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Category: Biking

Footprints

Footprints

 

This post is about a bike ride I made in August 2015! It has been been in draft mode and by now I have forgotten most of the trip, but I still want to show the best part: the dinosaur tracks! Click on the pictures to see them full size.

These tracks were made in mud 110 million years ago. The mud dried, got covered by some other dirt, and then hardened for a few million years. Really cool! The dinosaur tracks are about 2 miles in.

I’ve been back to this spot several times and it has been covered with leaves or water, so these are the best pictures I have. Here is the beginning of the original post:

In the summer of 2015 I got even more serious about biking and discovered that my civilized Townie was exactly that – civilized. It was almost exactly a year old and I traded it in for a Giant mountain bike with 29″ tires. What a difference! SJ swears it has pixie dust because it rides by itself. After riding it around the greenbelt for a while I thought I’d take it somewhere totally uncivilized, a local natural area called Government Canyon State Natural Area.

As I pull into the parking area, I see a lot of cars with bike racks, so clearly this is a popular biking area. I look at the map and head out Joe Johnson road. Some parts of the road are nice and smooth, shaded by some large trees. Other sections would be a challenge for large 4×4’s.

And that’s as far as I got with the post…

Sunset
Thorns, Twilight & Wood Nymphs

Thorns, Twilight & Wood Nymphs

A couple of days ago I noticed the rear tire of my bike was completely flat. I finally decided to fix it, because, you never know when the urge to go riding will come over you, and then you don’t want to have to wait to fix the tube.

I found the hole and patched it – the usual pinhole from a thorn or cactus spin. I even found the tiny thorn still embedded in the tire. After inflating it part way it looked a bit funny. It still needed more air, which I started adding, and was rewarded with a startling “POP”. I pulled the tube out and parts of it were shredded! Oh well, it was the fourth patch after all. I tossed the tube and installed a new one. Not a big deal, just that when I patch the tire, especially in the back, I can do it without taking off the wheel. Unfortunately, you can’t replace the inner tube without removing the wheel.

After all that, I really needed to go for a ride. The sun was settling behind the trees so I quickly changed clothes and headed out for a short run on the trails beside the local greenbelt pathway. As I left the paved path and started along the gravel in a stream bed, I had the impression that it looked a lot smoother than it felt. That’s when I realized that I left the house without changing my indoor computer glasses for my outdoor ones.

Oh well, that did make things a bit more exiting, but no less enjoyable. The sun was setting, lighting only the tips of the trees above me. Lots of deer were out foraging, most just glancing at me as I pedaled by. Ignoring the sound of nearby traffic, it was easy to imagine being somewhere quite far away…

I did make it back without picking up any new thorns or spines. As I left the greenbelt, I encountered a group of young ladies, settled comfortably on a blanket in a patch of grass, hand-feeding some young deer, while their elders (of the deer!) stood off a ways and watched.