Ellijay

Amy and I took a fun trip to Ellijay yesterday. I love the trails in Ellijay. The scenery is beautiful. Plus there are so many different options to choose from. Dirt roads to ride on during the rain. Painful sustained climbs to test your meddle like Tibbs. Fun rolling singletrack like the second Pinhoti section. Super steep and exposed switchbacks like the third Pinhoti section. Super fast rocky descents with huge berms and waterbars like Windy Gap. Crazy slick wet descents with unending creek crossings like Mountaintown. Fun fast descents with great jumps like Bear Creek. I could ride there everyday without getting bored.

Amy and I rode the Pinhoti 2 and took Shakerag road back to the trailhead. I love the Pinhoti 2 section. It is my favorite trail. It starts off with a little bit of climbing, and then you are treated to a really fast and fun descent. While I had ridden the Pinhoti 2 many times, I had never ridden on Shakerag Rd. I was expecting Shakerag Rd to be just a convenient way back to the car, but I was pleasantly suprised with how nice it was. Shakerag has a beautiful little stream that runs along the road. Mountain laurel covers the hills on both sides of the road. You can hear the sound of the stream falling through the rocks as you ride along taking in the views.

We had a really good ride. I think this is the most challenging ride Amy has ever done. She did awesome. I was wondering how I would like riding without gears and suspension. I had a great time. I really like riding this bike.

We went to the pink pig afterwards in Cherry Log. It was pretty good. Better than Col. Pooles but not as good as some other places I have been to.

Amy and I have been talking about going to Tanasi next weekend. I have never been there so it should be a really fun trip. I will bring the camera this time so I can take some pictures to post.

Lazy Days

This is the fourth day in a row where I haven't ridden my bike. After reading a bunch of posts about the Old Pueblo race and the Susitna 100 race I feel guilty about not riding. I don't understand this line of thinking. Riding should be a fun pastime. I don't understand why I have to make it a required chore.

I stopped training because I didn't think I really enjoyed racing. Today I was reading some posts about the upcoming Dirty Spokes race, and I felt sad that I am going to miss the race. The weird thing is that I don't really feel like I want to race. I just want to be a part of it somehow. Kinda like I want to have my cake without all the strenuous chewing. :)

Maybe I just don't want to ride solo. Maybe I would have more fun riding on a team. Or if I rode solo, just ride a couple laps for fun. If I want to take a break and hang out that is okay.

I don't know.

I think I will wait to see if any of the upcoming 12 hour races have good weather. If a couple days before the race things look good then I will just register and show up with no training or preparation. Then ride till I have had enough. When I am through riding, I can drink beer and cheer on all the hard core dudes.

Ft Yargo

Saturday I went on super fun group ride at Ft Yargo. The ride was organized by one of the number one posters on the SORBA forum. He also happens to be a member of the BOD group. So I shouldn't have been surprised when I pulled into the parking lot and saw the huge turnout.



It was great hanging out in the parking lot. Everyone was telling jokes and laughing. I rode around and checked out all the cool bikes. I saw some really nice Ventanas, an El Mariachi, and a really nice Niner. I even got a couple compliments on the fork and cranks on my bike.

Finally someone decided we should go for a bike ride. The YABA group recently changed the trail design to switch the direction of travel daily. Luckily Saturday the trails was running in the reverse direction of the way I rode it in the Dirty Spokes race. I had never ridden it in this direction, and it was a lot of fun.

The rock garden was just as tough.



Plus the big climb was a lot more fun going down instead of up.



I had a great day with a great bunch of people. I hope I get to go on many more group rides in the future.

Sunday Amy and I rode from the house to Big Creek and did a couple laps. It was a beautiful day, and it felt great to get out of the house.

Icy Weather

I had planned to go on Al's birthday ride on Saturday. Originally the ride was going to be held on one of my favorite trails Bear Creek/Pinhoti. I haven't ridden these trails since I switched to my Fred Flinstone bike so I was excited to try them out with a bunch of people to laugh at me. After the "wintry mix" we received on Thursday the ride was switched from fun singletrack to the forest service roads of Winding Stair so my excitement level declined dramatically.

I woke up early on Saturday morning all snug in my warm bed and quickly decided I would have more fun rolling over and going back to sleep instead of getting up and driving to Dahlonega and riding my bike on the forest service roads in the cold.

At the crack of 2:30 pm I finally got enough motivation to get out bed and ended up doing a fun ride with Amy through our neighborhood. I showed her my secret trail that links the Alpharetta Greenway to the Big Creek Greenway. I also showed her the strange road they added that connects Cranberry Trail to Cranberry Creek.

I discovered this new road one night when I was looking for a piece of flat road to do sprint intervals. It connects two roads that were already connected by a different road so I couldn't figure out why anyone would go to the trouble of building this new road. My best guess is that they plan to eventually build some new houses there. I saw some cast iron pipes sticking up out of the ground at approximate house width intervals. Plus we saw one of those mobile office trailers parked there so it is probably not a bad guess.

After checking out my new road, we headed down to the Big Creek Greenway and did a quick lap. On the Greenway, we ran into some dirt jumpers. One of them had a cool looking wolf dog.

The dog was pulling him like a sled back to his car. I would love to have one of these dogs if I could live some place where it was cold enough for them to be happy.

After the Greenway, we looped back to the house. It was a cold ride, but it was nice to get out for a little while. Amy made me a big mug of cocoa and I crawled back under my blanket and spent the rest of the day relaxing. It was nice.