Boulder Park Mountain Biking

After being off the bike and any exercising for over a week due to a leg injury I was finally well enough to go for a MTB ride. I headed out to Boulder Park after reading reviews of the trail. I really liked this trail since it is single track (one way), it has two tracks the blue is 6 miles and is the easy one the red is 10 miles and more difficult with creek crossings. I rode both paths and got a good workout, on this weekday ride I saw no one else.

It is nice to have a large area in the City of Dallas that is dedicated to Mountain bikes, not crowded and looks like a nice shady place to ride in the heat of the summer.

There were several little bridges, and one large one shown in the above photo. The trail takes you over and under this bridge.

A few areas here have narrow sections through the trees, I tried to illustrate that in the above picture. Like I said I liked this Park and if I ride here a lot I will cut down my handlebars for better clearance, keep your knobby tires if you want to make it up the hills and don't go if it is wet.

We have also done some road rides, one was on a nice Sunday when Michele and I rode about 35 miles with a stop at a local coffee shop on a perfect weather day. Our friends Gary and Lugay went with us and I took this photo ( blind over the shoulder) while riding. Michele is in the Texas Jersey. We all went out to dinner to close out a really nice day.

I have been invited to go for a full day of sailing on a Pacific Seacraft Danna that has crossed the Atlantic so stay tuned for the next post.

Dennis

Mountainbiking Huntsville State Park

We had heard Huntsville State Park was a good place to ride the trails and hike and since it was warm we paid them a visit. This is a large park with a nice little lake and trails from short to about 10 miles long. These trails are nice, no rocks but a fair number of tree roots will keep you standing up a lot. I should also note there are quite a few boardwalk areas to keep you out of the marshy areas.

On the longest trail called the three C's trail I heard the sound of rushing water so I stashed the bike and hiked in to find this small waterfall in the Pine woods. The picture does not do it justice.

While the trails are great and it is a beautiful park, we stayed in a shelter and found the facilities and the restrooms a little run down. Don't let this stop you from going and if you can go during the week it would be a super place.

Sunday about noon the wind changed and a blue Norther arrived, within 5 minutes we went from shorts and t-shirts to coats and long pants cutting our trip a few hours short.

Happy New Year

Dennis

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.

Ride with a reason

We filled up with some cheap gas on Thanksgiving Day, the lower prices help a lot but I wonder if it will just delay conservation and in the long run cost more. My non scientific survey shows traffic seems to have picked up a lot.A week ago Tuesday a group of about 15 of us rode our bikes to a viewing at a funeral home, The funeral is for a long time member of our local bike club. His family appeared to really enjoy having cyclist dressed in warm clothes and riding in the dark across Dallas to pay respects. James loved to ride his bicycle and cycling had nothing to do with his passing.

This week Michele and I took a midweek ride at White Rock Lake, we usually ride a 9+ mile lap together and then I take off and ride until I make a lap up on her. We will no longer be doing that as she has gotten to fast for me to make up 9 miles. We still split up and I do the optional hills or sometimes join another rider and work together, or just test each other.

Taking a break on flagpole hill, while this is not a good year for fall color there is enough to make it a beautiful time of the year to ride here.

We also rode a trail that follows White Rock Creek for 7 miles, this trail out and back with a lap around the lake is 25 miles. We had a nice 40 miles or so. This picture is Michele returning to the trail, we rode up this side path and it leads to a new development of modernistic cube style houses with a big effort on going green, next time I will get a picture of some of them.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

Share what you have

Dennis & Michele

On the 5th Bobby took me sailing again on a perfect day, we decided to sail over to the Fish House Restaurant at the Bass pro complex. We sailed wing on wing with the main and jib to clear the big point and the reached on over to the docks. Had a nice fish sandwich and a nice sail back.This is our newest Bass Pro Shop, I wonder how many of these we need. Locally or close by we have Gander mountain, Cabella's and 2 Bass Pro's as well as Academy, Dicks etc.

I got invited to hunt in Brady Texas again and took this picture as the sun tried to break through the fog, The deer were like grey ghosts silently moving through the wet woods. I was down to 2 packages of meat and now the freezer is well stocked again.

Michele and I have still been riding our bikes a good bit but we are not putting in the miles or hard long efforts like we did this summer. We did do a long ride Saturday on our roadies, I broke off with our club's fast group and gave a good effort but I got dropped. The only thing that makes getting dropped taste a little better is I wasn't the only one or the first one to go "off the back"!

36 degrees this morning

Dennis

A New Era

The flowers have been hit by frost, the leaves are falling and the flagstone patio is done. Well almost anyway, it will need a little detail work to be finished. With the raised beds, the rain barrel and Sprockets dog house we like the new backyardWe finally moved the boat to the lake as the refit was as done as it is going to get. The boat makes the F-150 look a little small, kinda like a big boat and toy truck.

Ready to move out on the way to Lake Texoma and a date at Cedar Mills with theTravel lift and mast crane.

We made the 85 mile move fine, I was a little worried as after all I built the trailer from scratch. We fully rigged her and put the sails on and took a little test spin in the marina area.

The picture below marks the end of our ownership of the Sailing Vessel Rising Star, The little dot in the center of the picture out beyond the boats in the Marina is Mike sailing off in his new boat.
I am happy and sad and I hope he enjoys the boat.

After all this we went to Lake Fairfield and camped out for the weekend, we had perfect weather to hike and got several nice rides on the bicycles. Oh and yes the bass were still biting in my little cove. As the campfire fades and our eyelids grow heavy we contemplate our next escape pod, maybe an RV or a storm damaged big sailboat around Galveston, or maybe nothing for a little while.

Get out and vote

Dennis