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The Fall leaves were amaze as per the usual. A short write up and work starts tomorrow so all this fun stuff ends…
Ride of the week? I think the bridge out ride will be hard to beat but this was pretty top notch.
whoop whoop.
It was a splendid mid morning ride with legs feeling a bit better on a beautiful Canadian Fall day. It was back on the Moots after giving the Rocky Mountain hope that it might be my favourite bike. The Moots knows what the pecking order is and it was ready for a fun ride in the valley.
*shuts macbook instantly…
*interns assemble! Its finally happening. the bikes are going to soon have souls and become sentient beings in lonebiker lore…
*instant silence in the room..
*one brave intern whispers 'what the fuck was that you said?'
*shuts down bad idea and returns to writing on blog.
Oh man… I'm sorry about that. The ride started at the Velodrome, another old school parking spot. I hit the singletrack and exited a tad early via Blue Man Group. An insane amount of homeless garbage litters the area. It seems quite obvious must of the stuff was stolen as everything looked rummaged through.
The homeless encampments are becoming sadly a lot more common bringing heavy drug use to some combined with mental problems out roaming the back trails where the mountain bikers lurk. So be careful out there.
I visited my lady Victoria and oddly saw no homeless on the route in an area which was odd for that area. Once off the trail I wanted to skip over ride Groat Road Rollercoaster (Lovers Lane) back towards the river and head back. Unbeknownst to me the bridge was out at the other end on Stoney Plain road so I pondered my next move and couldn't come up with a gameplan.
Lost and forlorn I rode back the way I came through Victorias Secret and found the roads where still undecided I rode to the High Level bridge but decided to press onto the legislature where I believe every cop in Canada was attending a memorial for a fallen officer that sadly happened recently. I rode through a police road block making eye contact with the police standing there to know I was good. They said nothing and I rode down the hill unencumbered as to what was going on.
Cops were everywhere, most staring at me as I was thoroughly enjoying the closed down road and with Lana Del Ray on the headphones I was enjoying the attention I was getting because of my horrible narcissism and then hearing what the event was about later I felt like an asshole. If I had know I would have avoided the area.
I blame the bridge out deferring me this way.
Thats what it was.
Sorry about that. A big miss on that ride through.Yes I know it was just a guy riding though on his bike but there should have been some respect given.
The high side Mill Creek Trap trails took me home through a splendour of memories this time oddly. The amount of different people I have been with through this area is ridiculous and the big moments in life that were happening at the time. A strange thing to type but at a time was kind of a refuge when thing got rough. I even brought people down there when things were tough for them.
There is something about that place. My family thinks it's trashy for some reason, the sewage smell in areas perhaps?
Bah ha ha ha…
*edited a bit later after realizing multiple grammatical wtf's. fixed, so weee think…
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| another attempt at a return to the potty break photos |
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| let's just have a big old sigh and do nothing about this shall we? |
I'll tell you what though… as a longtime Albertan tradesman I do salivate when I think of those high paying refinery union jobs… Good Lord, I might be able to afford upgrades to the bikes.
And you don't have to go up north…
The ride today was a planned recovery one after yesterdays rough one. I had Fort Saskatchewan picked out or Leduc's now all to common Telford Lake. The idiot "must do manly shit" side of me took over and I chose mountain biking in Fort Saskatchewan as it is much more manly than a gravel bike ride in Leduc.
I mean come on…
The ride was slow paced and I had some cool moments of gliding through the trees in the Fall air. It was sublime. How many times can I tote on here how awesome bikes are?
The legs were pure garbage and didn't want to give me anything so I did end up on paved for a little bit. The good news is elbow still hurts but can still ride. Oh yes and the Jeep is top notch too!
Everything's coming up lonebiker!
With things getting even more shitty I decided I must have a bike ride to try and appease the Gods. The infamous Jeep I drive died on my daughter (lonebiker Jr) and looks like it could be expensive to repair. This coming after missing a whole set of work due to back issues where we have never financially recovered from the last set of back issues that was had in May. With that and a small number of things happening we are quite certain that some sort of nefarious evil demon has put a hex on me and now things have been super mega fucked.
This all started in July of Twenty-Twenty when I accidentally killed my daughters bird. A very significant moment in time and things have not been the same since…
Oh don't believe me when I feed you this bullshit. I do hate the 'oh woe is me' types and I do not want to be that person. Things have been oddly shitty for some reason… from realizing I hang out with sociopaths to my girls going through some rough times with some health issues fucking my shit up. I think I just am forty seven and the health stuff is just normal. The high thyroid has turned me into a psycho probably for the past two years and now the back is a real issue.
I have meds for the thyroid and exercises I do for the back with regular massage and steroid injections I should be top notch!
So that being said I fucked my elbow up pretty good on a crash over some logs on the middle Flat Pete trail in Oliskew.
The ride was a definite top fiver and it was rough. A staff College start took me through Go trail in Terwillegar where the old Rocky came alive immediately on the quick moving singlertrack. The feel of moving through the trees at a high rate of speed on a bike was pretty awesome.
I crossed and rode the Oliskew trails and rode Clamatory and Purgatory and forgot how much I hate riding Purgatory up. That was the first crash, a too fast of a descent followed by skidding on leaves as I tried to slow down for a quick corner and ended up in the ditch.
It was minor.
I rode our and to the top of the houses and thoroughly enjoyed the ride going the other way. A few stops and starts happened but considering how little singletrack I rode this year I was quite happy with my effort ( I mean, I have a real bad back guys..) A newish ladder bridge through a tree on Clamatory was super fun and put a big smile on my face.
I hit the Petes again and got to the second one and remembered a big log crossing that I stopped at going the other way to make a few repairs to it. Remembering the crossing and my stellar repairs I had full confidence I would clear it.
I didn't and landed hard on my left elbow. A little bit of blood and ripped brand new shorts accompanied the elbow but all I cared about was the elbow. I'm old and things take a while to recover so now I am a little nervous. I stood at the edge off the log crossing and wondered why it betrayed me after I gave it some loving going the other way earlier.
I stretched out the elbow and could still ride despite not having full range of motion where the third crash happened on Log…. ugh.. what's the name of that dumb trail again?
Log Jammer?
Log -a-riffick?
The Log Trail?
Log Em If You Got Em?
Between a Log and a Hard Place?
Now you see… Once again all those are better names than the one they came up with. I really want Lonebiker to be in charge of trail names in the valley.
Wipe-out number three wasn't bad. A bit of blood on the right elbow and I was back on the trails rolling though and loving life cause bikes are fucking epic. I did start to get tired back in the hills of Terwillegar. The singletrack was ridden with pride all the way back to the Tacoma,
Now I'll sit and wait to hear about the Jeep and nurse my elbow. sigh…
It is a bloody nice little spin, I know I have touted this ride many of times in past posts so I won't go on.
The annoying part of the ride was not bringing a bell and riding on a popular route on a very nice Sunday morning so many people were passed on the grass off the trail away from them. As usual the dog walkers who would take over the whole trail were plentiful today.
A quick trip around the lake in that park named after a greasy politician and I made it back with no exciting stories. He could have been a nice guy but I think all politicians are just greaseball human beings.
The back held up which makes me happy although a slight tinge of pain did show up and I blasted that fucker with five Percocet's.
Bah ha ha…
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| take that ya hairlips! |
A huge improvement on yesterday and this one was started in the weird refinery park otherwise known as Goldstick. It was all singletrack on...
