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Today I went for my first below-freezing ride of the season, ending up in River Bends (surprise!) poking around both single track trails that I already knew and some that I just came across for the first time. Some of these new (to me) trails resulted in a better mental picture of how the trails, disc golf course, and rivers fit together.
After riding a bit of the unmaintained single track I happened back up to the normal hiking trail, and ran across two women with dogs on leashes. Following them was a small beagle, and they told me that it just started following them and if I see someone looking for a dog that I should let them know it’s with them. After sniffing me (and allowing me to note the presence of a license and name tag with phone number) on its collar, it started heading back the way it’d come, and the direction I was going. After telling the ladies that I’d take care of the dog I followed it for a while hoping I’d hear someone calling for it.
Since no one was calling for the dog I eventually grabbed it by the collar and played with it while calling one of the numbers on the tag. The person on the other end of the phone seemed pretty excited that I’d found their dog, and in not much time her husband was on his way to meet me. It seems he jogs River Bends frequently, so we were able to establish a place to meet; one of the benches in a notably straight part of the path. No more than 10 minutes later he came jogging through the woods and I was able to get his dog back to him. I’m really glad this worked out well, as both seeing a lost dog looking around for someone familiar and knowing that someone has lost their dog is a pretty sad thing. Here’s a picture of the dog while we were waiting for its person.
While riding around other parts of the park I came across lots of ice, all of which was fun to ride across even without studded tires. As these were mostly narrow and mostly snow covered puddles it was quite solid and not slippery and in places where I did break through there was just a bit of mud beneath. However, at one point I came across a larger flooded area, part of which is seen above, and while it was tempting to try riding through this bit of floodplane on smooth/hard surface it’s possible that this area could have been a few feet deep, and with the ice being an inch or so thick, I didn’t want to risk falling in. Not to mention that unlike the aforementioned puddles it had a slick glare which caused me a great deal of difficulty when setting my bike down, resulting in a controlled slide / almost-fall as seen above.
Towards the end of my ride I was heading along one of the single track-bearing ridges when I veered a little bit off the trail. Normally this isn’t a problem as I can hop up the edge of worn (into a U) single track and continue on like normal, but in this case with the snow kept my front wheel in the groove while my body and bike continued on off the trail. This resulted in a rather amusing tumble into the brush and down the ridge, with me looking back up at my bike (as seen here) after I stopped. I’d previously been afraid to fall here, as the hill is fairly steep and covered in a bunch of woody brush. However, with it being winter-time and my wearing multiple layers of clothes, the fall was mostly something to laugh at. This was actually my first decent tumbling-fall since the crash at Addison Oaks resulting in the skinplug, and thankfully the outcome was much different.
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