This year, we went to McCormick’s Creek State Park and hiked Trail 7. We had only hiked this trail once before, way back in 2007 if my memory is correct.

Here is mom, just starting down Trail 7.

The trail starts out following a ridgetop alongside the gorge that contains the creek and waterfall, with some nice rock outcroppings where you can look out over the ravine.

Naturally, my nephew, Avery, went right to the edge.

We also had a couple nice views of the creek.

Including a great place to throw rocks …

Next we walked on a boardwalk across a muddy area thick with foliage.

Before long, we reached the White River.

From there, the trail looped back toward the start.

I had forgotten how great this trail is, with some diverse views and enough ups and downs to be interesting, but not overly strenuous.

More importantly, it was a fun way to spend Mother’s Day. I hope my mom enjoyed it as much as I did.

One fun story: my rear tire had been slipping around a bit and I was riding along somewhat absent-mindedly, thinking about what was going on with my tire when I stuck my knee out too far in a turn and smacked it on a tree. I heard a CRACK! sound echo through the woods. Oddly enough my knee is fine, so I guess I broke the tree …

We did a variation on our “secret night ride” route we’ve done a few times before (see here and here). It was an excellent ride. Even though it’s not long in terms of distance, we certainly got our share of adventure as we rolled through the woods on muddy, puddle-riddled trails, listening to the coyotes yipping and howling and the whippoorwills whippoorwilling. We watched toads hopping across the trail in our headlight beams, and later, spider eyes glimmering back at us.

One of the route changes involved climbing up on an old eroded horse trail which we had ridden down before, which was difficult enough. However,  climbing it was another story, as we discovered. The trail was steep and the ground wet and slick and we had to push our bikes up for quite some time.

It was also Cinco de Mayo, and Dave had the presence of mind to bring some margaritas in his backpack. Drinking margaritas in the middle of the woods at night was a blast.

An amazing moment occurred as we flew downhill on a gravel road toward a lake, seeing the supermoon rising over the lake with the incredibly loud sounds of buzzing, chirping insects and croaking toads enveloping us.

It was very much the kind of ride I needed. Fun, with a sense of adventure but without being too epic, and great company to top it off. I need more rides like this one!

I’m still here, but school and my contract work have been keeping me busy. I haven’t been riding much. I was at least commuting most of the time through late February, but then I got out of the routine of commuting by bicycle for most of March. I did manage a couple road rides during that time, but nothing else. Instead of riding to class, I took the bus a lot, and sometimes even drove (due to an odd set of circumstances, we ended up with a second car, so driving is an option for me now, although parking is expensive near campus).

A number of my bike/blog friends are doing 30 Days of Biking during April, that is, riding every single day in April. I’m not doing that, but I have at least started commuting every day again. I’m a creature of habit, and I feel like I’m already back in my riding routine.

One thing that is interesting to note is that there is a massive amount of construction in Bloomington right now. Anywhere you drive, the construction is an obstacle. However, my bike commute route is completely unaffected. I guess those low-traffic roads just don’t need as much work, and they are less likely to be undergoing “improvement.”

I’ve also been having a few health issues, nothing serious but enough to prevent me from riding at times. Nothing serious, I think, but I have a doctor’s appointment coming up, so hopefully we can figure out some of the problems I’ve been having.

School is great, I’m loving it and learning a whole lot. It is, however, sapping all my energy. I almost got out for a ride on Sunday but then had to spend the day working on stuff for a project. I’m hoping I can get out for something more than a commute soon.

The thing about Dave is, hiking with him is different from hiking with a normal person. He loves to explore, and he’s not overly concerned with staying on the trail. This can lead to some very memorable hikes, such as this one in search of a pond (which we never really found), or this one on the Old Axsom Branch “trail” that hasn’t been maintained in many years, yet features some of the best views of Lake Monroe I’ve seen.

