It's Sunday! Time for the JAR ride, so I'm out of the house and on the
way. Temperature was about 86 with 98% humidity when we hit the trails at
Mercer County Park in Trenton, NJ. Yes, Trenton. That misunderstood state
capital that was once the capital of the United States. The same place
George Washington crossed the Delaware (you could pratically walk across it
in the Summer). Mercer County Park is actually one of the largest
"municipal" parks in New Jersey. Thousands of acres and a huge lake in the
middle. It's as flat as a pancake! I think the water grading of my house
has more vertical. However, it has some extremely technical twisty woods
singletrack.
We hit the woods hard and fast. The trail is dry and we are flying! Within
the first 10 minutes we've hit seven huge log-overs. I'm much better at
these than a year ago. In fact, I complete every one including the the
three foot - what's on the other end - nightmare. I guess you need to make
the trail interesting when it's that flat. Within the next 20 minutes we
see no less that 15 deer including a couple of fawns. How cute until I
realize I didn't put any deet on to prevent the ticks! We hit the Blaire
Witch Project with tenacity. This is about 6 miles of twisty turny dark
tree covered singletrack. The turns are 320 dregrees and the trees are so
close you literally have to wheelie and turn the bars sideways to fit
through. I forget to do this a couple of times slamming me into the tree
and down into the poison ivy. No worries, I'm immune - really. The others
weren't so lucky. They were already covered in it from last Sunday's ride
and this just enhanced their scratching.
We hit all of the trails on both sides of the lake and completed twenty
miles in just under two hours and fifteen minutes. Not bad for a slowpoke
like me. Back in the parking lot it was now 92 degrees with 98% humidity.
Our luck was good, the ice cream truck was there to cool us down.
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