Sunset

I kept saying I was going to write more for the blog this year. That's obviously not happened.

I just don't have much to say about riding stuff right now. I've been doing some riding and have had some great rides and some not so great rides. I've crashed and I soared. But as I've done before, I've focused my riding to where I don't stop to take photos or try to take mental notes so that I can write about the ride later.

And it is February, which is a hard time of year to ride. Especially this year. Sometimes it is too much snow that makes it hard to ride. Or too much cold. This year it is lack of snow and temps that turn everything icy and slick overnight and wet and cruddy during the afternoon.

I went out to the MatSu Greenbelt trails this weekend for a ride and it was such a mixed bag that some of the riding was a blast while other bits was absolutely gut wrenching. The access roads in the farm fields and along the powerline were icy and slick as hell while much of the single track was awesome tacky riding. Except for those south facing parts of the trail where there was a clear shot to the sky. Those sections were luge track. Then there were the blow downs. I took Root Bear to the north east out of Bear Berry - the old part of this trail - and there were numerous trees down and debris all along the trail from the last wind storm. In the end I had to stop many times just to pull sticks out of my der or my wheels.

In the end, the riding couldn't have been that bad as I spent nearly three hours out there killing the trails.

Anymore, though, those are the rare occasions. Usually when I am not at work right now I can only get an hour or two, tops, away. Between grading papers, kids' activities, and putting off the work around the house, I just have a hard time getting the time to get out there.

Or maybe it is more of a motivational issue. That's probably the case. I usually do have a slight downturn in my riding in January and February. The vacation time I take in late December and Early January leads to some great days of riding without the worry about work and such. Then I get back to the daily grind and it just gets hard to get out there on the days off.

As of now I have no epic rides planned for the spring and summer, but I do want to get in some good, long rides. We'll just have to see what's the what. Hopefully some good stories will be shared here again soon.