtb skills seem improved - either by adding muscle from weight lifting or carrying less weight around, I don't know which.

In motion shot on Little Beaver Creek Greenway, OH.

I've managed to keep up a pretty good number of bike rides too.  Checking with mapmyride, it looks like I got in 126 miles in April and 172 in May.  Most of that was paved riding, but there were at least 8 mountain bike trail rides, including West Branch State Park, Beaver Creek State Park, Quail Hollow State Park, Rimrock Trail in Allegheny National Forest, and North Road Nature Preserve here in Warren.

Love the colors on this - first night ride of the year at West Branch.

Kenny went camping with the Boy Scouts the last weekend in April, and while he was out with them Diana and I took the opportunity to get a cabin at Cooks Forest State Park and spend the weekend over there.  I really love the Cooks Forest/Clear Creek/Allegheny National Forest area, and we had a great time getting out and having some quiet time.

Diana on the hikers bridge over Tom's Run.

We even headed up to Rimrock Overlook for a while - and I managed to get in a ride on the shortest loop at nearby Rimrock Trail.  Those rough trails over there are a treat to ride.

Kinzua Reservoir from Rimrock Overlook, PA.

The trails at West Branch State Park opened up a couple of weeks early this year, and I headed out that first day after work to get in a night ride.  The local mtb club, CAMBA, did a bunch of work out there again last season and the trail system is better than ever.  Now if it would only stop raining for a while I'd be able to get out there and enjoy them!

The West Branch skinnies are a bit mossy after a long winter.

Memorial Day weekend all three of us managed to get away for the weekend, to go back-country camping at Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania.  We got one of the dispersed campsites up above Loleta, with the East Branch Millstone Creek right beside our tent.

Our Memorial Day campsite.

Saturday we wandered around the area and had a nice lunch up at Marienville before heading back to relax at camp.  We took bikes, so Kenny and I got in a couple of forest road rides through the woods. The scenery is amazing over there, and even on a busy holiday weekend there was almost no traffic.  We had a great time and I hope we get the chance for a couple more long weekends together in the next couple of months.

Ken leads the way on the fat bike.

Here are a couple more photos from the adventures of the past month.

Rainbow on a Little Beaver Creek Greenway ride, on the road section near Lisbon.

Ready to head downhill at Beaver Creek State Park.

Hickory Run, a secret gem of a creek right by the OH/PA line.

And to end this post, here's a little video clip from a ride around town with Kenny.  The cottonwood seeds were blowing through the sunlight at Perking Park, so I whipped out the trusty smartypants phone and shot a little clip.

Only a couple of weeks of spring left.  Hope you all enjoy your summer!!!

Another Look at Trail Building

I've written here about trail building before, but since it's been taking up quite a bit of my time this fall I figure it's time to come back to the topic once more.

For the time being my trail building energy is being spent developing a short (approx. 3 mile) mountain bike/hiking trail network at North Road Nature Preserve, a county park in my home town of Warren, Ohio.  This piece of land is bounded on one side by swampy, slow Mosquito Creek, with a big apartment complex framing the other side. The land was put into a conservation easement by a developer, then the state of Ohio transferred it to Trumbull County Metroparks for possible future development.  The total acreage is about 140 acres, but because of some site features we've limited our trail network to about half of the site.

The terrain is gently sloping towards the creek, with not very good drainage.  Part of the land was bulldozed back in the 60's as it was intended to become an addition to the apartment complex.  The vegetation on this part of the land is recovering forest, with some fairly good sized trees and patches of dense scrub in the lower, wetter spots.  Back by the creek there is strip of more mature, open forest, with some trees in the 4 to 5 foot diameter range.  And then there is a section of dense, short scrub  - the worst stuff to build trails through that I'm familiar with.

Three years ago I heard that the Howland Wellness Committee had volunteered to build trails at this site.  Since I had some experience helping  CAMBA (Cleveland Area Mountain Bike Association) build trails at West Branch State Park it seemed like I should join them and help to get this accomplished.  Turns out that I was the only one who actually had trail building experience, so I got to be the informal boss of the crew.

A section of the Red Trail, raked and ready to ride.

