racked up
The weather has been incredibly nice lately– unusually warm for February. I’ve been taking advantage of the weather by going biking, if you couldn’t already tell from all the biking posts in February.
This weekend I went biking out at the American River Parkway with Jiro and Ray.
I’d forgotten how nice it was out there. I used to bike out there pretty regularly, but in the past couple of years I’d only gone out there to ride the Mercy metric century. I should ride out there more. I mean it’s pretty much made for biking with nice scenery, smooth pavement, no cars– what more can a biker ask for?
There’s also good food options along the parkway. Our original plan was to bike to Seoul, a Korean restaurant that’s not too far off the parkway. I’ve gone there so often that the waitress knows me. She lets me park my bike inside the restaurant, which is why I go there when biking. There’s also Costco, which is where we decided to go instead of Seoul.
I guess the main reason why I don’t bike at the parkway much anymore is because I’m lazy. To get to the parkway I either have to bike about 15 miles to get to the start of it, or drive out to Sacramento. Nowadays when I’m road biking I prefer just heading toward Winters.
After the ride at the parkway I swapped out the bike rack for my ski racks. It’s the first time using both in one weekend. That’s kind of cool, I guess, using my car to its full potential.
I had avoided going skiing this year because I didn’t think there was enough snow. Plus the last time I had gone skiing I had narrowly escaped getting injured (http://outdoortravelgeek.com/2011/01/gold-run/), so I’d just been sort of wary of going in general. I sort of decided at the last minute to go, partly because there was a decent sized group going, most of who I hadn’t really hung out with in a while, and partly because George had a discounted ticket for me.
It was a fun day, even though the snow conditions weren’t all that great. The snow wasn’t very deep, there were patches of exposed rocks, and for the most part it was icy. I spent most of the day skiing with Robert, who had gone snow camping a few miles away the night before. Towards the end of the day we met up with the rest of the group, and did a run down a black diamond. I think if the conditions were better I would’ve liked that run a lot, but it was a bit scary with the icy patches.
So anyways, yea, good times. I didn’t take any pictures all day, so here’s a picture I stole from Lisa’s facebook.
Things I’m thankful for:
- ski racks and bike racks
- driving stick on windy mountain roads
- biking and boarding and skiing friends
