Ride now, rest later .....

... well, that was my thinking last weekend anyway. Blue skies, dry weather and riding my bike were on my forecast for the three day weekend.

Marianne and I made some last minutes changes, and the result was a mid-day ride at Wawayanda with Art on Friday. We hit up all the usual great trails and the conditions could not have been any better. I was even more pleased not to run into any more rattlesnakes on splitrock. My last experience out there was a bit unsettling with rattles sounding from what seemed like all over, resulting in a bunch of girls huddling together behind their bikes. ...That was then and on this day, we thankfully slipped through without bothering any snakes. We rode some new trails and were reacquainted with forgotten trails. It was a day to remember. Pictures above, from the bridge that Nature Jim claims .... but we all know that the beaver owns this one.

On Saturday I went for a ride at one my favorite spots, Blue Mt. We had a nice group made up of Adrienne, Dar, Marianne and myself. We were joined by Alex and Jane for Monster. I know I had a race at Blue the Sunday before, but I felt like I didn't get my fix without a ride on Stinger and Monster. So there I was, like a single-track junkie going back to get my fix. I tried to justify my being there by thinking I was helping to guide Adrienne on her first Blue ride, but I think we all know (wink, wink) what I was doing there. Lots of fun on Saturday too.

Sunday, we all agreed to do a road ride because Dar was really jonesing to ride road with us. We needed to cap the ride off at 50 miles, but where to go? My thinking was, give her the best of the best ... Ringwood to Harriman. The bridge on 106 has been barricaded but passable by bike for over a year now, and recently a backhoe arrived on the site. I emailed Marianne, who would be traveling back through the park the night before, to scope it out. From what she could see in the dark, it looked like nothing had changed from the week before.

Much to our surprise, when arriving at the bridge, it had been removed, gone, like 2 feet deep of water 20 feet across. I got a chuckle when I saw that a beaver had already started to fill the chasm with branches. What were we to do? hmmmm, Jess made the first move by climbing down the embankment and stepping into the water to see how deep it was. After crossing, she declared it a go. I removed my shoes and socks because it was chilly that day and I did not want wet anything on my feet going 40 mph downhill. I would not recommend walking barefoot through a construction site, and I am probably insane for saying this, but the dirt, broken tar and cool water felt really good on my feet. It was a liberating experience, and was truly an adventure for my new road bike, Napoleon too.