Rolling With the Changes

Time for another blog update, and it's not going to be the one I thought I would be able to write.  I was planning on writing about the bike tour on Greenbrier River Trail that my son and I planned on taking.  But that didn't happen.

I don't want to spend a lot of time complaining, but here's what happened.  Three days before we were supposed to leave an uninsured driver hit my car at a stop light, which caused enough damage to total the car.  With all the hassle because of the uninsured motorist, and the trouble with my insurance company on getting a rental car that I could take to WV I was forced to cancel the vacation.  It took almost two weeks to get things straightened out and get a new car - and then it broke down within the first week and took a major repair.  But that's all history now, so no use dwelling on it.

Broken wheel number one: my totalled VW.  Lucky the bike didn't get ruined as well.

Broken wheel number two: the other front wheel is pointed straight ahead.

Ken and I did manage to get the bikes out for an overnighter at Clear Creek State Forest, Kennerdell Tract.  So we did get to use the pannier systems that I made, and it turned out that while they do work they need some tweaking to get them perfect.

Ken on his bike, getting ready to ride into Kennerdell.

You can see them on the photo above. Diana got us four waterproof bags on clearance, for something like 80% off.  So I bought 100 feet of 1 inch black nylon strapping, and designed and sewed up two harnesses that hold the bags on the bike.  They hold quite a bit of stuff, but I can see that I'm going to have to start investing in some ultra-light camping gear if I want to actually do some real touring.

Our bike packing trip turned out great, with nice warm weather.  We camped at almost the exact same spot where we stayed last time we headed out there, a nice ferny section of woods not far off of the gravel forest road.  We used our new tent for the first time, and Ken got to be camp cook.

Ken loves it when I take his picture.  Observe the enthusiasm.

I'd like for us to be able to get out on at least one more overnight bike trip before the season turns.  I'm thinking of a paved bike path trip over by the Allegheny River, probably from Emlenton up to the campsite on Sandy Creek Trail, then back the next morning.

Bike camping map - Allegheny River Gorge area

And we've got a long weekend planned for Labor Day, with Diana actually able to get the whole weekend off work.  Hopefully we'll get a bit of rain so that we can camp over by the Clarion River and get in some kayak time.  But even if it's dry we'll be able to get out and camp, and that's good enough!

Classic lines at the LaBrae car show.

On to the next topic!  It's been about 7 months since I started watching my calorie intake and increasing my amount of exercise, all in an effort to shed some weight that I'd put on over the previous year.  This wasn't the first time that I'd tried this since turning 50, and there was no reason to really expect any more success than I'd had at earlier efforts.  But I figured that limiting my calories (including eliminating sugary foods and drinks from my diet), and adding a basic weight training program could only have good effects in the long run, even if my weight didn't change much.

The first couple of weeks were tough.  I definitely have a sweet tooth, and eliminating Mountain Dew from my routine was harder than I expected.  But I kept at it, even if there were no noticeable changes for a looong while.  But after about two months I started to notice a difference - maybe that's just how long it took my metabolism to get used to a different nutritional balance.  And now after 7 months I'm down about 25 pounds - from 205 to about 180.  I know it's not a huge difference, but for me at 5' 5"  I feel a LOT better without that 25 pounds. And since I'm not planning on returning to my old diet there is hope that the gradual weight loss will continue for a while.  If I was able to drop another 15 pounds I would be extremely satisfied.

With the weight loss and all the extra rail trail miles I put in during the extra rainy months of June and July, it seems like I'm riding my mountain bike pretty well this year.  Trails finally started to dry out towards the end of July, and all the local trails are finally in great shape.  I've had some great rides out at West Branch on the fat bike, as well as on my Gary Fisher Marlin.  And the trail crew has repaired the trails at Quail Hollow, making the trail better than it's ever been.

West Branch State Park, Rock Run Trail.

The skinnies on West Branch's Exit Ramp Trail.

The Marlin at West Branch S.P.

