Thanksgiving Break Bike Trip

This thanksgiving I was set on making it out to CO for some early snow skiing. Unfortunately, the snow gods had other plans. Suffering from lack of snow, summit county got the boot to other adventures.

I was able to bug out of the Lab around 12:00 on Thursday. I swung by Vienna to drop off Pauli and have my teeth fixed (I did not want to be inhibited in any way for turkey day). After that it was off to JC. In Jeff I rode a couple of Laps round Binder Lake. The trails were slightly moist so conditions were prime for railing turns and maintaining serious speed.

That evening I headed up to Columbia to hang out with some friends. Friday morning I awoke to a beautiful morning and headed for Rhett’s Run in Columbia’s Cosmo Park. This was a fun inner city trail that incorporated everything the area had to offer to make for a short but interesting loop.

After a couple of laps around Rhett’s Run I headed out to Rock Bridge monument park. I rode a few laps on a couple of trails. Rock Bridge had some short climbs and decents over rocky and rooty wooded trail (but don’t get me wrong, the rock and roots made the ride interesting). Some of the hills here were quite challenging, so a good work out.

I returned to town to get cleaned up and headed out to eat with my parents who happened to be in town for a Mizzou Basketball game. I went to the game with them where they won by a large margin, because it was an exhibition game, it was pretty boring.

Saturday morning I awoke to another beautiful day. I headed to my car to jimmy the locks (I locked my keys in there the night before). As the locks popped open with minimal effort, I knew it was going to be a good day (and that I should never leave valuables in the car).

I met Kirby at Landahl Park outside of KC Saturday morning and hit the trails. Landahl was absolutely amazing. They don’t get much better than this. Trails were well marked, well traveled and in great shape, there was ever and gall with a leaf blower clearing the trails. The difficulty ranged from a green trail which was just an easy going multi track, to a black trail which had rocks, ledges and cuts to challenge even the most skilled rider. I didn’t fall too much, but I did scuff my sholder on a rock face. The would totally looked like a gun shot grazing (and there’s even a shooting range in the background).

After about 1.5-2 hrs of riding, Kirby and I were debating on how to finish up the rest of the ride, when coming down “Dave’s Maze” was I biker I recognized at Chris Sholls. Running into this guy was completely random but a lucky occurrence. Kirby, who needed to hit the road, took Will’s Wonder back to the trail head, while I remained riding with Chris. We rode for a couple of hours then headed to Overland park to Chris’s town house for some beers and pizza.

I stayed the night in the luxurious guest room of Chris’s apartment. Sunday morning I headed to Shawnee Mission Park to ride the little trails tucked away in the woods there. I rode for an hour or two while Chris and Lauren had some pictures taken by ex-pro downhiller/photographer, Sean. Trails were exciting.

Later that day, Chris and I met up with another single speeder (Walt’s ex mechanic known today as “Darby”) to ride Miner Park, aka BRP. We rode for a couple of hours here and nearly killed ourselves. All of us were having the damnedest time staying on our bikes. I found Miner Park to be a challenging trail with plenty of variety.

Monday, Joe and I headed up to Lake of the Ozarks and rode Bittersweet (a local built and maintained trail) and Honeyrun. Bittersweet was an elaborate network of interconnecting neighborhood “green space” that winded through and around drainage creeks. I blew out my right shoe on Bittersweet and had to visit Tim at Ozarks Outdoors and Cycling. Honey well was a fast non technical rolling trail bench cut into the Ozark hills.

Check out photos at: web.umr.edu/~dmwbnd

Bike trip down south.

Saturday I loaded up with a couple buddies and headed down to south to Council Bluffs recreational area. Pretty much, this place is a man made lake (approximately 500 acres) with a trail that winds around it. The trail is what we were interested it. It made for a fairly epic ride with fast creek crossings, short climbs and a few technical rock sections. We were blessed with awesome weather and beautiful fall colors.



It took only a couple of hours to get around the lake. If we'd really be on top of our game, we would have gotten there a little earlier and rode another loop in the opposite direction. The loop went well with no real bike problems and no real bad spills. Kirby took to cake for drawing the most blood.

After the ride we sat up camp at the Ozark Trail head of the Middle Fork section of the trail and cooked supper and had a few brewskis.

We awoke to a light thunderstorm in the morning but after about an hour it went away and the skis cleared up. We had breakfast, in the form of eggs and sausage of the fire. By the time we were finished eating, the sun had come out and the day was looking nice. We wanted to ride the middle fork section of the OT but got scared off by redneck hunters who were also using the woods that fine morning. Because we didn't have orange vests, we decided to head to Tom's where we wouldn't have to worry about drunk wood hippies taking aim at us.

Tom's was great, as usual. We did two laps without too much conflict. It think everyone fell once but no one got hurt. At the sink hole we came up with a new line that Incorporated another nice little drop.

It was then back to Rolla. I returned home only to find a not saying Mom was cooking salmon later on that evening so I headed home to get some of that...delicious.