A mountain bike, too

"Everything is banal in experience, fleeting in duration, sordid in content; in all respects the same today as generations now dead and buried have found it to be." - Marcus Aurelius

 

 Happy St. Valentine's Day.

Decades ago, I used to be an avid road cyclist. After a too-long hiatus, I've decided to get back on the bike. That's all well and good, but things have changed in the decades since I rode on the shoulder of a highway... like texting. I have no problem dying while doing something I love - but getting mowed down by an inattentive driver seems... so pointless and awful. I'm still going to be road cycling, but the options are pretty limited, because I will only be using dedicated paved bike paths.

Because there are only a handful of paved bike paths available, I'm pretty sure I'll get bored to death with them in short order. So I've decided to take up mountain bike riding. I should have done this years ago, because a short distance from my house is a great place to MTB: Farragut State Park. It's close enough that I can get there without having to ride in traffic or tote my bike there with a car.

Yeah... I probably won't be riding *that* bike trail anytime soon.

Fortunately there are some flatter trails available that won't land me in the hospital if I make a wrong move.  The above trail is the squiggly line at the bottom right on the map.

I've had the mountain bike out three times so far.  I stopped going on rides when the weather service issued a wind chill advisory a couple of days ago.  No point getting extremities amputated due to frostbite.  I did have some fun before it got cold though!

Below:  An old railroad track that is now a dirt (mud) bike path that leads into Farragut State Park.

There is a complete wall of trees blocking the path behind the first downed one.  Probably from that last wind storm in January.  This was the end of my attempt at getting to Farragut State Park.

The following day, I set out to ride a small 14 mile loop - parts of which I've driven on in the past.  It became a bit of an adventure.  The county is in the process of pushing our dead-end road through to another major cross-road.  I decided to scout out their progress, and see how it looks before the entire forest gets developed.  It was below freezing when I did this, which will come into play later in the post.

Below:  End of the paved section

Below:  What came after the paved section.  There was a track-hoe at the end of this muddy section.  The operator was clearing trees and piling them up for burning.  The bike's tires flung a lot of mud, and the bike and I both got really muddy through here.

Below:  Just past where the the track-hoe was working, I found the abandoned narrow dirt road that passes through to the far end.  It's not been in use recently - there were 3-4 ft tall saplings growing in the middle of the trail - nature was taking the road back.  Fortunately there were ribbon markers for the track-hoe guy to know where to remove trees.  The markers kept me from straying off the path when the undergrowth got dense.

In the end, I made it out to the far side with a very muddy bike.  I rode north a little ways, then turned west onto a maintained (but very muddy) dirt road.  I went west for about four miles, mostly a gentle uphill grade.  What I didn't realize is that the entire time, the mud on my bike was freezing solid - in the front derailleur.

At the end of the western leg, I turned south and dropped into a glacier-carved valley.  The climb out was really tough, and made tougher by the fact that I couldn't get into the lowest gears, because the front shift mechanism was full of mud that had frozen into a solid block.

Below:  The 1.5 mile long grade (it continues the upward slope well beyond the bend) that I had to grind my way up without being able to use low gears.  It took a couple of stops to catch my breath.

 

 

Below: Aerial view of the same hill.  The grade ends just off the photo at the top left.

 It was pretty grueling - not gonna lie.  But it was also an awesome workout!  Almost two solid hours at a 153 average heart rate.

Below:  The mud has begun to melt out of the front derailleur and fall to the floor.  This was a pain in the ass to clean up, outdoors in the cold, with cold-running water.

One thing I learned though - it's not smart to just jump on the bike in jeans and start riding.  Best to have some butt protection, because the pressure points where the hips hit the saddle were in a great deal of pain afterwards.  I need to get some padded shorts to go underneath.  I also installed this - a shock-absorbing seat-post. 

Hopefully those two things will help make riding this thing more pleasant - because if it hurts every time I do it, I won't want to do it.