That first year we spent a bit of time just walking the site, getting familiar with what it had to offer.  What we found out is that the site wasn't particularly well suited for hike/mtb trails - the drainage is poor enough that during wet seasons the whole thing pretty much turns to mud.  But this would be the first shot at mtb trails in our county, and if we turned down this opportunity it might take 20 years for us to get a second chance. So we flagged a 1 mile trail loop through the second growth woods near the apartments and set to work.

One of the wet spots on the Red Trail, with a rock stockpile for armoring.

Our crew has varied over the years, but it's always been a small group.  Most of the volunteers are even older than me, and are not mountain bikers - just a group of nature-loving community people who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty.  We've had some help from other groups - Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and once from a small local mtb club.  Since we're such a small group we don't limit ourselves to fall/winter work sessions like the bigger clubs in our area - we work all year long, conditions permitting.  But with an older core group we limit our work days to just a couple of hours, so it helps to get out more often.

The trail building process goes like this - flagging, detail flagging, corridor cutting, and tread finishing.  We start by flagging a rough line through the woods, avoiding as many wet spots as possible and hitting as many desirable areas as we can.  After that we pin-flag the trail to a more precise route, picking which side of which tree we want to pass and how tight we want the curves to be.  The next step, corridor cutting, is where it actually starts to look like a trail.  Using loppers and saws we cut back the trees and undergrowth to create a corridor about 4' wide and 7' tall.  Cutting corridor through the mature forest is pretty easy.  Cutting corridor through the newer forest is quite a bit harder.  Cutting through the scrub is brutal.

Once the corridor is cut in we have to make the tread that actually forms the trail.  We're aiming for an 18" wide tread of clear dirt in the center of the corridor, with the undergrowth trimmed down on either side.  That involves a lot of cutting out of small sapling stumps and pulling of weeds.  In the sections going through scrub this part of the job is amazingly difficult.

But persistence pays off and after the first year we had our initial trail loop finished.  That gave us 1 mile of beginner level trail, so we began planning for phase 2.  This was an out and back trail that cut down by the creek through the more mature woods.  We'd tried to run part of it right alongside the creek, but the whole area near the water was too low and soft, so we had to keep a good distance back to take advantage of more suitable soils.  It took the whole year to finish phase 2, but it turned out pretty nice.  With this trail being an out and back, now we had a 2.5 mile ride possible in one 'lap'.

In the spring of 2013 we started flagging the phase 3 of the trail.  We wanted to take advantage of the more mature forest area, and also run trail down a section of higher creek bank downstream, but in order to do this we were going to have to run a section of the trail through the dense scrub - not an optimal choice, but it's what we have to deal with.  We worked on it through the summer and fall, but when last winter hit us with long periods of heavy snow and extreme cold progress almost stopped.  Then the late spring and early summer of 2014 turned out to be so rainy that the trails were barely even suitable for walking, much less riding or working.  So it was into August before we were able to get back on track.

Newly built trail on phase 3.

The section of phase 3 that we had built in 2013 down by the creek was still in good condition, but the rainy summer had allowed the undergrowth in the recovering forest to sprout up like weeds (amazing, huh?)  We spent a good deal of time re-working the tread as well as adding rock armoring to the wettest spots.  And finally, about 2 months ago, we cut the last section of corridor for phase 3, connecting the creekside trail with the trail through the recovering woods.  Unfortunately this connection is through the dense scrub, and is the least suitable terrain for trail building that we've encountered yet.  But we're not about to give up, so it will eventually get turned into singletrack.

Newly cut corridor through the dense scrub of phase 3.  Bleah.

One of the aspects of this project that has been a lot of work is the rocks - or more precisely the LACK of rocks.  With as poor drainage as the site has it's impossible to build trail that misses all the wet spots.  To deal with these wet spots the most common approach is rock armoring - in other words paving the wet areas with big rocks.  Unfortunately there are nearly no rocks on site bigger than an apple.  That means that we have to bring rocks from off site, and then carry them into the wet spots using our trail wagon.  So far I figure we've hauled in around 6 tons of rock and gravel - all by hand power.

More new phase 3 trail through the scrub.

Another problem for this site is the blasted multiflora roses.  These are an invasive species of wild roses that are widespread across the site. While their white flowers do look nice, and the rose hips provide food for the birds - these things are the bane of my existence.  One plant can spread out over a 20' diameter, with long canes that can grow up to a foot a week.  So not only are they a pain to get rid of when you're building trail, but they constantly need cut back during the spring and summer as they reach out onto the trail.  This fall I've spent a LOT of time on the existing trails, taking advantage of the sparser foliage to hunt down and eliminate rose bushes within 10' of the trail.  My hope is that this will save a ton on maintenance time this next riding season.