This outing was not as epic as that one, but as Dave got out maps and showed me where he wanted to go, I realized we would spend plenty of time bushwhacking. His maps showed some trails, but much of it involved statements like “I think we can make our way down this ravine to Crooked Creek Lake,” and “I think we can find a way up the other side, and then hopefully connect with this other trail.” Some of the trails were horse trails, but others weren’t even established trails, just paths Dave spotted in satellite view in Google Maps.

I was intrigued, and ready for adventure. Oh yeah, did I mention it was raining on and off throughout the day?

We started out on what I believe is officially a horse trail, but it had a gravel surface for quite a while.

Logging is always a little disheartening to see, but it did open up some nice views.

We were mostly on ridgetops for a while.

As we hiked through this section, the rain started back up. By the time I got my poncho on (tearing it in the process) it had stopped again.

Soon the trail ended, and Dave didn’t skip a beat. He didn’t even slow down.

We were fascinated by this tree that had decayed so much that there was only a flat outline of it remaining on the ground.

It didn’t take long for us to find our way down to Crooked Creek Lake.

Sarah and I had hiked here a few years back, so I knew it was a rugged hike around the lake, bushwhacking most of the way. In fact, this was the most difficult part of the entire hike, making our way across steep hillsides covered in brush and slick rocks, with many trees felled by beavers blocking our path.

After we made our way around the lake, we started up the ravine on the other side. Dave said something like “I *think* there’s a trail up there …” And thus began the most strenuous part of the hike. I don’t know how long or how high we climbed, but it went on for quite a while, and we went straight up the side of the ravine. I certainly hoped we would find the trail, and sure enough, we did. I had to stop and catch my breath at the top.

From there, it was more easy ridgetop hiking back to the car. The sun was setting over a ridge as we finished our hike.

My GPS is very messed up right now, butit said we hiked 3.7 miles.  In reality, it’s probably a little more than that. I’ll include the map, even though it’s missing some parts.

This hike was a blast! It makes me want to do more exploration hikes, trying to figure out ways to get from trails to places they don’t really connect to, or finding ways from one trail to another, etc. It’s very liberating to realize that you don’t always need to rely on a trail to get you where you want to go.

Neither of us had ridden much for a while, so we decided on about a 27-mile route and moseyed the whole way. This ride was exactly what I needed: a relaxing ride, not too tough in terms of distance or pace. Though there was a decent amount of climbing, it was much easier at our relaxed pace.

It was an unseasonably warm day, probably in the upper 40s. And sunny skies. Aside from a little wind, it was a fantastic day for a ride. We rode a subset of this ride, but we did the loop in the opposite direction. So there were no new roads, but we rode some in a new direction.

Carmel Ridge Road was one highlight, but in this direction, it was mostly climbing.

These folks had their own private bridge. The sign over it read “Rodgers’ Bridge over Branstetter Hollar.” Nice.

As time wore on, the shadows grew longer.

Somewhere along the way, Dave’s knee  started acting up. And then his other knee. He has had some knee problems on and off for a while now, and they certainly were bothering him on this ride. I think it may have hampered his ability to enjoy the ride … which is too bad because I found it very fun and relaxing.

We passed some very interesting barns and cabins.

Another highlight of the ride came after a nice long descent on Lick Creek Road, as the road traversed flat creek bottoms for a couple of miles, following Lick Creek for a while.

We passed this huge house with a beautiful pond in front of it, somewhere along State Road 45.

We saw some lovely hills along Indian Hills Road.

Soon w were approaching Lake Lemon.

The sun set as we rode across the causeway on the lake.

Just one last (killer) hill, and we were back at Dave’s house, where we started our ride. A great end to a great ride. Rides have been too few and far between, but I am certainly enjoying them, when the opportunity arises.

For now, I’m getting to/from/around campus by bus, walking, and rides from my wife. It’s times like this when I’m glad I have some alternatives to riding.

Next week is finals, and then I have a few weeks off before winter semester begins. I’m looking forward to a break, and I hope I’ll be well enough to do some riding by then. I am thinking that I would really like to do some wandering rides — take my time and just enjoy myself, nothing too intense. It sounds relaxing.