Even though we're already in the last month of summer we still have a bunch of stuff on the schedule, including a trip up to Conneaut, Ohio tomorrow to watch a D-Day re-enactment.  I'll remember to take lots of pictures for the next blog post!

Holiday in the Sun

Time to catch up on the last 6 weeks or so.  It's been a busy time, with plenty of fun, not enough bicycling, and too much work - but such is life.

Diana, Kenny and I took a REAL vacation this year, the first one in too long.  After last years disappointing vacation attempt, where I got a killer cold the day we left, we were all ready for something a little more enjoyable this year.

So we packed our stuff and headed west.  It took a little driving, and we had to go through some nasty weather, but by the afternoon of the second day we were in the Badlands of western South Dakota.

Wind farm in Iowa.  We literally saw thousands of these during our trip.

It's an amazing experience driving west into the Badlands.  South Dakota takes a LONG time to drive across, and it's so flat, with very few features to differentiate one place from another.  Then you get to the Badlands, and it's like another planet all of the sudden. First of all there is now a vertical element to the terrain, and it can certainly be dramatic.

Inside Badlands National Park.

And then there are the colors on some of the eroded peaks.  Not really bright, but more subtle shades of yellow, green, orange and purple mark out different areas of sedimentation, now revealed.

Badlands National Park.

The incredible forms, and the fact that they're so densely packed together is something else that takes some time to get used to.  The ridges climb up like natural trails, and the valleys practically beg to be explored.

Kenny and I exploring.

And then there are the animals.  We saw a lot more bison than we did when we were here 15 years ago, as well as several pronghorn antelope and about a zillion prairie dogs (Diana's favorite).



10 cents worth of buffalos.



We saw these guys all over South Dakota.

Taking a nap.

This is the kind of place that I could spend some time getting to know.  There is a different feeling to the land, not nearly as hospitable to visitors as the forests back home.  The nearly total lack of trees on the higher ground is another thing that kept catching my attention.  I've lived my whole life in areas where treetops usually define the horizon, and seeing places where the entire view is devoid of woods is hard to get used to.

I didn't do any riding in the actual Badlands NP (no offroad cycling), but I did do a bit of back road riding up near Wall, South Dakota.  Interesting riding the gravel roads there, when you can see them going straight ahead of you for what?  Ten miles?  Just ride out till your halfway to tired, make a 180 and ride home.  Still some impressive looking country.




Sunset in Wall, South Dakota.
 

And if you're ever out that way, stop in the tiny town of Kadoka, just north of the National Park, and have lunch at the Aw Shucks Café.  Great food, great service - you'll like it.

After a couple of days in the Badlands we headed west just a bit further to the Black Hills National Forest.  We stayed in a campground at Whitetail Lake for a couple of days, and then at Grizzly Campground near Mt. Rushmore for a couple more.  It was great to be back in the woods again, even if there are huge swaths of dead trees from a mountain pine beetle infestation.  They're putting a lot of effort into controlling it, but the dead trees are widespread.



Diana and Kenny taking a breather while hiking at the Cathedral Peaks area, Black Hills, SD.

We spent some time hiking and exploring the amazing geology of the area.  Cathedral Peaks and the Needles are two must-see areas.  Coming straight from the other-worldly views of the Badlands, seeing the exaggerated rock promontories of the Needles is a jaw dropping experience.

Kenny in the Needles, Black Hills, SD.

I did get a chance to ride some in the Black Hills. There was a hike/bike trail around Whitetail Lake that went right past our campground.  It was fairly well maintained, and had some pretty steep, if short, climbs.  Riding through the relatively open forest was a blast, way different than the dense undergrowth we get in the woods in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

I also spent a little while riding a part of the Centennial Trail just a couple of miles west of Mount Rushmore.  There was a long, steep, technical, rocky descent to start out with, then a missed sign that left me wandering around on the roads, and finally another pleasant stretch through the aspens and back up into the piney hills.

On the Centennial Trail, SD.

 

This is our third time to the Black Hills, and I can definitely see how people come to visit and end up staying for the rest of their lives.  The landscape is stunning and the people are pleasant - what more can you ask for?  We stayed for almost a week, and I would have been happy spending the next week there too.