Gravel path and rock armoring on one of the wet spots on phase 3.

I'm guessing that we will finish off the phase 3 trail in 2015 (that is if it doesn't rain all spring and summer like in 2014).  That would complete the scope of our original trail plan, and give a 'lap' of  about 3.5 miles.  There is a tentative plan to change the phase 2 out and back trail to a loop, which would add a bit more trail.  Personally, once the phase 3 trail is done I hope to add some mtb specific trail features to phase 2 and 3, so that developing mtbrs will have a bit of challenge once they're used to the phase 1 beginners trail.  Once that's done I have another idea - I plan on approaching Mosquito Lake State Park (just 6 miles up the road) to see if they'll let me build a mile or two of trail in their 'multipurpose trail' area.

One other little nugget of trail news from this fall,  Way back in the woods, but still within sight of our phase 2 trail, one of our volunteers found a cache of suspicious looking containers hidden out of sight beneath a big fallen log.  To make a long story short, it turned out to be chemicals used for the manufacture of methamphetamine.  It doesn't look like they actually had the lab set up back there, but just had the chemicals hidden in the woods for some reason.  Our local police investigated and removed the hazard, but it just goes to show that you need to keep your eyes open at all times.

The stash of chemicals.

Here's a little video of the phase 1 trail - aka the Red Trail.  This is from just a week or so ago, and shows that our raked trail is maintaining a surprisingly good tread considering the rain and chill temperatures we'd had for the previous couple of weeks.

Special thanks to CAMBA for tools and encouragement - I really owe you guys a ton for believing we could do this.  Also, if anyone out there reading this is interested in helping us build, or just wants more information about our little trail system, go to the 'Warren Bicyclists' facebook page and ask there.  Hope to see you on the trail!



BTW it looks like I've been writing this blog for just over 3 years.  Today it says that it got it's 12,000th view!  Not too bad for such a wandering and disorganized mess.  Special thanks to all the Russians and Ukrainians who apparently check it out frequently (????).

Give Me Patience

Each of the four seasons is theoretically 1/4 of the year and should therefore last three months.  This year we've got more than our share of winter, something that is probably pretty obvious to anyone living in the Northeast.  It started being winter sometime in November, even though the calendar says that winter doesn't start till after the middle of December.  So we've had half of November, all of December, January and February - and now it's March and I'm still looking out my window at snow.

Lord, give me patience.

Patience to wait out the days as the temps slowly start to warm and the snow shrinks and finally vanishes.  Patience to wait out the 'mud season' so that the trails will be firm enough to ride.  Patience to wait until the conditions are finally just right for a great mountain bike ride, or whitewater kayak run, or maybe even a backpacking trip.  Just take a deep breath and relax - that time is definitely coming soon.

But I've been trying to get out and do what I can to get some fresh air and exercise.  I've been doing quite a bit of trail work this winter, cutting new corridor to finish up the phase 3 trail at North Road Nature Preserve.  Last summer we built a section of trail through the mature woods that line the creek.  This is a beautiful area, and pretty easy to make trails through, as the canopy keeps the undergrowth down to a reasonable level. 



Flagging a new section of trail in the more mature woods.

 

But in the fall I started working in an area with a much younger woods, and another area of dense scrub.  This stuff is HARD to build trail through - I call it 'the most work for the least return'.  Thankfully the distance through this scrub is not that long on this loop, so a couple more work days should at least let me cut the corridor all the way through.  Then as the weather improves and the ground eventually dries up we'll be able to start getting the stumps out and filling in the low spots.  We hope to finish this trail loop by early summer, and spend the rest of the year improving the existing trails and possibly adding a new trail extension.  Even though these are beginner level trails, it is absolutely a GREAT thing to have a mountain bike trail less than five miles from my house.

I headed out a couple of weeks ago to try and get in a ride on the rural roads in northern Trumbull County.  The roads were clear of snow, but any place that I was legally allowed to park was still covered with 8" of soft snow.  So that pretty much ended that days riding before it even started.  But by last weekend there had been a few days where the temps got above freezing, so the snow cover had lessened, and I had hopes that I could park in one of the rail trail parking lots and get in a road ride from there.  It was still mostly snow covered, but clear enough that my little car could get in and out without too much trouble.

