Matthew Bafford's Musings

« Back to blog
 

The Broken Bike Lock

My ride-to-be yesterday started off pretty poorly, with a broken bike lock.

Dsc_5833
The picture is actually from after I was unable to unlock my bike and had to steal it while a couple of cops watched. The theft was pretty blatant, as I ultimately lifted the bike and chain up as high as I could (I was grabbing the bottom of the tires) over the pole that it was chained to. I'm just lucky I chained it up to a pretty stupid spot (a tall post with no top) - otherwise I might have been stuck there a lot longer.

The cops, including the one who arrived just as I was lifting the bike over the top, said and did absolutely nothing. I guess that's a good thing.

Despite an hour wasted trying to unlock my bike, going back home, finding my Dremmel, and cutting through the lock, the ride turned out to be an awesome one.

For one, it turns out there's a pretty decent set of (paved, but shady and sweeping) trails to get me up to the W&OD trail and where I normally start mountain biking from:

Nice_trails_lawyers
 It'll add 6 miles or so to my loop, but it'll save me from having to drive, so it seems worth it.

Even better, is yesterday's ride ended up being 40 miles of mixed mountain bike trails and paved trails/road. Previously (this time around) the best I'd done was 20 miles. Not bad for being back on a bike for only two months after over 10 years of non-riding!

The entire route:

Entire_route

There's a whole network of trails throughout Fairfax County. It's definitely something to keep in mind when the area starts to get you down...

Posted July 12, 2010