 

But instead we headed south across Nebraska and headed into the Rocky Mountains at Estes Park.  If the difference between the South Dakota plains and the Badlands is jarring, the difference between the Colorado high plains and the Rocky Mountains practically knocks you off your feet.  We headed into the mountains by following the Big Thompson River up.  There was some immense flooding there last year, and the signs are still all around.  A massive amount of rebuilding has already happened, but it will still be years before the area recovers fully.

 



 

Wreckage on the Big Thompson River, CO.

When we got to Rocky Mountain National Park I started having trouble breathing.  It's been 15 years since I was last at this kind of altitude, and unlike last time I was having a lot of difficulty adapting.  After spending some time in the park we decided against the fantastic one-way road up to the pass at 11,000+ feet - I was having enough trouble breathing at two thousand feet lower than that.  It was kind of a bummer, and I felt like I was ruining the day for Diana and Kenny, but there really wasn't another choice besides heading back down to the plains.  I'd love to come back again some day when we had way more time, and try to gradually get used to the heights over a couple of days.  At least Kenny got to experience the mountains, even if it only was for one day.

Diana and Kenny in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Since we had headed down out of the mountains well ahead of our schedule, we took a little more time heading east.  We camped at a state park near Sterling, where the campground was totally devoid of trees - a completely surreal experience to this forest dweller.

Kenny at the high plains campground, Colorado.

 

We ran into bad weather again crossing Kansas, and actually spent a night in a hotel - all the rest of the trip we tented.  But the wind and rain were truly epic, and we were all spent from a long day, so it wasn't that hard of a choice. 

From there we headed further east and ended up at Brown County State Park, in Indiana.  This park is famous across the middle of the country as a mountain biking destination, and has been designated an IMBA Epic trail.  We camped in the park for a couple of days, and I had the chance to explore some of the trails. 

At first I didn't really expect much - after all the terrain isn't really much different than what we have at home.  After my first ride I got it - these trails were special.  They were designed extremely well, having the best flow of any place that I've ever ridden.  They were built well, with no short cuts and time tested methods.  And they are maintained well - I could see dozens of instances where nicks were taken out of low spots in the trail to prevent puddling.  It rained the day we got there, and by the next morning the trails showed almost no sign of it.

By this time in the vacation I must have been getting pretty tired of taking pictures all the time, because I really don't even have a single good shot of Brown County, much less the video that I had intended to take.  The truth of the matter is that it was just so damn much fun riding the trails that I didn't really WANT to stop and take pictures, or spend my time messing with the video camera.  All I wanted to do was RIDE.  Truthfully, I do feel bad that I didn't capture a single frame of the trails at Brown County - but it was just too much fun to stop.

We finished out the two weeks with a visit with my wife's sister and family in Columbus, and then made our way back home.  There were a few issues with equipment, and then the problem with me at altitude, but besides that everything went very well, and we all had a great time.  Kenny was glad to be done with the long driving days, and probably doesn't want another travelling vacation for a good long while.

It wasn't easy getting back into the groove once we got back home.  I had turned off my cell phone on the first day of vacation, and hadn't turned it back on for two weeks.  Getting used to all the daily crap we have to deal with wasn't unexpected - it just wasn't any fun.  Add to that the fact that it seems to rain an inch at least every three days - way more than enough to put the trail off limits - and July was a hard month to get into.

When I finally saw that the trails out at West Branch were posted as being dry enough to ride I headed out to get in some miles.  Turns out that I was on the trail for less than an hour when the skies opened up and heavy rain chased me right back out of the woods.  All that rain did make the creeks come up, so I got in a nice easy whitewater kayak run on Slippery Rock Creek, but I need some mountain biking to keep happy.

Finally it got to the point where my brother and I just decided to head out and find some trails.  We had hoped to drive back to Brown County, but the weather forecast for the weekend was pretty depressing for that area.  We were juggling possible destinations up until the last day, but finally we decided to limit it to a day trip and head over to near Warren, Pennsylvania to ride Morrison Trail in the Allegheny National Forest.

