In the woods

Not long ago my neighbor Russ looked over my mountain bike, which is pretty ancient. He tightened this, tweaked that, and came to an assessment that it was perfectly reasonable for mild offroad use, though it might not be optimal for lots of the single track trails.

"Great." I told him. Yesterday I headed off into the wilds of Carolina North around rush hour. My theory is that I should road bike on weekends when there are fewer cars on the road, but since prime biking time for me during the week is pretty much rush hour, I should be offroad then.

I had seen some trails back by some of the Zinn subdivisions off of Homestead, branching off from the paved trail that goes into the back of CHHS (and also Smith and Seawell), really an atypically ingenious touch by the developers. I had no idea where the trails went, which vexed me.

It didn't take that long to get there, but when I went onto the little trails that had intrigued me, I found they looped back quickly to the paved trail. Nothing worse than that. So I kept going and crossed over to the west side Bolin Creek and rode down the trails along the sewage line next to the creek. Before too long I was on nice single track trails in the woods and my bike was doing just fine, thank you. I was going along, tra la la, feeling great, bending around, looping back, going up and down, popping over roots of all shapes and sizes, crossing little bridges, happy as a clam.

Then I saw some houses at the edge of the woods and stopped and looked on Google Maps on my phone to see where I was. I was over behind a subdivision off of Hillsborough Road, kind of near where Eric and Max Stein used to live, a pretty long ways from home.

No problem, I thought. I'll just go back to Bolin Creek and follow it down to Estes, then go back on the road. There the plot thickened, because I had underestimated how rocky and shitty the path was there. Often I was picking my way carefully along, going maybe 6 mph. My legs were getting tired and I started to curse a little internally. At one point in time I saw a single track trail that I thought could take me back over to Seawell School Rd. That didn't work at all and it was steep and rocky and I was pushing my bike. Eventually it took me back down to the creek.

Eventually I got to where the railroad crosses the creek, where I waded through the stream and up the embankment, then rode home on Estes Extension. I was beat, and had come to a true understanding of the limits of my bike.

But I had gotten a good workout and adventure and slept well, so it was all good.