Note
Inspired by having my bike off to the bike hospital for much needed repairs, I made my 2020 mountain biking debut today. I decided to go with "easy" since my mountain biking skills are somewhat less than "sub-beginner". And that meant making a lengthy journey of at least 3+ minutes of moderate pedaling to get to the nearest trailhead for the School Section trails. For an actual trail, I chose "Lunch Lady", which comes closest to making a circuit around the whole of the section. My goal was survival.
Survival was never really in question, but for me, mountain biking does have the flavor of being always near to the brink of disaster. It's the nature of going from smooth pavement that might be 30'-40' wide or more to a dirt path that is nearer to 1' than to 2', and (in this case), dotted with all kinds of broken pieces of limestone rock of varying wheel destroying sizes.
But I got around with no falls (good), and only twice chose to hop off to walk an obstacle (also good, for exercising good common sense) that almost anyone else would have ridden over with eyes closed while doing a reverse wheelie. I wonder if riding there for even once a day for 30 minutes for a week would reduce the anxiety much?
Looking at possible downsides, at least the School Section is positioned right behind the hospital, and not all that much further from the large bone and joint clinic in town, so if something did happen, at least you're in the right place!
But I was able to pick up my road bike in the late afternoon, so we're back in business. Then ran trails at Happy Jack, where there were all kinds of happy mountain bikers, lots of happy equestrians camping down below, many happy black cows around Browns Landing, one happy bull moose also hanging around near Browns Landing, and one happy runner dude (me.)
On the way home, I stopped by the grocery store, which was strangely busy for a Friday evening. And McDonalds and nearby other similar places were incredibly busy, with long lines for the driveups. I wondered what was going on. Had everything been moved up at UW for early classroom starts and had students arrived today???
Everything became clear as I drove past the hospital, and noticed there were no traffic lights on up ahead, and that everything was very dark. No power in the north half of town. It finally came back on at about 12:30 am, having been off (I later learned) for 6+ hours. No idea what happened.