Fording the river

Well, sort of.

Today started out like any other Sunday, waking early to go biking. Ryan and I had already agreed to ride the Wilderness trails (Morris Bridge to Flatwoods to Trout Creek and then back to the parking lot). I almost thought we wouldn't be biking today as I was awoken by the sounds of thunder and rain against the patio. A quick look at the weather and it looks like the rain had escaped the Wilderness trails. I texted Ryan to be sure he was still up for it and he confirmed. Jason and his crew headed over to Alafia today, so we wouldn't be seeing them. At some point I'll convince them to give these trails a run.

At any rate, we were just finishing up Heartbreak Ridge when the deluge came. The weather to this point had been terrific - nice and cool, and surprisingly dry. Now we were riding in an all out downpour, not my favorite thing to do, but alas, no lightning and it looked like it was going to be short lived, so on we continued.

Depends?
I suspect that if I were to guess what depends must feel like to wear, a soaking wet biking short chamois must be really close in comparison. As we were doing the road section between Morris Bridge and Flatwoods, I ran through a 2" deep puddle that the tires decided to deposit down my back and my ass. Fun times. At this point we are about 1/2 way through the distance we plan on covering.

By the time we made it to the paved loop at Flatwoods, the rain had stopped and the sun returned. The interior trails on the loop were pretty muddy but the clay gully was no worse that normal (bottom of the pedals touched the water).

Fording the river...
At this point we were already fairly soaked, but I wasn't really prepared for this. I wish I had taken a picture, but Ryan and I were trying to figure out the driest way around a section of trail that had turned into a small lake. Lord knows we couldn't back track 40 yards to the paved trail, and then walked our bikes through the brush on the other side.

This is where the "Oregon Trail" approach kicked in.
You have 3 choices 1) ford the lake, 2) ride around the lake, or 3) wait for conditions to improve.

We decided to do a combination of 1 and 2. We geared down (too far) so that when we were pedaling, sometimes the rear tire would just throw mud up on our backs. After some major pedaling (and eventually putting my feet straight down into the water when I sunk) we made it to the other side. It was about that time I noticed the paved loop was only 30 feet to our left.

At this point the trail really straightens out as it approaches Trout Creek. I dropped the hammers and blasted through the rest of the trails until we got to the parking lot, never happier to see a towel in all my life.

We did avoid the "going to die feeling" but still had a great time.

Ride Stats:
Ride Time: 1:58:40
Stopped Time: 0:00
Distance: 12.62 miles
Average: 6.38 miles/h
Fastest Speed: 16.39 miles/h
Climb: 315 feet
Calories: 685


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