Good Enough for Friday

Ninety-four degrees licked at my face like a sheet of #50 sandpaper; the rays of the sun, tangible, scratching at legs and face. If not for my sweating eyeballs the orbs in which they were contained would have been as dry as two hundred year old wooden marbles. There was an entire Kentucky salt lick within the confined space of my upper lip. It was hot, yes, but not that hot and that left me confounded as to why I was going to fail for a second consecutive Friday to reach my goal of a twenty mile dirt ride. Part of the problem, I realize, is the ten mile loop which gets me back to, roughly, the start point, at the half way to twenty mark; a place on the mental map where it is oh so easy to simply say "good enough for today." I have, sometimes, noticed since relegating racing to the past that the desire to push because I feel I need to get that training in is visibly lacking.

Anyway, and consider this a PSA, as I descended to the tower of power, a County Fire truck was parked at the point where the Coyote Trail makes a 180º bend back upon itself up above the 10 freeway. Hmm, I thought, either an on-the-ground spotter, or there is a crew down the hill doing some clearing. A little of each was most accurate, I guess. He was on the lookout for people descending the road for a crew of one driving a bulldozer coming up. The annual grading project. That, of course, means that the Backside, as I call it, aka the Coyote Trail is a slip and slide nightmare of soft stuff with pockets full of loose rock all over the place. If you don't like that stuff consider it best to stay away for a while, until it becomes a little more compacted. Or you, like myself, could consider it opportunity to push a little bit, overcome a weakness in your riding.

sun baked

patterns

cedars and pine

slough

'dozer moving out of view