.:: DonnieNix.net ::.

I would have liked to have still been in Colorado at this time of year. The Fruita Fat Tire Festival is happening this week, and looking at pictures from Fruita, and reading ride reports really make me depressed. It’s still 3 months before I go to Fruita, and that seems too long. Not to mention the fact that something will probably happen that will totally screw ALL my plans.

I just got back from Pensacola, FL, yesterday. Me , Melanie, and that crazy woman that birthed me went down for my cousin’s wedding. He’s a good kid, and married a very nice young lady. It was a fun wedding, as far as weddings go. Melanie says it was a good wedding, so I will take her word for it. Women have a better feel for that sort of thing. My suit did not fit at all. Since I’ve lost a little weight, it felt like I was wearing a clown suit. We had a good time, and had a small world experience too. But that’s a story best left for other times.

I haven’t ridden since last Sunday. The schedule and the weather just haven’t been favorable. I’m hitting Blanket’s Creek tonight for a few laps around the Dwelling Loop. Jake said he’d go with me and ride a few laps on Mosquito Flats. I wish I was getting ready to go to Fruita, but I guess I can hold out for a few months.

In June, I have the DTFC trip to Cleveland to meet with friends and watch a few games. That should be fun. With the cost of gas, I’m seriously looking at flying. It’d cost about double what gas would be, but consider it’s a 1.5 hour flight, or a 13 hour drive, and that puts things into perspective. Plus we have already driven the Tucson across country twice and have racked up the miles. I’d kinda like to save it a bit.

Eh, we’ll see.

Instead of going to the Ellijay Fat Tire Fest, I drove the 65 miles east to Fort Yargo State Park, in lovely Winder, Georgia. I’ve been wanting to ride this trail for a while and so when my riding buddy backed out on Ellijay, I took the opportunity to hit this trail.

The drive out was not too bad, but it WAS Saturday morning, and so I got there in about an hour. Since this is a state park, it had all the usual state park type facilities, along with numerous recreational things, like tennis courts, fishing docks, putt-putt, a huge lake, and a lot of other stuff. I parked in section A at the designated start point of the trail, which is the first parking area after entering the park.

I unloaded the bike, geared up, and headed off toward the singletrack. The first section was a switchbacked area through what looked like a bombed out forest. I don’t know if pine beetles got these trees, or if they were just cutting them down, but the trail wound it’s way through all these fallen trees and then cut back into the forst where it was pretty easy singletrack for several miles. There’s a minimal amount of serious climbing, which is fine with me, and very little truly technical sections that test your guts and skill. This trail is mostly fast, flowing singletrack winding it’s way through the woods around the lake. Around the 6 mile mark, you make a few power-line climbs and descents, loop back around and hit the old part of the trail, which is about a mile of doubletrack that is packed with hikers. You then cross a bridge over the lake and hit the most technical part of this trail.

Hanging a left takes you around the very edge of the lake on what looks like newly cut trail. It has a lot of dips and roots and very short, steep climbs. It twists it’s way around and back upon itself almost, and is very tight and slow. This part almost strikes me as someone wanting to squeeze as many miles as they can out of a small area. It does widen out a bit after a while and eventually bends back toward the direction of the main trailhead. It twists and turn through some more forests, and takes you by the lake again, and you eventually come out in a camping area and from there you road-bike about 1/4 mile back to the trailhead.

I don’t really know if I went the optimal way, or the path that is laid out by the trail builders. I got a little confused at a 5-way intersection and ended up riding the hiker-crowded section 3 times before I crossed the bridge. I saw a bunch of people out there on high-dollar full suspension rigs, and couldn’t help but think that was overkill for this trail. I think this is the most hardtail-friendly trail in the state.

All told, I managed about 16 miles on the day and felt pretty good. It was a fun fast trail until you cross the lake bridge, and then it gets real slow because it is very tight and twisty with no straightaways where you can get any kind of speed. It wasn’t very technical, and seemed tame when compared to Bear Creek or Blankets Creek. The speed you can make the first 10 miles though makes it a fun ride. If there’s a way to cut off the post-bridge tight stuff, then it would have been the perfect ride, and would have been fun to do two laps. I’ll go back, because it’s a good 16 miles of riding with several very fun parts, a gorgeous lake, and a lot of other things to do.

