I have recently started doing some off-road riding out at Tribble Mill park, as I’ve mentioned before here and here. I kicked it up a notch this morning when I drove out to the Yellow River Regional Park which is about 10 miles from my house. They have two main trails here, the River trail and the Creek trail. I rode the River trail and it was glorious! I encountered a few other riders, but for the better part of an hour it was just me, all alone in the woods. The sounds and smells of an unspoiled forest are a wonderful thing. All I could hear was the “singing” of Cicadas (or something similar), the sounds of my wheels on the trail and my own breathing. There was quite a bit of mud and sand (not fun) in some places but generally good trails, quite a bit of them paralleled the Yellow River, which provided its own sounds to my journey.

I was actually in the woods for about 1.5 hours, actually peddling for an hour. Near the end of my ride I came upon three other riders and we chatted for 10 minutes or so about equipment and such. Nice guys, they were. I tried another Clif Bar, but just like the last one I tried, it just sort of tasted like bird seed held together with some sort of paste. At this point I much prefer PowerBars.

Anyway, I had a lovely ride, came home thoroughly filthy and smelly, but happy and content. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, which is a bummer. If it were not for the rain, I’d be out on that trail again.