nuxx.net Posts

Yesterday my friend Brian () and I headed out for a bike ride. Parking at Rochester Mills we rode up the Paint Creek Trail, winding our way through to the back entrance of Bald Mountain Recreation Area‘s North Unit. (Here’s a map of the North Unit trails, from Flickr user cedarkayak.)

Taking some back connector paths, we entered the system just north of #5, and continued around the outer parts of the white, orange, and blue loops before heading back to the PCT. Everything went well, although some areas were a bit muddy and a bit much for Brian. It made for a slower than normal ride, but I’m sure he’ll become more comfortable with it all as he rides more offroad stuff. The shortcut connector from the Bald Mountain trails out to Conklin Rd were extremely overgrown, and combined with yesterday’s strong winds, riding the 10″ wide path with 3′ tall grass along it was a bit frustrating.

That photo above is a Common Snapping Turtle which we saw right in the middle of the PCT, somewhere just northwest of Rochester. One has to be careful not to get too close to these turtles, as they are aggressive and capable of quickly removing fingers. Here is a photo from under Gunn Road, which is the entrypoint to the PCT when one is riding dirt roads to connect Stony Creek and Bald Mountain / Addison Oaks.

Today was the Stony Creek XC Marathon Race, run by Tailwind over at Stony Creek Metropark. I’ve been thinking it would be neat to try taking photos at a race, so I headed over there this morning to try it out. After unexpectedly running into some people I know via the MMBA we ended up wandering most of the single track together, watching and recording the race. The three other people I was with (Matt, Tim, and Jan) all had video camera stuff, and I had my 20D with a couple fast lenses (100mm Tokina and 24-70 Canon L).

I’m fairly happy with the photos, although it really is a lot harder than I’d expected to photograph things ducking in and out of the shadows in the woods. I ended up settling for properly exposing the riders, and letting the sun blow out any area which it fell on directly. I think this worked out pretty well. If you’d like to see the photos, click either the image above, or here: Stony Creek Marathon XC Race (2009)

Today after leaving my parents house I drove straight west on 32 Mile to Addison Oaks so that I could ride the single track bike trails there. I ended up doing two laps, and this all generally went well, except my first lap (plotted above) was much slower than the second. Perhaps it was because of all the sugary / unhealthy food I ate earlier in the day, but that first time around was considerably more draining than the second. I probably should have done a third, but by that time I was wanting to get some food and head home. So, I did.

Maybe I’ll head back out there tomorrow. It’ll be interesting to see how much the trails dry out overnight, as today they were a bit slippery and sloppy in places.

(If you’d like to see it, here is the KML used to generate the above image.)