Eat'n Shit - Milwaukee Style

I suppose I was due. For the past few weeks I've been talking smack about the state of mountain biking (or lack thereof) in and around the Milwaukee area. From what I could tell, the terrain was just too flat, the trails too smooth, and the rides too short to provide any sort of workout or challenge. Well, as I lay flat on my back on the side of a trail yesterday, I had a few realizations.

Let me back up here a bit. My move to Milwaukee has sort of been twofold - I came out for about a week and a half only to go back to California for two weeks and then return back here again for good. The first, short experience with Milwaukee was great. Sunny, hot, and humid, there wasn't much of a departure from what it was like in California. I was able to be outside doing work or playing or whatever - just like always. This second, more permanent trip has proven different. Today is Tuesday and it hasn't stopped raining since I got back here on Friday of last week. I've seen more rain in the last five days than I'd seen during the entire last year I was in California. That sounds like an exaggeration for effect, but it is actually completely true. I guess thats why most backyards are grass rather than dust and dirt (which is nice), but also why places like Southern California are more popular vacation destinations than Milwaukee, Wisconsin. But I digress...

Like I was saying, I have been talking a lot of smack about mountain biking out here. This after having investigated about every trail in Wisconsin, but only having ridden one - mostly due to the rain. So when it looked like there might be a small break in the wet action yesterday afternoon, I quickly packed up my bike and headed to what is considered the most fun and challenging technical single track in the city.

Parked in the Pick-N-Save parking lot I was reminded of our old Crafton Hills loop staging area in Yucaipa. I poked around some side streets until I found an access to the trail. It runs along side a river, so the only way to get down to the trail is by finding a steep access point from the streets above. Once on the trail it seemed tame enough, just some crushed limestone and relatively flat - not exactly what I had in mind. At one point, a freshly fallen (albeit HUGE) tree blocked the trail, so I had to return to the streets above to navigate around it. Now on the other side of the tree, things started to change. No more crushed gravel, dirt became the primary surface. Soon trees and roots and rocks were the norm. Add to this a steady left side camber and gently rolling topography, and I was actually having some fun!

For the next few miles I meandered my way through the trees and undulating dirt, noticing many more off-shoots and trail options that I left for future exploration. However, it wasn't until I was on my way back that I had what I would decide was the defining moment of this outing. At one point on the way back, I was on a trail that made its way down to the edge of the river. Since it has been raining so much, it served as a kind of mini-tributary and there was a very shallow (read: less than a half inch) trickle of water that ran down the middle. Just a few feet from where it would eventually hit the swollen river, there was a little drop formed by a pile of roots. This couldn't have been more than six or so inches high, so I had the choice to roll over or pull up and drop off. Given that it looked so low and I wasn't going that fast, I chose the former. However, there was one fairly important factor that I neglected to take into account when making this almost subconscience decision. That small, shallow trickle of water had at one time been a larger flow, and that larger flow had carved out a nice 6 or 8 inch deep pool of water on the other side of the roots. What I thought was just another half inch or so of standing water was actually at least 10 times that deep, and what started out as a simple little roll over some roots turned into a classic roll over my handle bars - dumping me into the mud and onto my back.

Now most people would find this frustrating, annoying, and painful. I guess that when it comes to riding I'm just not most people. As odd as it will sound to those who have never ridden with me before (but as normal as it will sound for those that have), looking up into the sky after that crash I breathed a loud sigh of relief. Rain? What rain? I just ate shit on some fun, challenging singletrack - life is good.