FATS day 2

Sunny chilly beautiful morning.

Breakfast & short drive to Bill’s house. Meet Liz, Bill’s wife. 3 kids are whirlwind of activity.

Drive over to FATS TH to meet other riders who are joining us. Bill’s plan is to complete the FATS dance card for me & complete all the trails in the system. He & his friend Trey take off & are gone almost immediately. Sometimes the trail twists in on itself & I can hear them talking. Man I can’t stay that close anymore. They would stop along the way to let me catch up. You Spokane riding buddies that taught me the 29 30 rule was applied to me. I pushed real hard to keep close.

These trails are so fun to ride, it’s like a constant spin either in a big gear w/ low rpm or lower gear but high rpm. I haven’t figured out the gearing. The ups & downs thru the old creek beds. Tread is 99% dirt, hardly anything on the tread. Turns are nicely radiused and never usually by suprise. Some of the dips are body swallowers in depth & distance. Access this website & open Utube window for ride video:

http://www.longcanetrails.com/4.html Trail Portfolio tab.

Its a different ride: high speed, dips & rollers coming out of them. Hard ride keeping up sort of. These trails are perhaps like Moab that you need to ride once in your life. I will say that you could spend more hours riding these trails than just Slickrock @ Moab. This is single track for mountain bikes only, no sharing. the expression trails built by mountain bikers for mountain bikers is shopworn. Dust it off, restore it to its naive charm and ride FATS and the old phrase is apt truly again.

Lot of cars in parking lot but hardly encountered any on trails. Its a social ride: we hammered for a bunch of minutes & would stop briefly for a conversation. Its like skiing with us providing the lift.

Saw Palmetto this far north:

Tomorrow are some of the old trails that are hand built & hardly ridden.

My mail did arrive @ Thomson on time but was rejected for insufficient address. Got to chase it down Monday. The tracking seems to send it to Atlanta. Lost in the USPS system.