Oakfield parking area, Western Reserve Greenway.

It's pretty easy to make a route up there that follows roads with almost no traffic.  I think I usually see an average of one car every 10 minutes (and mistrustful me, I usually pull off the road to let them pass).  There are some interesting old dead ends in the area, too.   Here's one I followed till it reached the edge of the wildlife area:

Don't shoot swans.

The road surface wasn't exactly easy to ride on, but if I wanted easy I could always sit on the couch drinking beer.

Some of the dead ends get very little traffic this time of year, so the snow is easier to ride than on the road above.

Very quiet back here.

And sometimes you can find a bike accessible route on roads that haven't seen car traffic in years and years.

Bridge closed - except to stubborn bicyclists.

Occasionally these dead ends require a bit of hike a bike - especially in the areas with unbroken snow - but its all good.

Hike a bike territory.

But I always end up back on the pavement, heading back into farm country. 

Smooth riding!

I have Friday after lunch open for riding again this week.  And with temps forecast to climb today and tomorrow I'm hoping that this chest cold that developed yesterday gives me enough wind to still get out and ride.  If not - patience...

Striving for Rhythm

Human nature is a funny thing.  Or more correctly, MY nature is a funny thing.  All winter I kept on the stationary bike, spending hours down in the basement spinning and sweating.  It certainly wasn't what I wanted to be doing, but I knew it was good for me.  So I gritted my teeth, put on a John Wayne movie and pedaled.

Now the weather is much, much nicer.  Even if there are some cool, damp days and it seems to be cloudy more often than it's sunny, the contrast with cold, wet, muddy and grey is pretty amazing.  But I've been slacking - not riding when I should and could be out.  I've made a couple of singletrack forays each week - but the other days I've been doing nothing.  Most of those days the weather was good enough that I could have had at least a nice ride around town, but I haven't.  So now that I've confronted the problem I'm going to try to get in at least a short ride five of the next seven days.  And I'll even get back on MapMyRide and log my miles.  Yeah.

Friday afternoon I headed down to Beaver Creek with Dave.  My plan was to ride a bit, from the campground down to the picnic area.  Then I planned on hiking back up, rather than push the bike up the insanely steep and rocky 5/8 mile "shortcut".  Once I got back to the car and caught my breath I would hike the bow saw down the trail about 1/4 mile to a downed tree and cut it out.  So I geared up and headed on down the trail.  I finally got the mount and lens cover replaced on my GoPro helmet cam, so I tried mounting it on the front fork for a bit.  Unfortunately that needs a bit more work, so I switched it to my helmet.  Even more unfortunately, when I came speeding down a hill, pegged my left bar end on a sapling, and crashed onto the trail at a pretty good rate of speed, sliding at least 10 feet on my right side - I had accidentally switched from video to photo every 10 seconds.

Immediately after crashing - you can tell because the bike is LAYING DRIVE SIDE DOWN.

Thankfully I didn't do any damage, but that was entirely too hard for a 49 year old guy to hit the ground.  Kinda took the oomph out of the afternoon.  I continued on my ride, eventually getting back into a semi-natural groove, but my shoulder and hip were pretty sore, as well as my right ankle.  The flat section down by the creek was a lot of fun though, and I actually managed to get some of that part on the GoPro - before the SD card filled up and it stopped recording.



I'm not sure why exactly, but I didn't leave the bike at the bottom, instead hiking (mostly) and biking (a little bit) back up to the top and the car.  By the time I got back up there I was twice as sore as when I hit the ground, and I wasn't about to hike back down and spend another half hour sawing through three tree trunks.  So I had a nice cold drink and headed back home - good enough for one day.

Saturday morning I did something a bit different.  Diana was sick at home with a nasty bout of intestinal flu, so Kenny stayed at home with her.  I headed out before 9:00 to meet up with two of the adult leaders from Kenny's new Boy Scout troop.  They had an idea to do a canoe trip on the local river, a slow and muddy waterway that has something like 20 dams on it.  And since they knew I was into kayaking they asked if I'd like to go along on an exploratory trip to see if the river was passable.  We put in one town upstream, near the Bliss dam in Newton Falls, and paddled downstream in spotty rain and cool temperatures.  Over the next four hours we came across three river-wide blockages, the last of which was a huge mess in an area that was very difficult to portage.  So they may have to either find another place to paddle or find another way to use the clear sections in order to get in enough distance to make the trip worthwhile.  It was nice to paddle on the Mahoning in the upstream sections where I'd never been before, but what I really need is some whitewater.  I'm waiting for a weekend when the water level and my free time are both right and I can get in a nice ride on the lower Slippery Rock Creek.  Now that's some REAL fun!!

