ALL TRAILS LEAD TO ICE CREAM

"Here eat this..."  With that, I devoured the mashed up marshmallow and peanut butter sandwich that Mark had pulled out of his Camelbak.  It was, to the best of my recollection, the only time that I have ever truly "bonked."  Halfway up a seemingly endless fire road on a mountain near State College, Pennsylvania I got off of my bike and laid down.  No mas!  I had nothing left and I needed something to eat...now.  In those early years of what would become our "big rides" I really didn't have much of an idea of how to properly eat before a ride and what to pack for the ride.  Hence...there I was lying wasted on a dusty fire road eating my friend's peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich! Like bears in the woods, we all have different ways of finding sustenance on the trail.  Pictured from top left to right (top row first): Glenn Medice, Tim Sindlinger, Mark Lentz, Kristian Hains, Dave Raymond, Mike Nardelli, Bill Graves, Matt Linnane, & Kevi...

Sometimes the ride gets tough...and often virtually impossible.  Mark often says that it's not a ride unless there's at least one "hike-a-bike."  Yeah...that part of the trail that just can't be ridden (well...at least by me!)  That part of the trail that requires you to get out of the saddle and push.  Over the years, as my skill level has improved, the trails have to be more steep and more difficult to coax me off of my bike...but, sometimes it just can't be avoided.   On our annual Columbus Day " exploration ride,"  Mark and I rode some pretty awesome stuff.  We also hiked quite a few hills...like the one behind me! -- October 10, 2016 Often, the hike-a-bike isn't caused by some obnoxious hill...but instead, it's the result of the unexpected obstacles thrown into our path.  It could be debris from a storm, a rock garden that just CANNOT be navigated, or mud pits that sink your bike "bottom bracket deep."  It's obst...

It's a term that Mark and I use when the trails get sloppy, muddy, mucky, or just all around difficult.  It's a term I also use on the road when I have to ride straight into a head wind.  "It's like pedaling through peanut butter!"  I can remember a ride, probably back in '08 or '09, when Mark, Glenn, Mikey, and I went to Blue Marsh Lake on a January morning...a morning that was so damn cold we really had no good reason to be there.  The temps were in the low teens when we started out.  It was so cold that I couldn't talk....I mean it...my jaw was so frozen I couldn't form words!  Funny thing about that day was, by the the time we were two-thirds of our way through the 30 mile loop, the temps had risen to a balmy 40 degrees.  Those trails that were frozen solid at the beginning of our ride were now a melted muddy mess. There's no such thing as a bad mountain bike ride...but I look back on the end of that ride and all I can think of is that, f...