More pictures of Fort Yargo

On Sunday, Casey and I rode the South Loop at Blanket’s Creek. Let me start off by saying, I hate the South Loop. There are no fun parts on the South Loop. It’s all rocky, rooty, technical climbing or descending through very narrow and short sections. You can’t get speed to climb through the techy stuff, and coming down is so rough that you can’t get speed up to clean a section at the bottom before a tight turn. Every climb has either loose rocks or a zillion roots so you are kicked all over the place and can’t get any momentum.

I know there are people that love this type of trail, but I am not one of them. The South Loop is difficult just for the sake of being difficult. There’s a descent that comes down some very rocky stuff, with two rock drops so close together that you can’t really land one before the other comes into play. And after the second rock, the turn to the right is so sharp that it’s nearly impossible. There’s another section that has a rock step up that has about 20 yards of trail leading up to it, but the builders, instead of making a straight run-up so you can get enough speed to clean it, took the trail to the right, around a little sapling tree and over some roots, so you HAVE to slow down, and that just makes the step dangerous. There are a lot of sections that just make no sense and have no flow. None of the climbs have decent lines, and all the descents have masive rocks or roots, sometimes both together with a drop and no recovery time before the next rock-root nightmare.

SORBA Woodstock is working on the North Loop now, and I hope and pray that they are not just making another South Loop. The one thing that I have noticed about trails in Georgia is that they are all the same. Big Creek is like Blankets, Blankets is like Chicopee, Chicopee is like Dauset, Dauset is like Yargo….. If all they are going to do with the North Loop is make another South Loop, then they shouldn’t waste their time. There are enough trails that have tight, twisty, slow, rooty singletrack. How about some trails with decent downhill sections that DON’T have a 90 degree switchback at the bottom? How about more S turns, and fewer Z turns? How about some smooth track? Mountain biking trails can be great without having to take a trail right up next to that tree just so you can get roots in the way.

Softball game Tuesday.

We lost 28 to 4. It was 4-1 after the first inning, 10-2 after 2 innings. And it just got worse from there.

I had a good game. My new DeMarini Ultimate Weapon 34-28 bat was kick-ass. I don’t think I’ve ever used a bat that felt that “right”.

I bobbled a few balls at short, but overall had a good solid game.

We’re in the wrong league. We need to be moved down. That was the 3rd game in a row that we’ve been “mercy-ruled”. Last night, when the ump called it, a few guys were joking and said “Aw come on! Let’s keep playing!”

The ump said, he was sorry, but he could not bear to watch this any longer.

That’s how bad it was. It was so bad that it bordered on comical. I have to say that this was the ugliest game I’ve ever been a part of. Even the other team was trying to show some mercy by stopping at third or not stretching doubles to triples. It was just batting practice for them. I asked the first baseman how many times he batted in this game, and he said 6. In 4 innings, he batted 6 times. I batted twice. I had a double and a single, but they were both good hits.

The biggest problem offense-wise is that we absolutely cannot string two hits together. We need some practice, plus we need to be moved down a league.

Oh well, I had a little fun, but mostly it was painful playing in that game last night. I’m glad I got that bat. It was totally worth the money.

This isn’t a game report, but more of a fan and MARTA report. You can get game reports on AJC.com.

Melanie and I started the afternoon with her picking me up from work so that we could scoot over to Perimeter Mall and catch MARTA to the stadium. We had plenty of time, reaching the mall at around 4:50. The game started at 7:05, so we had some time to kill.

We ate at Houlihan’s near the mall, and let me tell you, it was GOOD. We both had the half rack of ribs and grilled shrimp and it was “deeee-lish”. Our pre-dinner salad was some Tuscan thing that had beans and goat cheese in it, but it was very good.

After we ate we went right to the MARTA station, bought our tokens and went up to wait for the train. Tokens for the round trip cost $10. We planned on taking MARTA to Five Points Station near Underground and hiking the two blocks to the World of Coke where the Braves Shuttle picks up. Okay, we still had plenty of time. It was just barely 6:00 when we sat down on the bench and waited for the train.

The train to Five Points was actually pretty quick and we got with plenty of time to spare. Or so we thought. We started walking through the MARTA station over to Underground and it was a lot further than the MARTA info led you to believe. By the time we went ALL THE WAY THROUGH Underground Atlanta, it was almost 6:40. And then we saw the line for the shuttle.

