Learning to Enjoy the Ride: Chasin' daylight

If the state is in such a budget crisis, why are trails being mowed? Shouldn't we be asked to experience nature, um, naturally?

After a few failed attempts, yesterday I got together with a friend to go riding. He hasn't been out on a bike since somewhere in the vicinity of 4-5 years, and the last time I rode with him he got a concussion, so we went easy at Green Lakes State Park. Well, sort of. There is a climb out of the double secret back entrance parking lot that is tough even when you've been riding frequently but we both survived and had a great time. Did a nice 9 mile loop, checking out one of the lakes along the way. Everyone kept rubber side down, and no minor mishaps occurred either.

Today I was up and out of the house early for the spring community garden planting. It was a bit chaotic but everything, I think, worked out. I am not sure exactly how many seedlings and seeds were planted in the garden but I know we had in excess of 120 seedlings. We even gave away ~100 buckets with pepper and tomato plants, as well as tried out planting pepper and tomatoes in this using one of these to fill them. Kind of like a wheel barrow cannon - for mulch.

Bear Swamp in late spring.

Now that we're a month away from the longest day of the year, I decided to take advantage of the late sunsets. After picking up my car, I thought of going to Highland Forest but didn't know if they would shut me out after a certain time. Instead, I meandered over to Bear Swamp where I new the only closing time I would be up against was daylight. I took a route I'd only driven once before, got a bit off-track - ending up south of the forest, but eventually made it to where I needed to be.

I suited up quickly, in light of the time and voracious mosquitos. I hadn't ridden any of the red trails this year - they're always pretty wet - but decided to give 'em a try. They were more damp than wet, which was good to see. I cooked through that trail pretty quickly and made my way over to the yellows. I was going to ride the teeter totter but someone broke it in half so I passed. I was feeling pretty decent and decided to climb up to the top of a trail that I typically skip but it has a really fun downhill so it was worth the effort. Someone was camping in their RV in one of the parking lots, probably wondering who the fool on the bike was riding by at 7:30 pm. At the halfway point, I thought I was a little behind on the light factor so I started weighing my options. I eventually realized I was feeling really well and riding the loop faster than I ever recall, so didn't ever pull the plug early.

Most of the time, it sounded like I was riding in the fall, rather than the spring, because their were a lot of fresh dead leaves on the trails. We've had a few late spring frosts, which caught some of the trees with their leaves out, damaging/killing the leaves. While I like riding through crunchy leaves because of the sound they make, I know this is probably not good for the trees.

The other thing that was really prevalent today were spider webs. Riding late in the day means the spiders are doing their thing, setting up shop for the night's feast. There are more than a few that are likely going to go hungry tonight, cursing the two wheeled bandit who disrespected their kitchen.

The climb out - or as much as you can see from the bottom.

I bombed through a few more down hills and cleaned things I typically am much more cautious about riding. It was a great ride and I felt really on, listening to a favorite KEXP podcast. I averaged 8.8mph up until the bottom of the climb out to the car, where I dropped .4 of a mile/hour. Even with the good climbing beat of this song, too little saddle time made for a pretty slow grind. This snails pace was an opportunity for the mosquitos to feast, much to my displeasure.