I Won The Trifecta

Well I feel like I did anyway. If you didn't have an uncle who played the horses, here's a link to what a real trifecta is.

My new camera came in (scroll down a few posts to see why I needed one). This is the first picture with it (literally the 2nd exposure, the first was fine but I reframed a bit). The camera is a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2. I'm very pleased with it and think the wide format mode will be nice for bicycling pictures.

It was a beautiful sunny day today with temperature reaching the upper 40's. About the only sign of the winter weather we had just three days ago was the ice you see here still holding onto the middle of Deckers Creek. You'll be hearing more about the trail that follows this creek. I'm usually not all that fond of riding rail trails, but the Deckers Creek Trail is really something else. It goes through very pretty and rugged terrain. The creek itself has some serious whitewater, which of course means elevation change. I think the grade is what makes this trail so much more fun than the usual rail trail. It's not steep, trains used to go up it after all, but you climb up from here (where the creek enters the Mon River), then have a great downhill run back. With a little luck it will be rideable next week.

I made it up Sixth Street today, the hill that kicked my butt a few weeks ago. Since the weather was so fine I headed over there for a rematch. I've been anxious to try it on the EZ-1, but snow (and ice) set in the day after I was last there and the roads just fully cleared up today. The steep part of this hill is really short (here's a post where I sized it up on a topo map), but the road is rough, narrow, and seriously steep for that short bit. I've been concentrating my riding on the steepest hills in my neighborhood these past few weeks, both for the training and to work on technique. I feel like I've improved in both ways at least a little, but I just barely got up this hill today. Still, I was glad to make it up. I'm hoping that this obsessing about hills will pay off on the more normal grades I'll be riding with my buddies this summer.

Finally, I bought a new bike today (ordered it anyway). Oh, that's four isn't it? I better quit.

Quite a day.