Man. It's been a wet spring. The trails up here in Western New York
have been swamped for weeks, and are only now getting so they can be
ridden without damage. My wife and I were out a couple of weeks ago at
Ellicottville, and we ended up bagging the singletrack and doing some
fun, high-speed flying on the fire roads instead. Too muddy. Saturday
was better, and we hit these trails:
Really first-rate stuff. Even JD might approve. We did a
nifty loop, Race Loop to Porcupine to Mutton Hollow to
Buzzard's Breath, all singletrack once you do the 1 1/2 mile
climb on the fireroad up. Muddy in spots, and soft
everywhere, but it was as long as we rode smooth and light.
Marvelous, delightful, transcendent to finally be on
singletrack again after a too-long winter. The hardtail was
in fine form, smooth and nimble and wonderful.
Yesterday we hooked up with some roadie friends and
knocked off 35 miles, they on their carbon-fiber
wonderbikes, we on our trusty fixies. We managed to keep
up. The fastest rider of the group is a guy who is racing
Cat 2 this year because he's out of shape... yikes.
Luckily, he took it easy on us. Kinda sucks when you spin
out at about 27 mph on the fix, though.
Starting to get back in shape. I was able to do another 25
road miles on the fix this morning with heavy headwinds, and
I didn't feel yesterday's ride too much. Be nice to make the
NYC Century this year, and finally get the chance to do it
on a singlespeed. We shall see.
Ride on.
CC