Think of the worst 4th of July line at the Scream Machine at Six Flags, and you’ll get an idea of how long the line was to the shuttle. It took forever. There was also a $1 surcharge to ride the shuttle, which they collected by hand. They loaded only 2 buses at a time, then some assholes got on that were part of Underground’s entertainment thing, and they barber-shopped “Take Me Out To The Ballgame”, delaying us even further.

By the time we were rolling, we had 3 minutes before 1st pitch.

The game was a sellout, so getting into the stadium was difficult. First pitch must have been delayed a bit because when we got there at 7:25, Jimmy Rollins had just gotten thrown out at 2nd. We made our way to our seats to watch the game, having missed out on the free anniversary pin and Edwin McCain singing the National Anthem.

When we got to our seats they were in the very middle of a full row, so we fought our way through people unwilling to let someone by, or acting all offended that they had to squeeze their damn knees in. I had a feeling that I was not going anywhere for a while.

Everything was fine until the row of lesbians (not kidding or trying to be derogatory, this is what they were) behind us got into their 5th or 6th beer each. These skags made the worst redneck in the park appear calm and reasonable. They sang, they yelled at players (usually using the wrong name), they made stupid crude jokes, danced, hugged, spilled beer, dropped food, everything. They drove Melanie crazy and almost ruined her little purse she bought for this so that she wouldn’t have to lug around her regular one. One of these women dropped their Bud Light and it spilled and ran down under our seats and Melanie’s purse was between her feet, so it got soaked. Not even so much as an I’m sorry from them, even though we complained.

Two rows in front of us was the Cell Phone Posse. These were a group of kids that chatted on they cellies da ho damn game, yo. And they kept standing up and waving while they had their cell phones glued to their ear. “You see me??? YOU SEE ME?” Over and over. And they just happened to be in our line of site, so when Andruw hit his dinger, I didn’t even see the swing.

Finally the Cell Phone Posse left and one of the lesbians passed out, and the other three looked like barf city. They couldn’t even putt together one more chorus of that stupid Henry Belafonte song they always play about bananas and hating whitey.

It was a pretty uneventful last three innings in the stands.

After the game, we made our way back towards the shuttles and were stunned by the sea of humanity waiting to catch the busses back to the MARTA station.

MARTA had one road beside the stadium to themselves, and they would roll up 5 busses at a time, and people would load. The problem was that you had to pay them 1 dollar in cash and show them a token, or else this ride was $2.75. So each person had to dig out their buck, argue and complain to the drivers, and then load up. The lines did not move at all. It took 20 minutes to get the first 5 busses loaded and running.

Of course this is where the Great American Drunken Redneck always chooses to show his colors.

One dude starts yelling, “Let’s Move the busses! Let’s Go! I’m paying good money, blah blah blah”, and on and on. He just won’t shut up. Finally an APD cop notices this anus and strolls over. This guy was yelling at the top of his voice until he sees the cop walking up, and then he got reeeeeal quiet. I yelled out, “You were saying?” But he was trying to make himself as small as possible.

The cop just glared at him. It was hilarious. He was owned, big time.

However, as soon as the cop was called over to another scene, G.A.D.R. starts it up again. What a chicken shit.

Melanie and I jump lines after a while and finally get on a bus. We think we are home free, but the buss proceeds to take us on the grand tour of Atlanta. To go the 2 miles from the stadium to Five Points Station took almost 20 minutes, because we are routed down backstreets, across the interstate twice, by the capital, around by Philips Arena….it was a friggin’ nightmare.

We FINALY got on the train and rode it back to Dunwoody. By the time we reached the car, the game had been over for an hour and a half. By the time we got home, it had been over 2 hours.

That’s ridiculous. You take MARTA because it’s supposed to be easier, cheaper, less stressful, blah blah blah. What a bunch of whooey. Not only was the total fare for this MARTA adventure more than it would have cost for gas and parking near the stadium, but the stress more than made up for any stress you were missing out on in ATL traffic. It took us one and a quarter hours to get to the game (LATE, THANKS MARTA!), and took 1.5 hours to get from the stadium to Dunwoody, and I could have made it all the way home in about 45 minutes. By the time we were getting on the shuttle, even the stadium workers were leaving.

