Schaeffer Farms - 21 miles

Today I drove out to Germantown, MD and met my friend Damien for a mountain ride at Schaeffer Farms. Schaeffer is awesome in general, but today's ride pushed past the confines of awesomeness and dare I say, bordered on the realm of epic. Though not fully worthy of the wearing the Epic robe, today's ride had nearly all the makings necessary for the aforementioned garment. The only ingredients lacking would be: distance and technical adversity. However, we did crank out 21.07 miles of nothing but singletrack.







And now... in bullet format... I give you the reasons for the nearly epic ride:

• Mechanically speaking: My bike rode like that of Tinker Juarez's at the 2000 Summer Olympics. (I'm assuming analogously here, that his bike rode in tip-top shape; given the fact that he is a pro-rider and as such pro-mechanics finely tune his bike to provide intimate responses to his affectionate inputs).

• Physically speaking: My body felt pretty fantastic. Even though the last bit of physical activity I partook in, was a 3 mile run around my home town this past Thursday morning. Unless of course you count the king-size mattress I folded in half and shoved into the back of the truck before taking it to the dump yesterday. I almost lost that battle. And if you think that's funny, I suggest you take your king size mattress out in the yard and try folding it in half... Anyway, I felt great today. Rock on.
  

• Weather-ologically speaking: Temps hovered in the mid 50's with over cast skies and the dew point at 51°F. Yes, it was quite comfy indeed kids. I rode in shorts, short sleeves and arm warmers which were just barely necessary (Tougher men could have gone without).
  

• Tera-firmically speaking: The trails were hard-packed, zippy, clear of debris and most notably: NEW. That's right: NEW. We stumbled upon a linking trail that connected Schaeffer Farms with the Seneca River Trail by crossing Germantown Road. This new trail is sweeter than sweet. It's manicured to perfection with a broom-swept appearance and has fantastic flow making you feel like a fun-loving luge racer but without any of the awkward & humiliating luge crashes.... awk-waaaaard! Though, crashes were kind of out of the question because the only possible flaw I could find with the trails was that they were too easy to ride. Great flow, but no real challenge. No baby-heads, big ledges, or rooty/rutty sections. Let the record show that I'm not complaining... just sayin'.
  

Tomorrow night is the Race Pace group ride over at Hasahwa. Till next time....

Above left: My beloved 1X9. Above right: Damien zipping by.

Above left: Beautious day to be riding. Above right: Survivors of a recent forest fire.

Above left: Me. Above right: Damien rides through the singed piney section.

Above left: Damien showing some leg. Above right: Damien in motion.