Monday Wakeup, Tuesday Breakup

After a long, hard weekend of relaxing, having a few adult beverages and getting stuff done around the house, Monday snaps you back to the day job. The thing that actually makes you money. It's a rude awakening, but it seems too early in the week to need a head-clearing ride. But it helps.

So I find myself on another ride at Glen Run after a few succinct text messages with my friend Chuck throughout the day. I leave the office a half hour early and we get right to it. I struggle, as I often do, to find the right balance of physiology for after work rides. I might be under-hydrated, under-nourished, sleepy and my muscles are atrophied from desk duty for eight hours.

I just have to punch it. It can take quite a few revolutions of rubber before anything feels good inside my carcass. This day, it was after 40 minutes of some pretty hot legs at the redline. We did a few loops around the pond and ran a few sections of the singletrack multiple times. We squeezed out just under five miles and about 950 feet in total climb.





I discovered that night that I'm still not there yet with my mountain legs. I had to slap some ice on my legs and sprawl out on the couch. But tomorrow I would have a welcome surprise. Fresh gear day would arrive a day early.

Getting new bike parts in the mail is always rad. I'd decided I wanted to break up with the stock handlebar on my Bad Habit... it just wasn't working. I wanted a bit more rise and sweep. I ordered a Chromag Fubar OSX from Jenson USA. In frickin' blue. So sexy.

The blue almost matches some of the blue accents on the bike. Whatever. Maybe I'm reaching. I'm doing less reaching in a literal manner, as the rise on the Fubar is 25mm vs. 15mm on the stock bar. The sweep is an addition degree back and it's also 780mm wide, vs. 760 on the stock bar. It's also 30 grams lighter.

The first few rides with the Fubar have felt good. I think it tweaked the stance just enough to put me in the sweet spot. I'll leave you with a cozy photo from the mod shop session at sunset.

Glen Run Again

I recently hit Glen Run Nature Preserve for a second time after riding it a few weeks ago. It was perfect weather this time, 70s and sunny. I was a little bit faster this time, my fitness levels are kicking in a little bit more.

It will be fun to watch the foliage grow into the area. As you can see from some of these photos, we're not full green in the Poconos yet.

 Fun truck is also a working truck

Them bones surveying the parking lot

Again, it's great to see a growing bike scene again in the Poconos. Where we'd once had Jim Thorpe as a Northeast US destination-level location, we've witnessed some decay over the years. But hey, the dream of the 90's are alive in the Poconos again!

Let's Hit the Country Club!

Visions of visors, white gloves, golf carts and beers in the sun may be dancing in your head, but you've got it all wrong. OK, not the beer part, but the rest would be inaccurate because I'm just referring to the nickname of my home trail. I just laid my first tracks of 2018 on it last week.

New log obstacles arrive yearly 

 Finally, T-shirt weather

These particular trails are just around the corner from my house in the DWG National Recreation Area. It's a local stash sort of thing, so I won't post the map here, but it's probably out there in the ether somewhere. I did the extended shorty loop, which wrangled about 4.6 miles and 725 feet of total ascent.

There's a lot of debris along with a few new log obstructions, so it'll take a little bit of cleanup until it's got its summer shape back in place. That goes for me too!