Archives for 2019

Though the morning started out cool, the bright sun quickly warmed things up a lot, and I was looking forward to my last ride on Flash here at this beautiful park. I had planned a long ride on a lot of the sections of blue trail that I had missed the other day, and wouldn't you know, I got turned around again somehow. Nevertheless, I managed to get in most of my plan, even though it wasn't exactly in the same direction or the same order that I had planned it! What's the difference, it was a beautiful ride! I was glad to see this section of blue trail was quite a bit wider, or at least the trees weren't so close on the trail that it was a knee-knocker. Still mostly single-track, and one part took me to an overlook that was just spectacular. You could see the lake and the regular campground on it's shore, maybe a half mile or more away, beautiful. After standing around in the cold and rain (though I had put their rain sheets on Friday night), Flash was quite ready for the ride, no hesitation and willing all the way. He's taken to hopping over downed logs, and even did a full-on jump over one. I've never actually done any jumping, but when I realized what he intended, I just grabbed a handful of main, leaned forward like I always see the Olympians do, and did my best to stay balance, and it ended perfectly! So proud of him, and myself for surviving it! Just glad he didn't go sideways at the last minute or anything, that would have been trouble... Anyway, it was a great ride, 9.39 miles according to MapMyRide, at just about 3 hours. This is SO how I want to spend as much of my time as I can! Spectacular! After we got back and I put up Flash (and, of course, the campground was mostly empty by now), I got busy dialyzing Hubby and packing up what I could for our departure tomorrow. What a great week! We will come back here!

For the last two days I've been riding on the north side of the park, as there are plenty of trails here, but today, I decided to explore the south side of the park. I planned a route straight west until the crossover to the black trail, where there was a large loop around the perimeter of that section of the park. Flash saddled up fine, but it took a few minutes to get him to leave camp. I guess three days in a row was unexpected for him, but since there's a storm front coming in tomorrow, I figured this was our last chance for a few days to ride, and he'll get plenty of rest then, so I pushed him up the trail until he stopped fussing. Once we headed out on a new trail he settled down a bit. The shortest route to the beginning of the black trail (other than the orange trail, which I was planning on coming back on) was a dirt road with some gravel on it, and I wish I had put his boots on, because it was getting a lot harder to avoid in some spots. Once we crossed the road to the black trail, though, the footing was lovely, no problem and very little stone. This is my favorite trail so far. It actually doesn't look as if it gets used as much, but it was a bit wider overall, but a bit more overgrown, if that makes sense. No knee-knocking trees, thank goodness! Several creek crossings (one which Flash didn't want to go over, so I did what I always do, make him go over it backwards, which, for some reason, he's less reluctant to do. Go figure,) lots of hills to climb, some beautiful lake views, simply perfect! These last three rides have been so exhilarating, so relaxing, so spot on for soothing my soul after a year and a half of anxiety, stress, tension and dealing with just too much stuff in too little time, it's really hard to describe the wave of pure joy that's washing over me right now. I think it comes from living your life the way you want, on your own terms, and being simply joyful at the heart of it. In Costa Rica some years back, we learned the expression Pura Vida, pure life, which I think just about captures it. I'd forgotten how much I missed this feeling, having been distracted by all the uncontrollable events that had found their way to us, but now we're back, for a while at least, and it just plain feels GREAT! After we finished the black trail, we crossed back to the orange trail for a nice finish to the ride, completing nearly 8.25 miles in just under two hours. Gave Flash some extra food, then got Hubby started on dialysis, and settled in to the rest of the day in no time, feeling happy, contented, satisfied, joyful and grateful for the Pura Vida!

Today I planned a longer ride on the blue trail, and was out in plenty of time to do that, but that plan changed a bit as we got a few miles out. Much of the blue trail in this section is narrow, single-track, more like a hiking trail than a riding trail, and as such, many trees were very close to the trail. I found myself constantly having to push on the trees at the last moment in order to prevent my knees from crashing into the tree, which would have been very unpleasant! After a few miles I kind of got tired of that, so I reconfigured the route to actually go along an old road for awhile. Eventually I got back on the blue trail, but it was more of the same so I backtracked (something I hate to do!), and eventually got back on the orange trail and headed for home, with a little side trip onto part of the yellow trail which branches off toward the lake. It ended up nearly 7 miles and about 2 hours, and it was mostly enjoyable, with lots of woods and hilly terrain to keep it interesting, and again, we thoroughly enjoyed it. Another morning of riding, followed by another afternoon of dialysis, more updating my online diary, followed by another quiet evening of relaxation. Who could ask for anything more?

Perfect weather for a ride today! In the 70's and sunny, I planned a fairly short ride today, just to get Flash used to the terrain. After all, we've only been riding on flat Florida canal trails for the entire winter season, so the hills around here should prove challenging! We saddled up and headed out, leaving a whinnying Apollo behind, as we started out from camp on the orange trail, which made a nice 5+ mile loop around the woods. We definitely had some grades to climb, but the trails were nice, a lot of them two-track wide, but many single track as well. There were a few more rocky areas than I had expected, but not too bad, and Flash seemed fine with them, though he did try to stay off the worst of it. What a beautiful park, and a beautiful day to enjoy it! Now THIS is what I'm talking about! Picture perfect! We both thoroughly enjoyed our ride today, and were back in camp in about an hour and twenty minutes, just right for a first day out. Once I got Flash settled back on the high-line and had lunch with Hubby, we got him set up for dialysis, which went brilliantly again. I'm so glad we had his fistula cleared out, it's making his buttonholes work perfectly every time, making the whole process simple. I just hope we can get hooked up with an i-pad at our next "home" clinic, it will make it easier, and I won't have to be hopping up and down every half hour to get the numbers off his machine. Fingers crossed we'll figure a way around that! The trouble is, currently each i-pad is assigned to a clinic, not a machine or a patient, so every time we change clinics, theoretically, we need to change i-pads. That's problematic because we'd have to ship back an i-pad every time we get a new one at the next clinic. Hopefully, though, we can devise a system where we can just re-program the i-pad as we switch clinics, but that will take some logistics which I'm not sure they're ready for. But we'll see! Settled in for a nice evening, the perfect end to a perfect day! I even had time to start updating my long overdue online diary! Whoo-hoo!