worked at wake-o-tink

met up with marcus and bunky before the regular wakefield night ride to try to get over for a loop at accotink before sunset. we set out just before six and hit the cinder trail over to accotink and within 5 minutes we were stopped at the side of the trail while bunky fixed a flat... a couple minutes later and we were back on the trail, up the switchback and cut down the road back to the cinder trail. ran into some issue with tree-trimming on one of the utility easement setions -- the limbs had been cut down but not cleaned up yet, leaving us to weave around them.

once we hit singletrack i was well warmed up and feeling strong... we started the ride the normal way, up by the gas works and then cut into some of the trails in the interior of the park, then back onto the perimeter... rode a couple of lines that i'd never tried before. turned around after a while and doubled back to hit the new boy scout trail on the way out and hit the road just as the light was to low to ride... out of the park with about 10 minutes to spare before it closed.

back over to wakefield bu we'd missed the start of the MORE ride by a good 25 minutes so we cut up the stream trail to the racecourse hill. marcus hadn't seen the new trail before, so we rode the trail the "normal" way then cut over to the 495 trail and new racecourse start and rode the new rock causeways/boardwalks along the powerlines. then rode the new trail backwards... pretty sweet in both directions, i almost prefered it backwards, since you get a pretty sweet singletrack downhill. down the creek and over to the bowl where bunky led us around every inch of trail without repeating anything. we passed by the MORE groups a couple of times, but since we had a pretty good pace going we stuck to doing our own thing. if we passed you without saying much, we weren't trying to be rude, sometimes it's just nice to ride in a smaller group.

finished the night up with beer and food over at kilroy's, always a good way to round out a night. 2:15 on the bike overall, just about right for what was on the schedule, but i was pushing a lot harder than i should have... felt great for most of the ride, but by the time we hit the bowl my legs were worked and my back was getting sore -- must have set the saddle a bit too high.

the new trail at wakefield is great, and accotink was riding really fast and feeling slalom-y. first ride with the new vanilla on the tracer... amazing, really stiff with 130mm of buttery smooth travel. the fork is a great match for the bike, felt faster and more stable than usual, but a bit sluggish in the tight twisty stuff.