~ some foothills joy ~
Spending several days in San Francisco has left me with a renewed appreciation for living in Boise. Don't get me wrong, I loved San Fran - - but it's wonderful to be home.
I've ridden in the foothills almost everyday since being home. It's easy to take it for granted, but the immediate access to outdoor recreation is something I would hate to give up. In addition, the network of trails continues to be developed - - just this past week, a brand new trail was carved linking trail 5 to Sidewinder (I believe it's trail 42/"fat tire" on the map). Josh and I did a trail 5, fat tire, sidewinder loop on Friday and it was fun.
On Saturday, the plan was to do a big foothills ride. Because we got a late start and that it was hotter than expected, we turned around sooner than planned. We did a 20 miler from the Reserve area, took the connecter trail up to Freeway, up Trail 4, up Corrals, and up Scott's. The plan was to continue from the top of Scott's up 8th Street to Ridge Road and down Hard Guy, but 8th Street was scorching when we got there. I had a water bottle that I used to squirt water onto my arms, legs, and head to keep myself cool, which I had also refilled in a creek, and I used the last of that water getting to the top of Scott's. Josh refilled that water bottle with some of his drinking water, but the possibility of overheating was very real at that point.
I've recently decided that my ancestors must have been royalty who never had to do anything physically exerting - - because I don't sweat hardly at all and I overheat very easily. Which is unfortunate.
Anyway, the downhill was awesome fun! I had particularly good flow for most of it and got some thrilling jumps in. Corrals was also in better shape since I last rode it, which made the flow better. The only time when my flow sucked was when I was going down that connecter trail to the Reserve area and I hit a sandy patch the wrong way and did a Superman nose dive into the ground. At the time, I was upset that I hit my knees (evidenced by the blood running out of one knee and the other knee quickly swelling up) because injured knees haven't been my favorite things in life. However, except that my one knee is oozing puss and the other is really swollen and bruised, they're fine and I even went on a small hike today without any problems. The worst part about the crash was cleaning the wound in the shower and trying to scrub the dirt out - - ouch! Below is a picture of me after the ride, note the blood running down my leg.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, that IS my garden that I'm standing next to! There's a tomato plant, pepper, beans, and squash. In the background is my weed garden, which I haven't been able to conquer despite HOURS of work.
