Riding the Cave

I knew I would have a wee bit of spare time today (like half the day) so I packed Baloo (that's my Lenz Sport Leviathan 29er - a true mountain bike to you) in the Subaru this morning. After working half the day doing more orientation yuk at Gritman Medical Center (a fabulous place to work) I cruised up to the Pond-9 area on Moscow Mountain for some delicious singletrack riding...talk about attitude adjustment - there is nothing better than riding singletrack under a canopy of pines. Lately I've been doing some road-toad stuff for some quick stress relief, but all between the cars driving too close, the (cough, cough) SUV exhaust, and the lovely carcinogenic smells (which I'm told smells like money) from our neighborly, sharing, stinky-assed pulp mill....oh yeah the point - well between all that bunk I sometimes think road riding is more stressful than stress relief.

Up on Moscow Mtn. I took Headwaters Trail up and headed for the Cave Trail on the backside for some real fun.

Getting there...

Cave Trail...
The singletrack was soooo good I decided to ride it all again in reverse (which made for 20+ miles total)....

I got home and for some reason thought it would be fun to do a club time trial on my old road bike. It turned into a real fiasco...in the order of occurrence - rain, lightning, major gusty winds (of course it was totally calm when I started then 100 yards after the start I got blasted), a sticky front shifter (I was stuck in the small ring for about 2-miles spinning real fast), and finally a tumbleweed decided to commit suicide in my rear derailleur (that means I had to stop and pull it out...yeah it was dead). The overall idea of a time trial is not to stop but go as fast and as hard as you possible can to improve your time - it's only you (me that is) against the clock...needless to say I was a bit crabby after the tumbleweed incident...I finished in 25:40 not bad considering all the time sucking events that happened in that 10-mile stretch...my starting goal was to be in the 24-minute range...maybe next time...