Morrison Trail is an old hiking trail that drops down a tiny creek watershed for about 500 vertical feet, then turns back uphill on a tributary, and completes the loop by cutting back across the ridge between the two.  The scenery is classic Allegheny foothills - mature forests, sometimes hardwood, sometimes mixed, across a hemlock lined creek valley.  The initial downhill was amazing - lots of steep technical sections, lots of rocks and roots.  There were also lots of wet drainage crossings and a couple dozen trees down, but when you ride this kind of trail you have to expect some obstacles.

Me riding downhill on Morrison Trail.



Matt enjoying the trail.


 

 

After a couple of miles of downhill you have to head back up.  Parts of the climb up were rideable - even by an old wheezer like me.  But there was a LOT of hike a bike on the way back, much of it up really steep trails.  This is not a trip for people who despise the slog, because the climb out is tough and seems long.  But all in all, this is a great trail and I hope to return to ride here again in August.

 

 

Great to be back riding in the Allegheny National Forest.



Fifty

Fifty.

The big five-oh.  Half a century.  Five decades.  Way too many months, weeks, days etc. to bother to enumerate.

The beginning of every decade of your existence is supposed to be some sort of milestone.  When you turn thirty it's supposed to be a big deal.  And when you turn forty everyone acts like it means something profound.  Again at fifty - ooooh, look at you being sooo old.

Bah. I'm basically not buying it.  I know people that are the same immature idiots at 55 that they were at 25.  In other words, growing older doesn't always equate with growing up.  We all know people that hit their maturity early as well.  Folks who show a wisdom and poise beyond their years.  So it's not quite as linear as all that.

But I am in a pretty sour mood.  I have 11 days off work, using the Christmas holiday, New Years holiday and my left over vacation time.  So I get to spend some time with my son while he's off school, which is nice.  But damned if the weather didn't get all wintry on me, so instead of my dream vacation featuring days of riding singletrack I'm moping around the house.  Too much snow to do trail work too, but I did get out for a couple of hikes.  Spending some time on the bike would have really helped take the sting out of this day, but you get what you get.

And really, I tried - I loaded up the bike and headed out to the trails to give it a shot.  The snow is right at the depth where it starts to make riding impossible, but I could make some headway.  It was great - unbroken snow on the trail in front of me, almost perfect silence in the sun - but I had to turn back.  This happens early in the year - snow lying on unfrozen ground.  And that ground was wet in spots, so that I'd be doing damage to the trail if I went on.  So it was a short ride, but I stretched it out by adding some snow covered road riding - lots of fun.

But  back to fifty.  I can reassure myself that I'm more fit at fifty than I was at forty, and that is a certainty.  My strength is better, my weight is a little less, and my stamina has improved.  But I definitely feel that I have a lot of room for improvement, so I hope to make some changes this year. 

I did pretty well early in the year with my nutrition, but kind of lost focus during the summer.  I was riding five days a week and with that exercise level I didn't have to worry about my calorie input.  But after getting sick in September and then getting really busy my riding schedule suffered, and the shorter days of fall made it even worse.  So I need to get back on track with my calories and with my exercise as well.  Just because it's snowy out I shouldn't just forget about exercise.  So I have to face the ugly reality and get back to riding the stationary bike in the basement (groan).  What I plan on doing is getting back into the habit of using MapMyRide as my nutrition and workout tracker.  It's a great site, especially since it's free, and I know from experience that it can help.   So starting with the beginning of January I plan on logging in and keeping my stats every day.

Hopefully that will result in losing some weight and improving my fitness a bit more this year.  I have a lot of things that I plan to do this year, from riding and trail building projects, to work on the house and time with my family.  Being healthier will make all of those things easier and more fun.  Wish me luck.

My next post will be more 'literary' in nature - I just needed to get this stupid 'fifty' thing out of my craw so that I can realize that today is just a day, and tomorrow will be yet another day.  Might get some more snow tomorrow - maybe I'll go sled riding...