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Today I set out for a longish ride and got exactly what I was looking for. Setting out from home I first headed up to Stony Creek where I ducked through the Trolly Trails and Fitness Trails before heading over to the normal MTB trails. Here I ran into a bunch of people that I knew. After a first go through the Roller Coaster with some folks I ran into my friend Jeff who was taking his son on his first MTB trail ride. I rode two laps of The Pines with them, then a bit more with Mark, who happened to cross our path on his way into the park.
From here I headed north, without much of a goal in mind. I ended up over at Bald Mountain, which was a mixture of wet and perfectly good. The climb up to Lake George was particularly wet, so I ducked out of there, headed over to Markwood (where the photo above was taken), and made this my turnaround point. I probably could have taken a different way home, but the PCT was a nice, inviting, smooth highway and I was getting a bit tired, so it did nicely.
Once back in Rochester, after stopping at the police station (the only open public bathrooms around) to refill on water and mix up some more sugary drink I navigated the crowds and headed off to River Bends. Half a lap of River Bends and some old slaughterhouse dirt trail riding later I was in downtown Utica and on my way home. Total for this ride was 71.30 miles, with a moving time of 05:29:51 out of a total time of 06:31:05. I lost half a mile and 2 or 3 minutes out of that from resetting the computer a short distance from my house after dealing with some HRM issues, but that’s pretty inconsequential in the scope of the whole ride.
After getting home Danielle made an outstanding mushroom pasta for dinner, then her and I curled up on the couch and watched The King’s Speech. This has been a good day.
Hopefully I can keep doing rides like this and push myself up to 8 or 10 hours of moving time. For now, it’s bed time.