Just a great fall weekend. Saturday we lead a club ride up at Cedro. Six of us total. Mostly a mix of beginner and intermediate riders, but fun to show some new people around. We started at Tablazon and rode 462 up to Lone Pine and took that to Pinyon 2-track down to Lower Pine and back to the lot. A really easy and short ride, but a good way to introduce newcomers.

Sunday after church, I headed up for a singlespeed ride around David Canyon and Otero Canyon. This is a great area for SS. I was all over the place up there and even though my time was limited I managed 18 miles in an hour and 38 minutes with about 2,400 feet of climbing. Just a great day to be out and I didn't want it to end, but I was actually starting to catch a chill riding even though I was putting out a good effort on the bike. I felt great and wished I had more daylight so I could do the same loop again.

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Pictures are from some recent rides in the Sandias, Manzanitas, and two fawns I spotted drinking from a puddle at Cedro while their mom kept lookout. Amazing what you'll see in the woods when you stop and sit quietly a while. I find a lot of joy and contentment spending time in the mountains in the fall. Great stuff.

"I am in love with Montana . . . Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans." John Ernst Steinbeck.

This time of year we normally are heading off to Big Sky country to see family and friends, to fool a few trout with offerings of hair and feathers, and of course to find beautiful singletrack to ride. Bozeman used to be a sleepy little college town, where the pace of life was as it should be, laid back. It has definitely changed but still nice and a home away from home for me. Seems like growing pains are everywhere in the west as people grasp for their little piece of paradise. Even water-rich Montana has not been spared from the current drought as wildfires scorch the earth and smoke fills the skys.

I'm going to miss having world class pizza at Mckenzie River, and a pitcher of one of my favorite brews, Moose Drool. Hope to get back soon.

Pictured is a beautiful piece of singletrack near Bozeman.

I love the smell of the desert after it rains. Thursday evening we planned a north foothills ride and as soon as we were wheeling the bikes out of the garage the rain started coming down hard. Fortunately it passed quickly and we took off for a north foothills loop. We headed down the bike path and picked up the dirt trail next to Sims Park road and climbed up into Elena and cruised the trails till dark and headed home passing the Tram and water tanks along the way. Pino arroyo is still flowing as are others. So nice to be hearing running water up there. Temps were perfect and the singlespeed and legs were in a good mood. Got out on the pavement Tues and Wed on the Klein for some asphalt therapy. We thought about racing Cedro this weekend, but just couldn't get jazzed up with the idea. Should be a fun course and a challenge for the SS crowd to pick the right gearing. Fast and flowing to start, then finishing with some pretty challenging technical climbing on Coyote and Five Hills of Death. Really glad they put Cedro back on the racing schedule as there are some really great rides out there being so close to the big city. Glad it's Friday and hope to have some adventures to report from the weekend.

As far as riding went this week, we were both a bit under the weather, but did manage a couple of road rides and a quick loop around Tunnel and Otero. I was thinking this morning about what I was doing five years ago today...

In the days following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, I found myself about as far removed from civilization as possible. You see, earlier that year, I had drawn a coveted archery elk tag for a remote portion of New Mexico's Gila, and I wasn't missing this hunt for anything, despite the fact that I had to go solo. It was strangely eerie in the Gila that year and amazingly quiet as not even a random airplane could be heard. I huddled in my sleeping bag each night listening to the BBC on my tiny shortwave radio, hoping and praying that we'd get the terrorist bastards. I'd have to say, that this was one of the lonliest experiences of my life being isolated and helpless. I was getting so lonely in fact, that on the morning of September 19th, I was going to bag the rest of the hunt and head home so I thought I'd just spend a few waking hours near my camp seeing what might happen. I set up in a prime spot and tried my best with a variety of calls to sound like a harem of cows and calves, when all of a sudden an incredible elk bugle rang out below me not more than 200 yards away. I had just enough time to nock an arrow, and when I saw that big bull coming my way, my heart about pounded out of my chest. I got a good arrow into him and he just layed down about 50 yards away from me and breathed his last. It was a beautiful 6x5 Gila bull; my first. I took some time to give thanks to the Lord for this great harvest which provided meat for an entire year. It took me nearly 9 more hours to get the meat de-boned, put into game bags, and packed out to my truck. Driving back to the Burque was bittersweet. That 6x5 rack is my constant reminder of the day the world changed. What were you doing five years ago?

Well, let's hope all my blogger glitches have gone away and I can resume posting. Gotta love a long weekend. The plan was to ride as much as possible the whole weekend, but a nasty endo at Cedro Saturday morning left me kicking back and sore all day Sunday. I'm glad I don't crash very often, but seems like when I do, it's usually an endo. Bruised up hip, elbow, and a sore shoulder, but overall nothing too serious. By the end of the ride though, I could feel some tendonitis coming on in my right knee, so maybe I tweaked something there too. Trails are really in pretty darn good shape at Cedro considering all the rain this year and even my bald rear tire stuck like glue through the turns. The rest did me good on Sunday and by afternoon we were planning our Labor Day ride. It ended up being a club ride at Cochiti Mesa with Phil, Matt, Ann, and me. With my sore knee and hip, I opted to dust off my Sugar FS bike for the day. It was really fun having all those gears to climb with, and the FS made me feel like I'd been riding a barcalounger all day. Since group rides always take twice as long as they should, (why the heck is that?) I decided to take the group for a 22 mile loop from Dixon's apple orchard, to the top of the mesa, where we stopped for lunch, and to give thanks and pray. We then dropped into Canon de Negro on the other side of the mesa, and rode that until we picked up the Media Dia singletrack. Fun loop with about 4,400 feet of climbing and tons of stream crossings. The upper part of Media Dia is in really rough shape from our torrential monsoon season, but the lower half was screaming fast. We hadn't ridden with Phil for a long time and he did great. He's been mountain biking a couple years, but in his younger years, Phil was a Cat 1 road racer and was a teamate to the Bostisaurus. Phil's a powerfull guy that also holds some world records in weightlifting and when he shakes your hand it literally feels like he could crush it if he wanted. Our other friend Matt joined us, fresh off of retiring from the Air Force, and just recently back from a mountain biking adventure in the Ukraine with some fellow bombers. Ann's been riding really well and has improved tremendously this year, I'm proud to say. The shots are from an absolutely beautiful day at Cochiti. Finished off the day with a late lunch at the Range.