Mountain Biking

Today I was up nice and early and so I decided that it would be a good day to go for a long ride probably out to Verdi which is basically from my house to California and back. Usually this ride can take upwards of five or six hours simply because I take a break once I get up there and have some lunch or at least a decent snack.

If it's windy out it's much more difficult to cycle fast so you end up taking twice as long to get there and then much longer to get back. Well unless you are lucky enough to have a tailwind on the way back. More times than not though, the wind is swirling or changing throughout the day so you end up with a headwind both ways and are beat by the time you make it back full round trip!

Zipper

Because of the wind and it already starting before 9 AM I decided that today would be just as good of a day as any to head up into the mountains and play in the dirt on my mountain bike instead. I searched around for a route to take and could not find one that satisfied me. There was one I consider doing, that I had done many other times, unfortunately I would have to do it three or four times to get the amount of miles I wanted to get today.

If I was going to pack everything up and then drive somewhere I did not want to be dealing with a bunch of traffic. What I mean by traffic is that this particular route inns up having a lot of bikers and dog walkers on it so it can make it difficult to make good time and keep up a good cadence. Not something you want to deal with if you are attempting to do multiple labs in one day.

Mainly because more than likely you're going to see these people more than once so you don't want to pass them and piss them off and then end up having to deal with them several more times.

So instead I opted to go to this trail that is very close to home called the zipper trail. Although it is just under 9 miles it is a trail I have always wanted to do and it's known to be not only a very fun trail but a very difficult trail as well. I don't know about difficult, they actually rate it as being for a strong intermediate.

After doing the complete loop today I have to disagree and say that it is definitely one for more of an advanced mountain biker. It's not that the terrain is that treacherous it's more that the climbing kicks your ass as well as the switchbacks that are also part of the climbing. If you are not 100% on your game you are either going to crash or you're going to go off the single track and end up tumbling down the side of the mountain.

This is not something I wanted to do on a Sunday or any day for that matter. Instead on some of the areas that I did not feel confident I would just put a foot down or I would simply get off and walk for a moment not a big deal.

The only shitty part with that is that it takes much longer to do the route and on certain areas the GPS does not like the fact that you are going slow and it assumes you are cutting across the track. So by the time you start cycling again and it catches up it draws a straight line from where you were before to where you are now.

I think this happened to me at least one time that I know of and it may have happened at least one or two other times. Certain areas of the trail were too steep and I could not keep my momentum up and do tight switch backs at the same time.

I will say, I am much better at the switchbacks going uphill than going downhill. This is probably the opposite for most people. I simply don't have the confidence that I should have in my skills on the mountain bike because I only ride it once in a while.

No matter, and all said and done the ride ended up being just over 11 miles. The reason was, I went ahead and did a little bit of a loop in the sports complex that I am familiar with after I was done with my ride on the zipper trail. On the way down I must have whacked a rock pretty good because I bent the crap out of my rear disc brake rotor. I did not notice it until I was getting ready to get onto the flat ground and pavement to do a little bit more distance before putting my bike on the car and heading home.

On the bright side at least it happened towards the end otherwise it would have really sucked do you have not had confidence in my back brakes on the way down that trail. On the negative side now I either have to try and bend the disk back so it's true or I need to order a new one and install it. Neither thing is that big of a deal it's just that it's one more thing on the list.

Hindsight it was a fun day although I do I hello a lot of hiking when I take the mountain bike out and I hate that. It pisses me off to no end when I have to get off the bike and walk up the hill pushing the goddamn thing. That and the fact that I have to wear a backpack with all of my crap in it when mountain biking is annoying. The day was still nice and I did manage to get some good photos and have some great views of some great scenery.

My only wish is that I could have done more aggressive cycling and that I could have stayed on the bike and enjoyed the entire loop. If I had to guess, out of the 11 miles that the zipper loop is, plus the couple extra miles that I did afterwards in the sports complex I would bet that I walked a good 3 to 4 miles of the damn trail.

The question is, will I do it again? The answer is that I probably will at some point. It's definitely one of those trails that if you are good at it could be a lot more fun. At the same time, you need to be sure to go on cooler days or early in the morning because even today I was sweating quite a bit and it's not that hot out with a nice cool breeze all day.

Home & Work

That will have to be all out of me today. It's pushing 6:30 PM and I need to get things done for work. It is time for my teams midyear reviews and I have been way behind on getting my part of it done so I can then have a one-on-one meetings with each employee.

Definitely not something I wanted to be doing at home this weekend especially when I have things to do outside like cut the lawn and that sort of thing. Nothing I can do about it now other than buckle down and get it done no matter how long it takes. In this week I will make it a point to meet with everyone and get these things done then I don't have to deal with them again for the next six months or so until we do the end of year reviews.

One last thing, it's Earth Day so hopefully you did something that was Earth conscious. If not I would not hold it against you because you should be doing it every day or whenever there is an opportunity to not just on one particular day of the year.

For me I guess you could say that I picked up litter. While I was out cycling after I finished one of my drinks I use the empty bottle to pick up firearm shell casings that I would find along the path.

There were some larger things but there was no way I'd be able to pack them out with my bike. It's amazing the amount of crap that people take out into the desert to shoot and then they leave it there.

Everything from propane tanks to old TVs and pretty much anything else you can imagine. It's super annoying and I wish people would just take metal targets and that sort of thing out there so they would leave with what they came in with.

Anyway I am not going to preach because no matter what there are always going to be douche bags out there that I don't respect the desert and the open lands that we have. Hopefully something will click one day and they will begin to care more about the open areas they have right out their backdoor ready and waiting for them to enjoy.

Photo: Cool shot of a group of wild daisies that I came across today on my ride. The wild part was all of the .223 ammo casings everywhere. It's not unusual to see them out here, just unusual up high on this perch! I don't want to know why they were shooting from up here and with that round? At least it wasn't 50 caliber casings!