A fortuitously placed fallen log at Moraine State Park.

 

Sunday my brother and I had planned on a ride over at Moraine, but he was feeling a bit under the weather and had to cancel.  I considered heading over and riding myself, but with the chilly, damp weather I settled on going to the nearby North Road trails and doing some trail work for a couple of hours.  Now that the tread is solid enough to actually ride I've managed to get over there and put in some laps.  It really pointed out where the trail needed to be tweaked to make it more bike friendly.  The twisty, narrow tread is great for hiking, but once I rode it I found that the corridor pressed too close in some areas, the sight lines were obstructed in others, and some of the turns were too tight for a bike.  So I spent a couple of hours widening the tread, cutting back undergrowth at corners, and making re-routes for the sharp turns.  I only got a little further than half way, but I think that the changes should be pretty noticeable.  I need to get my bike back out there and ride it again to see.

A too-tight corner before...

...and after.

I guess it was another so-so weekend.  I did get some stuff done, and managed to get in some riding, but I certainly hope to do better in the upcoming week.  With a little bit of cooperation from the weather, and a few other things falling in line, hopefully I'll get more miles - and have more fun.

The Joys of Summer begin to Return

If you live in a place where the seasons change, then you've undoubtedly heard them - the people who complain about the weather.  All summer long they complain about the heat, and the humidity, and there's too much sunshine - and the rain storms are too scary and what if it tornadoes for God's sake!??!  When fall comes you can hear them catch their breath and take in a big inhale - to give themselves more air to complain about winter.  It's too cold, too windy, the roads are too scary, I hate it when it's below zero, what if I get frostbite??!?!  Then another deep inhale in the spring, to get the wind to start the whole thing over again.

The Ranger approaches...

I'm out there all seasons, and I like when it changes.  When the weather stays the same for too long I get tired of it and welcome the next front with open arms.  But that doesn't mean that I don't NOTICE when those special irritations return as the weather warms up.  For instance, I have the first poison ivy of the year - a little area spread across my left forearm.  When in the woods I'd noticed the little stems with the tiny new red leaves coming up, and I knew what they were.  Yet somehow while doing trail work I still managed to get some on me.  Oh well, its not the end of the world.

Another thing I've notice is that the bugs are back.  Not many mosquitoes yet, or horseflies (thank God) but the little buzzy, annoying, fly-up-yer-nose things have returned.  And ticks - can't forget those little monsters - are going strong this year. But the thing I keep thinking about is the roses.  The wild roses didn't even really stop growing over this mild winter, and now they're just booming.  When I was at Moraine I noticed that every bit of undergrowth I could see was wild roses.  There is going to be a LOT of trimming of undergrowth this summer.

All that green undergrowth is wild rose.

But it's so great to get out in just shorts and a t-shirt, which is what makes summer worth the bugs and thorns.  I had a great ride out at Moraine on Friday afternoon, but my free time was limited so I had to zip out, get in as much riding as I could in a set time, then zip back.  Not really a problem, but it wasn't the great ride that I'd hoped for.  I did take a little bit of time and take video of one of my favorite rock features. 

The entry moves.

I forgot to bring the GoPro, so I set up the camera on the mini tripod and recorded it in five sections - which meant I had to ride it clean five times.  I had a couple of "unplanned dismounts" but actually got the whole thing done in just a couple of minutes.  It was Friday the 13th when I rode, so I edited a quick little video of that one rock feature.



Sunday morning we had a trail work day at the North Road Nature Preserve.  There were about 6 or 7 volunteers that showed up, so we got quite a bit of work done, mostly finishing up a new section of trail.  Eric cut a bunch more corridor near the old road, and we also moved in some more rocks.  Kenny was the staff photographer for the day, and took some great shots.

