MOUNTAIN BIKE TRAINING CAMP

After today's Galbraith Mountain ride, Bake and I took out the Galbraith map and counted up how many different trails we've ridden up there. The answer? Forty-six. We couldn't believe it. If someone had asked me I'd have said, "I don't know, 10 or 12." But 46? Crazy. All of them in the past two months, and probably 30 in the last three days in which we've ridden to the Towers twice, done Mullet three times, as well as Evo, Cheech and Chong, 911, Not Shawn's and a bunch of others. Bake had four days off from school and though the forecast called for rain and clouds, much of it didn't materialize so we turned it into a mountain bike training camp, as it were. Super fun.

Backing up, on Saturday, the day before Bake and I started our camp, I rode to the Towers with Glenn Gervais and Brian Wheeler, whom I met for the first time. (Real nice guy.) We rode to the Towers pedaling up trails I've previously only ridden down--Keystone, Naughty Nellie, Wonderland, etc. That was a super ride too, the last hour of which we enjoyed in pouring rain.

Kinda funny: somewhere on Wonderland, I heard Brian just behind me say, "Wo! Did you see that?" No, I didn't. Apparently, as I was riding a small bird landed on the trail just behind my front wheel but in front of my back wheel. (A moving space of about 18 inches.) I rode over its tail feathers just before the bird safely darted away, it leaving a few of its feathers on the trail. Both bird and rider are now resting comfortably.