It’s worthwhile to check out writeups from Tim and David. From their descriptions, I glean that it was very, VERY difficult, and involved a lot of suffering. I’ve had little time for training lately, so it may be a blessing in disguise that I wasn’t able to ride. Even so, I’m still irked that I didn’t get to go.

Saturday night I came down with a cold or something, just in time to be sick for possibly my busiest week of the entire semester. I’m hoping winter break in a few weeks will allow me to decompress and maybe even do some recreational riding.

Tim and David and I were supposed to head down to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky for a weekend of cycling and camping the weekend before last, but it didn’t happen. I was completely worn down and on on the verge of getting sick and Tim got sick, also. So I’ve been fighting varying degrees of sickness on and off for a couple of weeks now. Finally it blew up into a nasty cold over the weekend, but I’ve still be chugging along on projects and such. I hope to get a little bit of a break tonight, but otherwise my workload looks like it will remain intense for a while.

I haven’t even had much desire to ride, which is a weird feeling. It shouldn’t surprise me, because it happened last semester too, and then I did a lot of riding over the summer. I just can’t do everything at once, I suppose.

Thanksgiving weekend brings the Gravel Grovel, a metric century gravel grinder. I’m planning on riding it with Tim and David and Timothy (all Louisville people). They seem to be training for it more than I am, and treating it more like the race that it is. I am a little nervous about it, given my lack of training, but I am looking forward to a good day on the bike with friends, so I’m trying not to worry.

The upside to the days I take the bus is that I get to walk more, once I get to campus. I love walking, sometimes even more than riding, although it’s not practical when getting from point A to point B quickly is necessary. But walking allows you to slow down more, make more observations, and brood. Brooding is something I do well, and enjoy. I like to listen to music and just live inside my head. It’s wonderful and therapeutic.

I do have one rather significant bit of news to report, and that is that I’m quitting my job, where I have worked for two years. My course load is picking up to the extent that I just don’t have enough time available to make it worthwhile. I’ll do some small contract projects when I have the time, but that’s it. Actually, I’ve had some projects on hold so now maybe I can pick those back up again.

Despite the stress and workload, school is excellent. I love academia, I’m learning a lot, and every single one of my classes is interesting. I’m spending by far the most time on my photography class, but it is extremely rewarding.

So, we pushed the ride back a week, to this past Sunday. This time, we lucked out. It was chilly in the morning: 38 degrees Fahrenheit according to my car. Later in the day, it would warm up to 66 degrees or so. That’s a pretty wide range of temperatures, but it was a beautiful day all the day without a cloud in the sky, and deep blue skies. A chill in the air is ideal, to me, especially for mountain biking.

Tim had never ridden these trails. For Dave and I, these are our home trails, so we knew Tim was in for a treat. By the way, Tim has an excellent writeup of the ride on his blog, complete with some pictures.

When we rolled out, I was in the lead. I wasn’t sure what kind of pace the guys wanted to ride, and it took a few minutes for me to find a  pace that seemed comfortable to me. What I discovered was, I was feeling really good. This surprised me a bit, since my training has been a bit lacking lately, but no complaints here!

The way we rode the trails, they started out easy and more or less get progressively harder. This allowed us a good warmup before we had to deal with rock gardens and other technical features. Also, the easier trails are extremely fun. Even the easiest trails have challenges, really, but for the most part you can open up and pick up some speed.

Since I was feeling strong, I pushed it a bit, and on these trails, any extra energy you put into your riding is well-rewarded in the form of extra fun. If you can keep your speed up a little, a fun rolling ride through the woods becomes more of a roller-coaster ride. That’s exactly what happened. I hope the pace wasn’t too fast. I wasn’t sure how long I could keep it up, but I was having a blast.

Pine Loop, North Tower, Aynes, and Green Valley were all a ton of fun. Tim said they kind of ran together in his head, and I think for me they did too, even though I’m quite familiar with them.