And what the hell is up with making people walk all the way through Underground to get to the shuttle???? I guess that this is the only way they can get people to go there. I mean, what a wretched, overpriced, smelly, anti-honkey place to be! It’s ridiculous.

I will never take the Braves shitty shuttle again. It was SOOO not worth it. It was so not worth it that I would rather entrust my car to Cletus’ Backyard Parking Garage than try and deal with MARTA BS again. It should NEVER take more than an hour to get all the shuttles loaded and gone. Hell, it shouldn’t have taken more than 20 or 30 minutes! I can’t imagine that alot of people that tried the shuttle service last night would be willing to give it another go.

The game was great, being at the stadium was great, our seats were great for watching. The idiot “fans” and drunken assholes around us killed the experience, and MARTA put the last turd on the shitcake. I WILL go to more Braves games, but NEVER will I use the shitty shuttle again. NEVER!

We took a roadtrip 1 hour north to Bear Creek in beautiful Ellijay, GA, Sunday. The air was a crisp 60 degrees when we started our assault on the mountain, and it really didn’t get much warmer as the day got older. There weren’t a lot of people there, which was strange because there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the conditions were wonderful.

North Georgia had withstood a powerful storm system that passed through in the early morning hours on Saturday, but knowing Bear Creek and the elevation profile of that place, we knew the trail would drain great. Since it all slopes down to the creek, water clears off the trail very well. There were very few wet spots, and the trail was nice and tacky.

We parked at Gates Chapel Rd near the access road for the Bear Creek trailhead. This is about a 2 mile climb up an FS road to the trail, and it’s a good warmup, but I really hate it because it is a steady climb, and it’s just seems so long because you are anxious to get to the singletrack.

We finally get to the beginning of the trail, and so we hit it hard. Our goal is the Overlook and we know that it is pretty much a 5.5 mile climb, mostly steep, with very few breaks or places where you can do a rolling rest-stop (smooth downhills that you can recover on). We take a few pictures going up, and stop a few times to look around, but for the most part, it is grind-time. Grind out those climbs!

We make pretty good time to the first gate, which is about 4 miles in, so we pause for a quick water break and to get our lungs and heartrates back under control. We’re there about 5 minutes, and then we hit the FS road that will take us to the gravel road and on to the Overlook. In no time we’re at the deep creek crossing and on the gravel road. This is the worst part.

The gravel road is covered with large chunks of gravel, and it is steep. Steep. Steep. It takes me at least 15 minutes to cover the last half mile, because I’m in granny gear, and grinding at about 2.5 mph. Reaching the top, I was completely winded, and my legs were toast.

I leaned my bike against the Cohutta Stones and relaxed while Casey took some pictures. It was so nice up there. No clouds, everything turning green finally, a nice breeze blowing. The work it takes to get up this mountain is worth it just for the view, but there is an even better payoff waiting.

The trip back.

It took us about 1:30 to reach to Overlook. We had a terrible avg time, because it is a pretty difficult climb up for a fat boy like me, and we took our time so that we didn’t spend all our energy and end up missing the Overlook because we had no energy on the FS road. Going back is just a fast and furious downhill descent for 6 miles that really makes all the pain worth it.

We started down the gravel road, hitting a top speed of about 21 mph, then we shoot off onto the FS road, splash through Bear Creek, take a short climb and then it’s nothing but speed and sweepy turns for about a mile. We reach the first gate and hit the singletrack, and I’m having so much fun that I am whooping and making all sorts of racket. We’re hitting jumps, wheelie-ing through mudholes, ripping through the switchbacks….

That’s the reason we go to Bear Creek. It’s such a great trail, with the tall hardwoods, the rhododendrons, the wildlife, the creek, the view. We splash hard through the creek crossings and by the time we reach the trailhead, we’re both soaked and laughing.

The total time to make it back down from the overlook is something like 22 minutes. Total mileage is 12.81, and we were in the saddle for 1:59. Overall it’s a pretty good time, considering there’s a 2000ft elevation gain to get to the Overlook. We averaged 6.4 mph for the entire ride, which is good for me.

The last time I rode Bear Creek, I didn’t make the Overlook. I had a hard time and was really discouraged. It was a combination of cold, no sleep the night before, and pushing it too much early to keep up with the group. This time I went at my own pace and made much better time, and got to the Overlook with a lot of energy to spare. The moral is, do your own thing, don’t be influenced by the crowd.

