Flex Day

There is something about riding on a day when you know all of your buddies are sitting at work wishing they were out on the trails, something wonderful, it feels like a free day on your bike.

I had one such day yesterday. I posted up on the VIMB.com boards on the weekend to see if any other lucky souls had the day off and no one replied, so I packed up the car and drove up to the old standby Hartland (a.k.a. The Dump). Since I was riding alone I was going to just ride one of my standard loops, up switchbacks then up to Jelly Roll and Lumpy Pants, Who's Your Daddy (WYD) and Nightshift ... and it started out like that 'til I was riding over to WYD and I saw a brand new trail. I just could not resist the temptation of putting my tires on fresh trail. This trail was so fresh ... it was not even done yet ... who knows if I should have even been on it, but I resisted the little angel on my shoulder telling me to stay off it for now, and well ... that was a great choice ... so much fun. After poaching this little bit of unfinished trail I headed to the newly opened Trillium. This is how trails should be built, good job to all those involved ... DAMN that's fun.

I was having far too much fun to take pictures, so instead you get dirty bike porn shots from the parking lot.

The amazing people at SIMBS have been building new trails in this part of the park, and admittedly I have not played around down here in years - I usually stick to the route I am used to ... it's just easy. Before you could ride some fun trails down this side of the hill...but then you had to do a boring access road climb back out. But with the additions of these two new trails you can now link together a great loop. These trails are fun up AND down, and just really well built - I was very impressed.

mmmmMMmmmm...mud

Since I have not explored this part of the park that much, I was happy to run into someone else enjoying a free day. I asked them the loop that they usually do and it sounded like a lot of fun, so I am going to try that one next time I am up there. At this point I turned around and headed back up Trillium. This trail is flowy and fun on the way down, and even on the way up it was not that bad, even for an out of shape desk jockey like myself. After huffing and puffing my way back up the new trails I was on my original route down WYD and Night Shift ... I love these trails ... fast, fun techy riding at it's best.

At the bottom of Night Shift I still felt like I wanted to pedal, so I rolled over to an old trail that I have not ridden in a LONG time - Inventive. Gotta love riding the old trails, it's probably been a few years since I have been on this trail, and I forgot how fun it is. After that I just rode the access road to hit all of the Shock Treatments trails on the way back to the parking lot. What I thought would be a nice little spin to exit the park turned out to be one of the hardest parts of the ride. I ran into a little leftover snow on this ride so far, but Shock Treatment under the power lines had a bunch of snow still and it was a mix of slush and icy snow, with the latter giving me some issues. All in all I rode 12.6 K and had a blast while most of my friends were slaving away ... yeah, that right there is good times.

To see my route and see how slow I really am check out the map below, click on the little pinkish bit to see my stats.

View Flex Day in a larger map