Monday, August 29, 2011

Calm Before The Storm

A beautiful day to single speed
Saturday I rode with someone I hadn't ridden with in a long, long time. Rich and I have been trying to get together for a ride for a long time, but with both of our families and busy schedules, we couldn't make it work out.....easily!

As with anything, you need to  put in a bit of effort some times to get good results. Well, Saturday was a "good result" and I am glad it happened.

Rich is someone I have known for a long time, but nearly well enough, and definitely not often enough. He was involved with Advantage Cyclery at one point, and if you remember "Bike Shop Tales", you might remember me mentioning him in one or two of those posts.  Rich was the first person I ever rode a tandem with, oddly enough. He also was a fun person to ride with back then.

This time we weren't grinding up a steep single track pitch into Pfieffer Park in Cedar Falls, (yes locals, this was before the paved bicycle trails!), but we were at the Camp's South Side. I expected to be showing Rich, whose first time it was being there, a great ride on fast, buff trails. However; inexplicably we were coming across huge blow downs. It was really puzzling, since we haven't had a storm out there with wind since I last rode there on Wednesday. It was perfect then, but Saturday there were at least two large trees down, and several dead and live branches.

Rich and I bull-dogged a bunch of it off there, breaking off branches, and pushing things aside enough to get by where we could. So, we not only got a ride in, but some resistance training as well! We came across Paul who was out there maintaining the trails, (Thanks!), and the offending foliage should be removed or routed around by now.

The rest of Saturday was chill,  and Sunday I took a casual ride around with my son. I just felt it was a good time to spend with family, since this week I will be getting buried with Eurobike, then Interbike comes September 12th. Lots of crazy, busy stuff will be going on here before it gets as calm as it is now.

3 comments:

Captain Bob said...

Funny thing about the camp. Seems like an old man loosing his hair out there. Crazy, I rode there wed night and spent over an hour clearing brush. Your thursday post says you rode cedar bend last wed so that might be why you didn't see the downed trees and brush. It's clear now....

Guitar Ted said...

@Captain Bob: Yeah, I realized I rode at Cedar Bend this morning. DOH!

So, that explains the sad face on the sign in board now....

Captain Bob said...

Yeah, it really took the wind out of me when I saw all the branches and trees down. I was wondering if anyone would catch the sad face.....I raked with my shoe and hands for 1hr that night but probably could have spent 3hrs.....