Bushwhackin'

This is bare creek bed in Black Hawk Creek. That's ice not snow.

 Wednesday I went out and did a little 'tune-up' ride on my Salsa Cycles Blackborow DS just to make sure it would be ready if we ever get weather conditions that warrant 4.8" tires on 100mm rims. A tune-up on a dingle speed drive train is pretty easy. Things go roundy-round and the wheels are propelled forward. You can steer and brake? Good? Then you are done. Simple.

But you know you just cannot go around the block and go home. You have to go 'bushwhackin'' if you don't have snow. You know, find the sand, the duff, the places where other bikes cannot go, and you go there. So, the best place for that near me is the Green Belt, and I don't have to go very far to get there either. 

Sand is available in copious amounts around Black Hawk Creek which runs through the Green Belt. Right now that creek is so low that many sand bars and the actual sandy bottom of the creek itself is open for some great fat biking action. Most of this is grainy sand, compacted, and easily ridden upon. But there is sand that is nearly impossible to navigate by bicycle out there as well. 

This sand is the stuff that gets filtered out during floods in the faster moving water. This then gets deposited wherever that water gets slowed down enough that the weight of the sand is pulled out of the rushing flood water by gravity or its inertia, if the water hits an object, or gets turned suddenly by an object like a fallen tree, a big rock, a embankment, etc. This sand can pile up two to three feet or more in depth and is as fine a sand as you could wish for. It's akin to 'hour glass' sand, if that helps to visualize this loose, unconsolidated stuff. 

So, you have those two challenges which are perfect for the Blackborow DS, but there is more. You have your regular paths, of course, and any bicycle can try those, but there are a lot of wooded areas with a ton of brambles, downed trees, and brick-a-back of all sorts, such as you might find in a wooded flood plain.

You have to wonder from how many miles away did this old stove come from.

You just never know what you might find down there along the creek. Plus you just never know where it may have come from. With the frequency and ferocity of floods through here, it could be flotsam and jetsam from upstream. Or it could simply be just stuff dumped off there by someone who should have known better than to discard their junk in such a manner. Either way, there are interesting discoveries to be made on a regular basis due to both of those reasons. Maybe others as well. 

I probably walked my bike a fair piece while bushwhackin' and that's all part of the fun in my opinion. That and figuring out how to cross muddy, water runs that cut across the flood plain here and there down to the creek. I had one that had me doing some pretty fancy gymnastics with my bicycle as a tool. It can best be described as a moveable stepping stone! I like figuring out that end of things while bushwhackin' as well. 

So, the Blackborow DS is all ready to go now. Plus, I got a ride in and that's never a bad thing. Now the Blackborow will await the opportunity to do battle with Winter, once it decides to come around with its snow and ice.