We decided to ride at the Fish Hatchery, which is a good 50 minutes away. None of us have ridden there in years, although it’s our favorite place. We don’t have the time. If you’re going to ride all that way, it’s silly to ride less than three hours, there’s so much out there to loop together.
After photographs of the maps from the parking lot kiosk, we headed out trying to remember what we used to ride. Finding the trails wasn’t nearly as challenging as dropping down into our first downhill, rutted out with rocks and ten-inch-deep ruts that swallow your tire if you don’t just jump them. I’m sure our screams of laughter could be heard for miles as we bounced our way down that first section, all of us astonished at what we used to consider a normal weekend ride.
It was enough to get our groove back. We chased through the woods with the trails nearly entirely to ourselves. We splashed through mud, marveled at the tunnels of spindly Laurel legs and stopped to laugh at the bottom of every fast downhill section.
For some crazy reason, nothing felt as hard as it did the last time we were there – when we probably couldn’t fully appreciate being away on free time.
We slung our even dirtier bikes back into the truck and headed to the nearest Mexican restaurant to heft cold beers to our lips in steins too heavy for our exhausted girly arms and toasted to “us” one last time before going home to children who were undoubtedly still running around the house waiting for mom to kiss them goodnight.
