5/18 Lehigh Ride..

Today was gonna be a tour of Lehigh and Salisbury for some folks that haven't ridden around here, and it turned out to be a couple locals having a good time before the rain hit.


The plan was to meet Keith, Christine, & Dan at SMC to carpool over to Lehigh for a couple hours of fun before the impending rain. When I arrived at SMC, Dan was already there and Keith & Christine were getting their gear and bikes all together - only to find a flat rear tire on Christine's bike. She figures she'll change it at Lehigh, so we all jump in our cars and head to the trail.

We met Frank at the parking area, only to find another mechanical issue (this one a little more severe), he cracked the face plate on his Thompson stem, leaving the bike out of commission. He returned home to grab another bike while the flat was being fixed, then we headed in for some great trails.

After as much rain as we had for the past couple days I had expected some areas to be more muddy, but was very happy to see that the trails dried up well. It was almost the perfect mix of dirt/mud for traction. I led the group through Crazy Bones, I got to race a deer down the powerline, then we climbed up Ono (lungbuster) out to the Goat (a tough rock garden) to meet up with Frank on his super pimpy Superfly.

Here's a blurry pic of Frank flying through the Goat, he's going so fast I can barely capture it on film. Gotta love those 29" wheels.

It seems that the 29'ers claimed the rock gardens for the day as Frank, Keith and I went through the Goat like it was paved.

Some more climbing was still in order as we went up Superman, a 12 or 13 turn very tough switchback climb which is fairly technical at points with a few short recovery points. At the top we saw the SVB crew out on their normal Sunday Loop. This group can be as few as 2 and I've seen as many as over a dozen riders on this ride. As the saying goes, what goes up must come down, we descended for a bit (thankfully) as I think everyone was tired of climbing (except for maybe Frank).

We finished out the day with the Channel 39 loop, some rim trail, a quick downhill through Deer path, and a wet rocky Wayne's World crossing. Only 9.5 miles of trail were ridden in about 2 hours and 25 minutes, but we finished just in time for the rain to start (perfect timing). As we were all tired and ready for coffee, we headed back to Emmaus for some SMC coffee.

I'm glad those who showed up did and sad those that couldn't make it didn't. I hope the people that couldn't make it get to come out and enjoy what amazing trails we are lucky enough to have in our area. Some of what Lehigh has to offer makes a lot of other areas seem like paved bike paths.

Good luck to all the lucky ones who will be racing Granogue next week, I have to work and will regretfully miss this great race which Marc organizes in honor of Andrew Mein. There is also a raffle to benefit HERA Womens Cancer Foundation, so buy some tickets - you don't even need to be present to win!!

-matt