My reflection

A little reflection on cycling and frustration. Not that cycling and frustration are collaborators or anything, but on this weeks trail ride I did encounter some frustration. I am an experienced, though hardly expert trail rider, and riding on rocky terrain is probably were I am the least expert. The park in my local is quite rocky. I was exploring another section I had not been on before, its called Rough Go on the trail map, need I say more? Trail riding requires a tripod of skill, power and confidence. Any week leg on this stool, shows up quick. You can hide some shortcomings for a while on a road ride, but trail riding brings the truth out quick. But I did have to grapple with frustration as I found shortcomings in my cycling that day, trail riding also can give rewarding flashes of satisfying achievment. A rider has to make split second decisions to clear a rough technical section requiring all three aspects of skill. Often this happens on a instinctive level, and of course this is where time/experience come into play. The rider has to bring all three aspects to play. A shortcoming brings a stall, a bail or worse a crash. On a demanding road ride the state of affairs is more pliable or fluid moving stightly from one corner of the metaphorical stool the the other and back. It make take covering several attacks befor lack of power finally overwhelms me and I am left witha dull sense of frustration. Conversly the rewards tend not to have that quick deep satisfaction either. That is one thing I like about trail riding and why I generally like to do it alone on my own terms. The following shot is a rather calm section.

This region is of ancient volcanic origin, which contributes to good vineyard soils. The mountain I'm on has very porous "boiled" looking rock on on side and hard and even glassy rock on th other side. It was quarryied for cobblestone in the early twentieth century. One can still see remnants of that work in blast holes and rock piles.
We had a snow shower today!! A cold front blew in from Alaska on the tail end of a rain event. Tonight is going down to 28 degrees brrr