Stokesville

Impromptu trials sessionThe family and I went to Stokesville for the Memorial Day weekend to take part in the Virginia IMBA Mountain Bike Festival. Wait a minute. Memorial Day? and it's already the middle of June... Yeah, I've been slackin'. Anyways... Despite the threat of rain, the weather was great and even as I was unpacking the tent Saturday morning, my spirit was already on the mountain, flying down that sweet Shenandoah singletrack. After a miserable time at Lodi, I needed this weekend. Gina headed out in the morning with a group that would ride the descent down Redish Knob. I knew she was worried that she wouldn't be able to keep up with the boyz, but I guess she did fine. She gets back a few hours later with a big smile on her face. Her trusty rigid singlespeed treated her well.


Top of Trimble Mountain with Scardaville and CampIn the afternoon I headed out with the fellas for a quick spin up and down Trimble Mountain. City Bikes rider MattD set a fast pace on the road climb up to the trailhead with me gasping and weezing to stay on his wheel. While waiting to regroup, Camp shows off his wheelie skillz. Then the real fun starts as we begin the singletrack climb up to the top with Matt and Larry leading the charge for most of the way. Tough going, especially since I'm overgeared at 32x19 but we make it up with no major problems. The descent down the mountain is typical Shenandoah singletrack goodness, no surprise there.


MattD coming down Trimble Mt.The real eye-opener was on the road ride (race?) back to camp. A nice long downhill for the most part, so I relax and let the geared folk do their thing. As expected, Matt and Scardaville drop into the big ring and shoot ahead. Then out of nowhere, JohnW zips by spinning his 32x21 with the speed of a dremmel. He catches up to the two geared ones and the three of them disappear ahead of me in a blur of spinning legs and dust.


Sagada at the ObservatoryBack at camp, we wait for dark and then head to the Stokesville Observatory to have a peek at Jupiter and Saturn. With not a cloud in the sky and miles from city lights, both planets looked crystal clear through the telescope. The bands of Jupiter and a few of its moons were nice to look at, but the rings of Saturn were the real draw, looking just like they do in the pictures.

Sunday morning we gather up for the Southern Traverse ride, a big ride through one of the nicest ridgetop trails in the area. I had done this ride last year so I knew what to expect. This year, Scardaville, JohnW, and I opted out of the 15 mile road ride section and shuttled the cars. All in all, two flats, a broken spoke, and no serious injuries. Not bad for the Shenandoah.
Scardaville on the Southern Traverse