These shots are from somewhere along the Aynes loop.

Here, Dave and Tim and navigating some rocks toward the top of Aynes.

And there they go!

As I said, I wasn’t sure how long I could keep up the ambitious pace. Up through this point we were still moving quite quickly. Most of the way up Hesitation Point was the same way. I love how it feels when I’m riding strong.

Hesitation Point is a “black diamond” trail, one of the harder ones we would encounter. It’s two miles, mostly climbing in this direction. It has a lot of technical features along the way, including tight switchbacks, rock gardens, etc. I made it up the two rock gardens, amazingly — I almost never clear those on the way up.

I felt great! Then, we approached the “rock waterfall,” which is basically a really big rock garden. It looked absolutely daunting. But I thought, “what the heck, I’m on fire today, I’ll give it a shot!” Unfortunately as I entered, something, probably my pedal, got caught on a rock, pulling me to a stop. I knew I was going to lose my balance, and tried to fall in such a way that I wouldn’t get hurt. Unfortunately, my kneecap landed right on a sharp rock.

I got up and walked it off for a couple of minutes. It looked like it was going to swell a bit, but it really wasn’t bad. It hurt, but I walking on it helped. I hoped that riding would help even more, so we got back on our bikes, and I did find that it felt better as I rode. I guess it helps that I basically came to a complete stop before falling.

As we rode on, I had lost a little bit of my edge. I still did well on most of the rest of the HP features, though I did skip the large boulder. I’ve never really figured out how to muscle my way up that one. Everything else went fine, and soon we were at the top, taking in the view, having a snack, and taking some photos.

Now we continued on and on the next trail, the Walnut Trail, I did OK for a bit but once we hit the technical parts, I lost the flow, and my nerve. There are a number of really difficult technical sections on this trail, sometimes several features one right after another, and I just couldn’t do it. I ended up walking large sections of this trail, and getting quite frustrated in the process.

Eventually we reached the end and got on the Limekiln Trail, which is an easy trail, but with sections of pump track, it’s incredibly fun. Here I found my groove again and we kicked ass the rest of the way to the end of the trail. It felt good to get the flow back.

We took a break and refilled our Camelbaks, ate some unappealing Clif bars and such, and then headed back. I felt pretty good as we rode Limekiln again, but we skipped the hardest part of Walnut, and I was glad we did. That trail just isn’t fun to me, and I was getting tired. Tired and technical aren’t a good combination.

By the time we reached Hesitation Point, I was slowing down considerably. I was nervous about the technical parts on HP, since I had messed up on my way up. I was also finding that while I like to keep a loose grip on the bars to allow bumps to be absorbed by the bars, rather than my body, as I got more and more tired, I couldn’t keep a loose, fluid grip. I was gripping the bars too tightly, which made some things more difficult, but I couldn’t seem to help it.

So, I just went slowly and cautiously down HP. I did clear most of the technical features on the way down, but not as fluidly as I had earlier in the ride. Somewhere around the bottom of HP, Dave’s leg started cramping.

Fortunately we were on the home stretch at this point and made our way back to the parking lot. Tim was on fire now, and showed no sign of slowing down. He was just flying. I was struggling to keep up, but still, the return trip was a lot of fun. It helps that it’s mostly downhill. We hit Pine Loop on our way back which is just such a fun way to end a ride.

By the end of the ride, we had ridden every trail in the park except for Schooner Trace, which is an “Expert”-level trail. Too technical for us.

After the ride, we headed into the small town tourist trap of Nashville, IN, and hit up the Big Woods Brewing Company. I had heard a lot of great things about them. I enjoyed an excellent stout and a good, but not great, burger. It was a great end to a great day of riding.

The ride was Sunday. It’s now Tuesday, and I’m still stiff and sore. I forgot the extent to which mountain biking takes its toll on your body, much more than any other kind of riding. But it’s a good soreness, reminiscent of a fun day on the bike. The knee that I smashed is a little bruised and sore, but it’s not bad at all.