Will Ride for Pie

Enough with the concrete already. We need dirt, and trees, and hills to ride up and down. And pie. Yes, dirt, trees, hills, and pie! Brilliant!

Well, almost.

Our bike rides have mostly been on city multiuse paths. Nice, paved, level paths for easy bike riding. The goal however has been to get our bikes out on some backroads, to work a little harder, and do some exploration around the southern California countryside.

Today’s plan was great — ride our bikes along little used backroads, eventually ending up in San Ysabel where we could eat some pie at the Julian Pie Company, then bike back to our car. I was a little worried that the roads I was looking at were actually private roads, inaccessible to us. The brilliant thing however was that we would be parking at a nature preserve, so if plan A went out the window, we could still ride on some nice dirt roads at the nature preserve as plan B. As it turns out, the plan A roads were private. Hungry, and slightly disappointed, we headed into San Ysabel to eat our pie. We would return post-pie to ride a bit around the nature preserve and salvage our bike riding aspirations.

The road at the nature preserve was fantastic for bike riding with a trailer in tow. I was ecstatic — exactly the kind of surface and grade that I have been looking for. The road was a dream!

We pedaled happily for a good three-quarters of a mile. And then we hit a hill. I like biking up hills. Well, most hills. This one was steep, and slanted, with some pretty nasty ravines and ruts.  Sure, it doesn’t look so fierce in a picture, but trust me, there was no way to pedal up this thing with a trailer, and I didn’t think it was even safe to try with little man riding back there.

I ran to the top to see what it looked like up above. Nice and flat, good road again for at least a little bit, so we pulled the little man out of his trailer, and walked everything up the hill, mounted our bikes again, and kept going.

We rode for another quarter mile. The road steepened up again, and the quality of the surface took a degraded again. We walked to the top of the hill. It was time to call it a day.

The return trip was more of a walk, as Jeannie carried the little man back down the couple of hills, while I road the bikes back to where the road was a nice surface. Unfortunately Jeannie slipped on one of the descents. She scraped up her knee pretty good, but was able to get Mason, whom she was carrying, down to the ground gently and safely.

So today’s bike ride didn’t really work out, but I do feel like I got a pretty good workout shuttling the bikes around, and running up and down hills. Yeah, it was a failure, and kind of brutal in spots. I can’t wait until next weekened for our next one.