Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Searching for Spring

I went out today on the Mountain Bike, simply because it was a beautiful day. I was in the mood to look for signs of spring. I am in a phase of just riding for the sake of riding. Which is a nice way of saying I am just riding slowly and trying to see things that I usually don't have time for due to the effort I am putting forth. I have no races scheduled and I am...uh...fat and out of shape...shhhh don't tell anyone... That's what the budgeting season, football season, three kids, a billion and a half calories of poor food choices, beer, and winter will get you.

I thought that it would be a good idea to ride the Oak Mountain loop that is just around the corner from the house, and happens to be one of the best mountain bike trails I have run into. I can hear Rick groaning now... Yes, I have "run into" a lot of thing on trails, and no, most of them wouldn't be classified as "the best"...sheesh...

The temperatures hit the mid 50's and I found myself pretty warm in my shorts and long sleeve jersey. It's nice to be warm for a change. I am very VERY tired of winter; even the short, anemic, pansy-esque thing we call winter here. You can see from my pictures, there isn't much of a sign of spring around here yet, and the absence of leaves actually changes the entire look of this trail. It seems wide open, and you can see all the large boulders and many more creeks than you normally can. The summer incarnation of this trail is very lush and almost dark in the afternoons with the canopy of leaves surrounding you.

The park has one section called Blood Rock. This is rather apropos since it extracted some of it from me the last time I tried to chase someone better than myself down it's rocky twists and drops. (The CT scan came back positive...there is gray matter in my skull... Whether said gray matter has ever worked properly is up for debate in some circles.)

Needless to say, I made it back, and I had a great time out in the woods looking for signs of spring. The fact that I was unsuccessful in finding much in the way of flowers or anything spring-ish, other than the front fork on my bike, just means that I guess I will have to go look more often in the coming weeks.












1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We keep getting spring here 2-3 days at a time. I blew off the ride Saturday because the thoughts of 40 degrees and 35 mph cross winds didn;t sound enticing. 48 hrs later its 75 and sunny, typical Florida!! Looks beautiful there though, much better than the pavement jungle I navigate on a daily basis. I must admit though, dodging cars does make it a little more interesting.......