Merry Christmas

We hope everyone has a Great Christmas this year, it's obvious many are having a hard time this year and all who can should spread it around a little. Well on to the cycling. Our local club http://www.gdbclub.com/ has been having a Santa ride for about 20 years from what I have been told, this year we met in North Dallas to ride to Highland Park and meet up with Santa and the van of gifts and more riders. We rode with Santa to a Family Shelter in Downtown and sang carols and donated the gifts and money our club had rounded up. This made me feel very lucky indeed. A Group shot if front of a decorated house, sorry about the grass

Chris's van full of toys and loot.

Michele and others with Santa

Riding with Santa was fun and people honked with joy instead of anger, Santa tossed out candy canes to everyone we passed, kids, construction workers bus stops etc.

After this ride Michele and I got with 3 others and did some bonus miles, shorts on December19th, you have to take advantage of it.

After Christmas we are going to try to get away for a few days and camp out if the weather allows. No sailing the last few weeks due to the weather, work and the foiling of my best laid plans.

Dennis

North Shore Trail Review Grapevine Texas

I have an older mountain bike that I won from Carrier on a point system for selling oem parts. This bike was junk, it weighed about 40 lbs and had worthless brakes and a couple of springs they called a suspension.

I got an early Christmas present when this GT Mountain bike went on sale and I had a 20% off coupon. It is the Avalanche 1.0 hydraulic disc brake. I rode it around for a few days and decided to try out the North shore Trails 9 mile out and back route. The bike is so much nicer than what I have been riding on the trails, if money was no object you can get a lighter better bike, but this would be hard to beat for the price I paid.

The trail started at a Park on the North end of the dam and runs along the lake through corp of Engineer land its whole route. I would call this a tough technical ride, it starts out nice but the first real climb is full of big rocks and I like most people had to carry my bike. The ride was fun and had maybe 4 real hard spots,(walk) mostly it was very doable hills and creek crossings. Below is a picture of a balancing rock and an Idea of what the area is like.

Well I can't leave out the sailing, at various places I could see this regatta, there was no wind at the finish line so everyone sailed into this big hole and it took them a long time to finish. I may go ride this again next week, it was a good workout.

The only bad thing is the trail was busy, and it is narrow with blind turns and I was surprised a few times. I think I will ride this during the week when the crowds are smaller.