Christmas Mountain Biking Photos at Morris Bridge / Flatwoods
No, I don’t feel bad at all that I’m missing out on skiing. Holiday tourists, lines, icy highways … or flip flops, shorts, and short sleeves … hmmmmm. Do I look sad? How do you like my leftover helmet from my 1996 race team? I like it, it matches the 1995 Stumpjumper I’m on.
Some people have asked me, “How can you mountain bike in Florida?” I say it’s kindof like mountain biking in two dimensions instead of three, on an X-Y coordinate system instead of an X-Y-Z, for the math geeks amongst us. Which basically means, yeah, it’s flat. But twisty.
The ironic thing is that no one down here rides singlespeeds. We ride singlespeeds on mountainous terrain where the gear you are in is rarely the right one for the job. But down here I’ve been just picking one gear and sticking to it all day. I’ve been using the 42×20. Big ring fun! I could have used a little harder one, but the next option is the 17 which is too hard. This was the biggest climb I did all day.
There can be some technical challenges even more frightening than the log hop, however. One time I had to turn around because there was an alligator on the trail. This guy really likes this spot, he has been here all three times that I’ve ridden so far this trip. The reason he looks so happy is because I was scratching his belly just a minute before. Alligators like their bellies scratched, FYI.
But the most horrible technical challenge occurs if you ride early in the morning. If you are the first one to ride the trails, you have to break trail. See, the banana spiders build webs across the trails at night. They build them precisely at head height. So you are riding along and all of a sudden you have a face full of web. And you know that somewhere there is a spider with a body about the size of the last segment of your pinky finger.
The trails are in perfect shape right now, as it hasn’t rained much this fall. The trails border on the Hillsborough River, and the water levels normally vary cyclically. So the low trails like this one get flooded certain times of the year and are unrideable.
Most of the higher sandy trails are rideable all year long. This is the perfect time of year to ride, it has been in the low 70s all week. It gets cold enough here that leaves do fall off some of the trees, although not completely.
So this is Steve Z Sr., and this is how the Steve Z’s spent their Christmas Eve, under the canopy of the cypress swamp!
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