Thursday was a different story. At lunch, I walked out to my car, saw my mountain bike on the back of it, and pulled it off and rode to get my lunch rather than drive. Then, after work, I headed over to Lost Valley for some real off road riding. Mother nature had a little something different in mind when I got there though. For about the last year or so, I've been parking at "the mound," which is this big rock pile that is used to bury some environmentally-unfriendly/radioactive/whatever-else-was-laying-around materials at this old WWII weapon facility next to the conservation area. From there, it's about a mile down the Hamburg Trail, where I then make a right and drop into Lost Valley on some rocky double track. At the bottom of the hill, I normally make a left onto some more double track (hard packed dirt rather than rock here), which lasts another mile or so before finally turning into some nice, not-too-technical single track. That area was a bit soft, considering that it's been a week since it rained around here. But once the trail crossed the creek and started climbing, everything was dry and perfect. At the end of that section of single track, I rejoined the double track road and started climbing the hill back up to the other section of single track. When I got up there, it was starting to get dark, and I heard some people coming back up the trail, so I waited for them to get out before going in. But when they did come out, they said there were some areas that were really sloppy and it would be better not to ride that. Well, that left me with two options - continue on the double track back up to Hamburg where I came in, or go back down the hill I just rode up and ride the length of Hamburg back to my car. Looking for added miles, and knowing I had to descend and climb no matter what, I went with the latter option. So while I got about 11 miles in that evening, only about 2 of it was real single track.
Friday was even warmer than Thursday, so I went back out to Lost Valley after work (no lunch time ride that day), hoping the 70° weather would dry out the mud bogs a bit. There were a couple guys leaving as I was getting there, so I asked one of them about the conditions and he said almost perfect. Good. Indeed, when I got to the area along the creek that was a little mushy the night before, it had firmed up, and most of the single track I had avoided was just fine. There was once descent that sometimes I'm a little hesitant on anyway that was a little mushy, and given that it was dark by the time I got there, I walked most of it. I'm still getting used to this whole single track at night thing. But I made it back up the other side of that hill and got to the point where I would normally turn around and go back to the center double track. But being that it was dark, and since I'm noticeably better going the way I had come from than the other direction, I continued around the loop as it turned into double track back to the bottom of Hamburg. So I got 15 miles in with that trip.
Saturday, I pulled the road bike out and met up with a friend to do a loop through the ritzy parts of St. Louis County. We parked at a strip mall in Town & Country, then rode east through Frontenac and Ladue before turning south towards Webster Groves, and then heading back west to our cars. I sometimes forget how hilly the more built up areas of this county is, as the whole ride was pretty rolling. Being I have 60 or 70 pounds on the guy I was riding with, I was struggling to keep up with him on some of the climbs. All was well and good until we were about 4 miles or so from finishing when I noticed my wheel was wobbling a bit. Sure enough, it was losing air and when I tried to fill it up it lost even more air. Turns out, the nozzle on the tube was getting unscrewed and letting the air out. But I didn't figure that out until the tire was off, so we just replaced the tube. As we were pumping the tire up, someone rode up by us who happened to live right on our planned route, and he offered to let us use his floor pump. We graciously accepted, and so with about 60 psi in the tire, I limped over to his house to fill it up the rest of the way. This guy had some interesting stories about unsupported touring (he was out training for an Alaskan tour this summer), and we would've stayed and chatted longer than we did, but it was getting to be after 4:00 and daylight was fading. So we parted ways and made it back to our cars with a half hour of daylight to spare. Good thing, since I didn't bring my light.
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