Category: cycling

That was me, last week, at the Lake Orion High School Dragon GAP mountain bike race, taken by someone from the Cannondale Midwest team. I did the race again today and received another second place medal, beaten out by someone who runs a mountain bike program for kids at a local middle school.

Today I did the ride on my Specialized geared / multi-speed bike, which was probably a good thing as the course took a different route which included some very soft, freshly cut trail that I had to slowly grind through. Even though it was quite a bit more difficult than last time, my time was a bit faster than the last time. I guess that’s what happens when one doesn’t get lost, eh?

If you’re interested Here’s a photo of the two second place medals I received on the number plates, and here’s one of Doug (black2003ss), Bob (utabintarbo), and I after receiving medals for our various places in the two beginner / citizen classes (35 and under, and 36 and over). This really is a nifty race. It’s short, difficult, fun, and the entry fees go towards some nice after school programs.

After work today I met up with Kristi, Marty, Nick, and (unexpectedly) Jon for a ride around Stony Creek. We first headed over to the new South Park Trails (map photo) which have been put in around the Skills Park. That photo up above was taken in one part of the South Park Trails where there happen to be some really beautiful CCC-ish red pine stands.

This new section of trail was very recently cut and thus has a mixture of small stick-like stumps and larger stumps, but it’s becoming rather firm and is really fun to ride. Most of it is up and down, curving double-track like the easy tracks in the other mountain biking area, but there are definitely some challenging climbs and fun, flowing descents. I’m really looking forward to riding this again, and particularly once all the stumps have been removed.

The rest of the ride was uneventful, but fun. We made a run through The Roller Coaster, and found that the newly cut parts of it are becoming particularly great. The trails are coming along very nicely, and are a whole bunch of fun to ride.

(Unfortunately, because of the high speed burst mode of the camera the quality is a bit crap, but it’s still quite a nice area. I really should take my good camera out there. Maybe one day when there is a race…)

The Lake Orion High School Guided Activities Program runs a few mountain bike races each year on the trails and in the woods behind the school. I’d already packed my car with the single speed and riding clothes, when my friend Bob convinced me to give the races a go, I did. I thought the single speed would be a bit challenging, but the trail flowed nicely and there were only two places where I had to walk.

This was a relatively short, but nicely challenging course, winding through all manner of terrain on both the school grounds and a bit of Bald Mountain Recreation Area. There were a couple very tough hill climbs, tight / technical single track, bumpy grass lands, and fun and fast downhill stuff.

Before the race we were all given placards, with white being Beginner (like me), blue being the Sport class, and Yellow/Gold as Elite. We were also told that there would be periodic signs directing people to different routes based on the varying skill levels. Unfortunately, the first sign which said to turn left was in yellow/gold, so myself and another large group of people ignored it and went straight. It was only after we realized that what we were riding through was a bit more than one would likely route for a race that we backtracked. This was about 10 minutes out of our way, through a whole bunch of mud, and over some fallen trees.

Even with this extra detour I ended up coming in second (getting a rather nice little medal), out of at least three, but … well… I’m not sure how many people. There’s another one of these races next week, with a rain date of the following Tuesday, so hopefully I’ll be able to make it out for that as well. This was a nice, fun, well-run event that felt casual enough to be purely enjoyable, and I guess that’s how they typically go.

Normally I would have an image here, but the SnapPhoto app for Android is once again failing and the images have come out corrupt^†. So instead I’ll tell you about what I had to deal with earlier today: dog poop on my bike tire.

When riding into the Stony Creek trails tonight I was rather close behind someone and didn’t notice a pile of very fresh dog poop until it was too late. That is, right as my front wheel was about to hit it. After I hit it there were two large lumps sticking off the side of the tire, showing just how sticky said poop is. I then had to scrape it off (as best as I could) with a stick, before riding up to the top of the nearest hill to meet up with the group.

Once at the top of the hill the corrupt photos were taken, one showing me giving a thumb’s up next to the tire, and another showing a close-up of the tire. I then had to scrape the tire more on the grass and dirt, which (somehow) resulted in dog poop getting on my hand and glove. Riding after that point was also a bit more interesting, because until most of it was worn off I had to go slow enough that it didn’t fling up into my face.

I intend to ride after work tomorrow as well, so I’ll have to wait a day before washing the bike and removing the last bits of poo from the wheel and down tube. Oh well. After that comes a day of storms (Wednesday), paved ride on the other bike (Thursday), and then hopefully a commute to work (Friday) on the other bike.

^† If you’d like to take a stab at the corrupt JPEGs, they are here: 20090511185103.jpg · 20090511185118.jpg. The issue seems to occur mostly after the app has been running in the background for a few days, as a reboot of the phone seems to make the problem go away. I’ve upgraded to the for-pay, $0.99 Snap Photo Pro app. Hopefully it doesn’t continue to have the same problem.

According to Google Maps and Earth, this is White Mill Road as it heads north from Wiloray Ave, as seen here on Maps. For some stupid reason this does not connect to the other half of the road, and the neighbors seem to have fenced it so it’s not passable by bike or foot. South of that intersection is this nice, but clearly seasonal dirt path leading not far to the other part of White Mill Road.

This all disappoints me, because this is the one point which would make a route between 22 Mile and 23 Mile Roads, east of Mound and west of M-53, possible on bicycle without riding on paths/sidewalks or cutting across large grassy areas (baseball diamonds) in parks. After showing my friend Erik the route to work from yesterday he was finding some potentially alternate connectors for me, which would cut down residential streets instead of along sidewalks. This was one of those connectors, and when I went to check it out for a short post-work ride, it was rather disappointing.

On the upside, I did come across these dirt tracks which I’ll investigate when my bike has knobby tires back on it. I half expect these to lead to some dirt jumps I’d been told about before, or if nothing else they might just make for interesting siteseeing.