Sunday afternoon I got in a little bit of a gravel grinder out around West Branch.  I parked by the mtb trails, but since the park closes the trails until just before Memorial Day to keep people from rutting them up (though they aren't muddy at all right now I betcha) I kept on the road.  It was a nice little ride, with a couple of hills and some bumpy potholed roads.  The sun was out doing it's thing and I was loving it.

At the parking pull-off just past where I parked someone had abandoned a bunch of cats.  I checked them out while I was there and they seemed to be very friendly and in good shape.  It was hard to forget about them out there, so I ended up heading back out there to see if they were still there.  Sure enough, once I got back into the woods a bit I found them - except one kitten was missing.  So now we have a new kitten in the house (there was no way we could take all four of them).

The white one with the black "horns" is the one that came home with me.

Diana had mentioned a couple of times that she'd like to have a cat again, and I knew Kenny would love it, so we have a new pet.  I'm sure it will be all the fun that I remember (unfortunate heavy sarcasm).  Still, it is a sweet and friendly little cat.  Lets see if it meows all night...

Time Warp

When I wrote my last post, the one talking about how I spent the whole weekend doing trail work, it turns out that I had an unseen passenger.  Behind my left knee, the one that doesn't move around so well so I can't actually SEE the back of it, there was a tick.  I didn't find the little monster until Tuesday, so that means that it was there at least two days, and according to what I could find out, that meant that there was a better chance that it could have transferred bad juju to my bloodstream.  Then when I got sick the next day, with a fever that just wiped me out, I really started to worry.

When I got hold of my doctor and described my symptoms he basically said "Get in here right now."  That's never a comforting thing to hear from your physician.  So I went in and they drew blood for tests and started me on some drugs in case I started to grow Lymes.  But regardless of what it was, I was miserable - fever, congestion, achy and it felt like my IQ had been reduced by 50%.  But I finally got the blood test results back after the weekend and found out that I didn't have Lyme Disease - just some sort of cold (ain't the power of paranoia a wonderful thing?)

But I did spend about ten days down and out.  I went to work the whole time - when you work at a desk with a computer there's not much difference between sitting at work being miserable and sitting at home being miserable.  But my head was so scrambled that it almost seems like the whole time I was sick didn't really happen - the Severe Cold Time Warp. It's not like I did anything that I could look back on, just sit around in a fog being sick.  But finally I'm more or less back with the rest of the world (as much as ever, anyways) and able to actually participate in living.

But after nothing going on for a week and a half I started to get my energy back towards the end of the week, and on Friday I headed down to Beaver Creek after lunch.  My plan was to get in a ride and then do a small amount of work on the new trail.  But as I've learned before, you're never ahead of downed trees when you're maintaining a trail.

There were two new trees down on Dogwood Trail.  I only had my small saw in my pack, so I couldn't clear them but I did get rid of all the branches so that you could at least lift a bike over easily.  That took up some of my trail work time, but I did get a chance to do some more benching on the hillside section of the new trail.  That has to be some of the rockiest soil I've ever seen up there, the exact opposite of the silty soil at the North Road trail project.

Next weekend there's going to be a big Beaver Creek trail work day, where I get a chance to do more than just a little bit of work at a time.  But this weekend it was time to work on North Road Nature Preserve.  Only a small crew showed up - just four of us - but we put in a good morning of work and finished cutting the corridor for the reroute around the wettest section.  The woods are waking up to spring pretty quick this year, which isn't suprising I guess considering we only had a quarter of a winter.

For TJ - this is the trail wagon from earlier in the year.

Then on Sunday afternoon my brother and I headed over to Moraine for a ride.  I was feeling a bit less than perfect with a nice headache going on, but I'd been thinking about riding all week so I was going to give it a shot.  And it turned out so fine - one of those nice, long rides in nice conditions with good company when it seems like you're firing on all cylinders and riding at the top of your ability.

I can hardly even attempt to describe how great it was.  A TOUGH ride, with lots of technical stuff to push yourself against.  No big falls, no crashes, no bike parts broke.  After a week and a half of time warp flu it was exactly what I needed.  I'm feeling sore from my legs to my shoulders, and I can tell I'm going to sleep like a rock tonight, but it's all good.

Also, this week my son Kenny graduated from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts.  He left Webelos with the Super Achiever award, which you only get if you complete every single one of the Webelos achievements.  He did a heck of a job and I'm EXTREMELY proud him.