The spice of life is challenging yourself.
And because I love to travel and I love to ride, I cooked up what I believed to be a reasonably doable challenge for Kailan and Edward. 80 or so miles, 3 forest crossings.
It seemed like a good plan, and I had been Eye balling the Lake George forest since before the TNGA had a route mapped and after some conversation with Edward we decided to go for it.
No hammocks were packed as we were sleeping one night. The night was to be cold and chilly, so sleeping bags were had, but as it is sleeping bag would not have been enough to sleep if the temps got really cold in the forest. So the Goal for day one was the Florida Trail Camping shelter at the edge of the Seminole forest.
As I was rolling out, I estimated the distance to the shelter to be 40 something miles. Of course my estimates were off. But at the time we did not know that, we were all packed up, I was all sherpad up and we were rolling on the highway.
The Mood was good, but I could already tell that Edward was starting to go through some growing pains. Granted, he has never even ridden 10 miles, let alone the distance we were planning to cover.
The Lake George forest was pristine, forest roads hard enough to ride a road bike on. With about three miles left the boys were already begging for a break and with some coercion and some encouragement, we made it to the first break spot at St Johns river and Astor Florida.
14 miles in and we had 10 miles to go before we could take our swim at Alexander Springs. Those 10 miles proved to be hard, as Kailan asked for the rope, and I watched as Edward drifted way off the back. I could see him reaching deep into the pain cave.
But, the sun was bright and the mood was great, I was enjoying every minute of every mile. The music going, the Ocala National Forest wide open; huge and intimidating as always with its gradual ascents and gradual descents.
Both Kai and I kept turning our heads seeing that Edward was now becoming a small dot on the horizon. With only 3 miles left I figured he may need some reprieve, so I unbuckled the rope off Kai's bars, rolled it into my Osprey pack and sent Kailan ahead as I waited for Ed to catch up.
He caught up, I offered the rope, but to my surprise, he refused. I was impressed by his determination, and I immediately set off chasing Kailan, who had taken off as if we were in a race.
As I caught up to him I offered the rope and we were able to engage the tow rope while we were riding, wow, we have gotten really good at this rope thing.
We cross the river and turn towards Alexander and I can see the Brown National forest park sign like a small stain in the distance, indicating that we were now within sight of the finish of goal 2. BUT ahead there was small climb, that seemed to be a steady grade for 1/4 of a mile. Kai and I got to the park gate and waited for Edward.
Not long after he emerged around the corner I could only imagine his mind state when he came around and saw that beastly gradual long climb that he had to do.
We got into the park, had a little food, and went swimming and sunning for a couple of hours on the banks of Alexander Spring. The water was gorgeous and I imagined my Native cousins in this land would of thought this to be as much of a paradise as I did.
The boys had cooked up this great idea that they wanted to camp here. But after telling them, I would consider it, I had NO intention of cutting the day short. I could tell that after 24 miles under our belt, the party had bitten off way more than we could chew. There was no way we were gonna make the Seminole shelter, so I wanted to complete the second forest crossing so we could at least wrap up the day with some pride.
We could take paisley road across, but a couple of weeks earlier during the race, it proved to be a tough 7 mile grind. I figured 11 miles of singletrack would be better. I was itching to see what was going on with the paisley mountain bike trail since they claimed that it was closed for some kind of forest project.
4 miles into it, as the suffering really started to set in for Edward, I could see that there was nothing going on with the trail at all. Which was a bummer, it would of made for a real big difference during the CFiTT. Any how, Kai requested the rope and we did it up, and we kept going, and at mile 8, I let Edward know that Paisley was the finish line, we were cutting the trip short.
A cycle set in, Kai and I would ride,
put a gap on Edward,
wait ten minutes,
then roll on.
Admittedly, Paisley MTB is challenging, with its long gradual inclines and declines. I still had the CFiTT route loaded and I could see Paisley Road. I figured at this rate, Edward was going to really have to suffer with 3 miles of singletrack left, so I opted to try and get to Paisley road and that would put us miles closer to the extraction point. After some bushwhacking, we found a forest road that was showing on my GPS. A bit sandy in spots, but Kai and I worked together and after a mile or more we made paisley road, a little more distance and we made the shopping mart on CR 42 to the expected pick up spot, 40 miles after starting the day.
I was proud of the both. Riding in the forest is no easy taskl, and for a kid who has never even done 11 miles, 40 forest miles was HUGE for him. AND he did it under his own power, incredible.
We got picked up, went back to De Leon, where LILr NI, went on to attend a Fall Festival party,
I went on to take a nice nap,
and Edward,
eventually,
went to bed Early that night.
Take Care,
Laters,
The NaKeD InDiaN
I met up with Rob Roberts, Mucaro MTB dot blogspot dot com and Afro Nipples.
