hurronnicane

Anyone been out there recently?

Anyone been out there recently?

Our whole family just finished reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. I enjoyed the hell out of it. Also recently read the Man Who Walked Through Time, and The Emerald Mile.

Planting gardens, working with the chainsaw, 5-6 mile walks (off-road), some bike rides though both my wife’s and mine are currently being worked on), working on our rainwater collection system... We are also fixin’ to move and upgrade the outdoor shower. My kids are also instigating push-up challenges and squats and pull ups.

My son discovered a roadrunner’s nest twenty-five feet up in an oak tree on the front of our property. He saw it hop from branch to branch to reach the nest.

Oops. On the bright side, I retired recently so I had no job to lose.

On the bright side, I retired rece

Engineer Mountain?

These are weird days for sure. Beautiful central Texas Spring! So beautiful and peaceful but meanwhile a raging pandemic is laying waste to a large chunk of the world. My family is all together and hanging out, eating meals together, sharing music, and talking a lot about the state of affairs. We were all together in Arkansas for a week, and now we are home and digging in to projects and self-isolating. With 10 acres here there are endless things to do without going anywhere. Both kids started their own gardens yesterday, building fences, working the soil. We went for a great ride today before it got too warm. Outdoor showers, hammock time, reading, walking the dog. I spent time yesterday preparing an area and planting with Little Bluestem. We are filling our days easily. Still haven’t figured out the grocery acquisition thing since we returned from Bentonville but we can get by another couple of days before we have to do anything.

We just got home from Arkansas yesterday and are still trying to get the hang of hunkering down. We worked for awhile carving a place out of the woods for my daughter and her boyfriend to park the Sprinter Van and live out of it. 100+ yards from the house so they are happy. My son helped them with that for awhile then started building a bike jump. Meanwhile we worked in the garden for a few hours trying to make it ready to plant. It’s weird having unlimited time to work on projects. I’m excited to get back on the bike once my trails dry out a little (late tomorrow maybe or Tuesday).

I just returned from a family trip to the Bentonville area. My daughter and her boyfriend had just departed on what was supposed to be an extended trip in their recently converted Sprinter Van. So my wife and I, our son, and his best friend drove up to meet them at Devil’s Den State Park, southeast of Bentonville. It was cold and rainy and the park was mostly deserted. We rode the trails and camped two nights there. It was very beautiful but almost no trees had budded out yet. After a couple of days of tent camping there we broke camp and headed to our B&B destination in Bentonville. On the way we went to Hobbs State Park to ride as it was the only place that the locals deemed rideable because of the rain. We rode Little Clifty and had a great time. It was wet in places but not muddy and there were some really fun downhill segments that our group loved. The following day (after another night of rain) we rode a portion of the Back 40. It too was really wet but not very muddy. We had started the ride late in the afternoon to give it time to dry out a little and finished in the dark. Everyone was so lit up with the trails and the shared adventure! It was a great trip despite a metric shit-ton of rain and the haunting pandemic developments. We managed to stay away from other people to a great extent, other than gas stations and a grocery run. Our age range was 19 - 62 and everyone had a blast.

Thanks! For this trip we may end up just using a soft roof-top cargo bag. We don’t anticipate using a roof rack much and the bag is a fraction of the cost. We used one when we drove to Haines, Alaska and it was adequate for our needs.

Yes. Sorry. Roof rack. We have crossbars but lack the towers and the parts that interface with the roof...

Just a long shot. Anyone have the racks to fit CRV? Otherwise my wife will try to use the 25-year old racks from a totally different car.

On a related note, my son just got a full-face helmet and reported that you can’t perform the snot-rocket maneuver while wearing it.

I've camped out there, swam, and mountain biked. It is a real treasure. I haven't seen it since the devastating flood on the Blanco in 2015. Does the 533 acres represent the entire Ranch Cima property? It seemed bigger.

I've never ridden in the dark much at all, but in 2010 while doing the Enchilada Buffet I had a true light FAIL. As they were lining us out at the beginning of the ride in the dark, my cheap light fell out of the camel back and fell into multiple pieces. When we got back to Walnut at dusk and started our lap I grabbed a cheap borrowed handlebar-light out the car but it wouldn't stay in place and pointed straight down almost immediately before it quit working altogether. I had to get between two riders who had lights and just hope for the best. By that point I was hallucinating a bit from exhaustion and the spotty lighting just enhanced the delirium. I only pegged one tree and at that point in the day it was just a minor inconvenience.

What about Farmer John?

City of Rocks, near Silver City, New Mexico. Somewhere around 1988.

The expensive plastic frame was purchased used, ridden hard for years, and then handed down to my son when I got a new bike. And when he cracked the frame, it was repaired with glue and fabric. And he paid for it himself from his hard-earned wages and we supported a local craftsman in the process. Hard to see much downside. We are all happy. And you should probably convert your lawn to a vegetable garden or wildlife habitat since maintaining lawns is a huge waste of resources, though we will be happy to stay off of it all the same.

Just had a 52 inch deep, thousand foot long trench put in across the front of our property to stop an Oak Wilt outbreak from wiping out our trees.

Thanks for the recommendation Seth! I just got my son's bike back. Cracked Carbon Repair fixed us up. As you said, the price was great and he was easy to work with. Thanks again!

Camping options near Bentonville seem limited. Devil's Den State Park is southeast of Fayetteville and it has pleasant camping and a trail system. Certainly not as developed as Bentonville area as far as trails go but we have had fun there. There is also a City Park with camping near Eureka Springs, Lake Leatherwood, which has an extensive trail system which we were unable to ride when we went due to torrential rains. And the camping was a little sketchy due to a huge semi-permanent Canada Goose population with attendant goose poop issues.

In the mid 80s I ran into a couple of dudes at Lost Maples State Park where they were riding. The day before they said they had ridden Enchanted Rock. They claimed to have ridden to the top.