July 22nd (Afternoon)

Another really sweet ride! It poured and poured all morning, then rained all afternoon, but it was gorgeous, sunny and only 23° for my ride home so I was for sure counting my blessings on missing the earlier weather. The dirt road at the end of Copperhead was actually quite slick and muddy, and even a bit tough to push through at some points. However, by the time I rode down to the Peterson’s Creek trailhead off of Summit, the mud was more than gone off the tires…

Going down into Peterson’s Creek was quite fun. I’m getting to know this trail pretty well, now, so my speeds are definitely increasing quite a bit. With all the rain, the sandy sections were perfectly soft and yet not as loose and therefore I made it through them quite easily. Too bad they’ll probably be dry by tomorrow morning…

I made it to and through the crossing, but just about didn’t. With the rain, the creek was higher and a nice, little “ditch” had formed on the east side that just about tossed me head first into the creek…

After climbing up out of the valley (same stop-and-walk as always at the middle section), I managed some great speeds across the single-track. It was a blast! Met up with one hiker with two dogs. Actually, as I started coming up behind him, he stopped and it looked like he was going to take a bathroom break right on the trail! For a second, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but then I realized he was just taking off his shirt…

Again, I had a blast on the pipeline trails at Rose Hill, even making an awesome distance up the final hill (best yet!). In fact, I suddenly thought I was going to make the entire way until I hit a loose, sandy section (never made it this far before, so didn’t know what to expect). As soon as I hit that section, my back tire spun wildly and with no forward momentum, I had to stop or roll backwards!

I took the pipeline section into Juniper. The entire stretch into Juniper was crazy fast. In fact, for some reason I had some dorky day dream playing out in my mind of a redneck chasing me with his 4x4 and me trying to stay ahead of him… Don’t ask me why, it’s been a long summer of commuting and I could probably do this stretch of trail in my sleep, thus my mind tens to wander, ok? ANYWAYS, I pushed it very hard and fast through the entire stretch, trying to see just how fast I could take the corners, climb the hills, etc. It was great, and I had a record time and average speed in the end. Oh, no worries, the rednecks rolled their truck into one of the ravines and I left them there to think about their indiscretions…