Thursday Night Ride

We had another great turn out for the ride last night. We did have one rider bail out at the beginning of the ride, when his rear hub locked up. Five of us went out to eat afterwards.

Thursday Night Ride by paulmnbw at Garmin Connect - Details

Mohawk Trail Ride

John & I had an epic ride Saturday. John has rode up here on the Mohawk trail before and he's tried to talk me into joining him , but I always wussed out because of all the climbing. So this past December, he came up with a shorter version,that only had one serious climb, so I agreed to do it with him.

So the two of us headed out early, for over a 2 hour drive, to reach our starting point. John with his bad knee and me,still about 30 lbs heavier than I want to be. We did have an out, if we couldn't make it up to the summit. We could turn around and ride back down to the start, which I think neither of us were going to be willing to do.

We had cool mid 50 degree temps and some cloudy skies at the start, perfect for a hilly ride. Plus John designed the ride so we had about 10 miles of retaliative flat roads to warm up. If I have to climb immediately on a ride, I'm toast the rest of the ride,I always need at least 5 miles of warm up, before my legs feel good.

There's a lot of history about the Mohawk Trail, but I'm not going into it here. You can Google it and you'll find all kinds of info.

As we started to climb, clouds and fog started to roll in. By the time we reached the summit, we could barely see at times.

A lot of the roads and bridges were washed out in this area, from Hurricane Irene a year ago. This is the last bit of reconstruction still going on, on the trail.

I'm looking down the trail, from where we just rode up.We stopped here for a rest.

This road is our return leg back down. I turned my lights on, so I could see and be seen by any vehicles.

Here I am, celebrating after completing the climb.

This is the east portal of the Hoosac Tunnel. It was built through the Hoosac mountains, because the trains couldn't make it up the steep climbs.

Even after we came back down, we still had some climbing to do, here and there.

Mohawk Trail Ride by paulmnbw at Garmin Connect - Details