See pictures here.

So I can keep it straight.

Thu Apr 6 8:30 – Softball game – field 4

Fri Apr 7 5:30 – Blankets Creek Too tired….didn’t sleep good

Sat Apr 8 10:00am – Silver Comet – at least 15 miles Rained out

Sun Apr 9 8:00am – Fort Yargo State Park (Rain alternate: Bear Creek)

Mon Apr 10 5:30 – Braves Home Opener!!!!!!

Tue Apr 11 6:30 – Softball game – field 3

Wed Apr 12 5:30 – Blankets Creek

Thu Apr 13 5:30 – Silver Comet – at least 15 miles

Fri Apr 14 5:30 – Blankets Creek

Sat Apr 15 9:00am – Ellijay Fat Tire Fest – Fort Mountain State Park – all day

Sun Apr 16 12:00 – Blankets Creek

Sunday, we went to Conyers and rode the former Olympic course near the Georgia International Horse Park. This trail was developed for the Olympic mountain biking events and you can tell by the level of difficulty that it was not meant to normal human beings.

The trail is really 2 parts. At least that’s the way I think about it. Part one is a winding stretch of singletrack that rolls through forests and meadows along the southern side of the park. This side is supposedly the “easy” side, but it will still totally kick your ass from here to the moon. The people who designed this track didn’t believe in switchbacks. Every hill is climbed by traveling almost straight up the side of the hill, usually at the steepest angle available. Toss in a generous helping of roots, rocks, and bumps, and each climb is turned into a test of your will and endurance. The few downhill sections on this side are fun, but short and bouncy because the trail is so heavily used and rutted with erosion.

On part two of this trail, you ride on pieces of Stone Mountain that extend under a majority of the state of Georgia. I once read that the granite that makes up Stone Mountain lies under most of the Southeast, and if you dig deep enough anywhere in the region, you will eventually hit it.

This is the closest thing the East coast has to slickrock, but it is nothing like what you see in Utah. Oh, it’s slick, but it is also bumpy as hell. Riding this stuff is like riding a bike across a cobblestone street during an earthquake. Climbing on this stuff is a challenge because you are constantly fighting the handlebars just trying to maintain control. The trail is marked fairly well, but it is again a straight up and straight down affair. Eventually you reach some singletrack, where you have more climbing and very little descending. It seems like you spend the whole day climbing. You’ll start climbing right from the trailhead, and you are climbing the entire ride, even back to the trailhead!

To me, the descents aren’t very enjoyable at this place because they are usually real short and rutted as hell so you are constantly fighting for control, or trying to prepare for the next death-march climb.

I wanted to ride this trail again to kind of ‘gauge’ where I was with my riding. We rode this trail the first weekend I was back in Georgia. I didn’t really do that well and quickly added Conyers to the top of my list of Hardest Places I Have Ever Ridden. Going back after 4 months was a real let down. I thought I should have done better.

This time we rode Part 2 (granite side) first because we noticed the first time we rode that it was a bit more interesting, but we were so wasted from Part 1 that we really couldn’t enjoy it. It worked out pretty good and we had some real fun on the granite. The singletrack, with it’s straight up climbs sucked though. Personally, I don’t mind climbing, if there’s at least an equal amount of downhill to make it worth my while. This place is nothing but climbing. I found myself so whipped after each climb that I couldn’t enjoy the little bit of downhill.

We finally finished this side and took a good break for water back at the van and talked about how people do the 24 hour race here. I can’t imagine riding that granite crap at night. Scary.

We took off on Part 1 and it was all well and good until the first really steep climb. This is about 50 yards of at least than 12% grade. Casey made it but was hammered at the top. I walked it because I knew more was coming and didn’t want to spend my load on the first climb. It didn’t help.

We played around on the next section and took our time and took some pictures and then continued on with the climbing. The rest of the ride was pretty much a blur because I bonked big time. I didn’t just hit the wall, I knocked it over and it fell on me.

We finally made it back to the car and left. We decided that people that ride this are crazy, and people that ride it on a single speed need to be kept apart from regular society. This trail has been dubbed “Climber’s Paradise” by Casey and I. I don’t think we will be riding it again for a while. It is too far to drive and too punishing for the weekend warrior.