April in November

These past few days have seemed more like spring than the prelude to winter. The warm and generally sunny weather drew people outside all weekend for a multitude of reasons. Many of my neighbors took the opportunity to finish their yard work or put up Christmas decorations. Fortunately I had my yard done weeks ago and the few outside decorations can wait until closer to Christmas. That meant I had plenty of time to do other things including riding.

I managed to ride all four days of the holiday break, at least two to three hours on each day except Thursday. On Friday the rail trails were wet on top and the mud coated the bike with a grey, cement looking coating. I ended up getting back on the roads through Stony and then the back roads home. At least the dirt roads were in fairly decent shape.

Saturday's ride was over to Addison Oaks to join the trail coordinator, Paul Bailey, on a lap with some out of town guests that he was showing around the trails. Paul puts a ton of work into the trails and every fall he uses a blower to remove the leaves from the trail to allow it to dry faster. It works, the trail was about 95% dry. It was probably in even better shape today.

Today I met up with six others to ride over to the cyclocross race at Bloomer. All of us except one were on SS's but we won't mention any names Mark. The group makes up most of the NOSS members, the North Oakland Single Speeders. Just a bunch of guys from mainly Lake Orion and Oxford that get together to ride and have fun. Of course most of them ride SS's. I do ride a SS on occasion but because I'm the oldest they let me ride anyway. That or they want me for my Hammer connection.

It turned out that one member of our group, Jay Jones, decided to enter the race on his SS MTB. We had fun cheering Jay on and watching him pass geared cyclocross bikes that were better suited for the course than his bike was. Some of our group had never been to a 'cross race before and were impressed with the race. I think some of them be entering one next year to try it out.

Now that this holiday is over it's back to work and probably onto the trainer. Cold and wet is coming our way and that means it's back to the basement and Spinervals or just spinning. When the weather cooperates I'll be back outside but it may be awhile.