Trails in my backyard

Are you sitting down? Yeah? Ok... Yesterday I went for my first mountain bike ride since I moved! Yeah, I can't hardly believe it either. Just over three weeks in Flagstaff and I hadn't hoped on a mountain bike once. It's crazy. I've been flaking out with the "but my road bike's ready, my mountain bikes need work", but yesterday I headed over to AZ Bikes and they hooked me up with an ExiWolf to get my 29'er operational again so no more excuses.

I started out with the intention of riding over to Buffalo Park and heading up to the mountains to play, but by the time I got my bike setup and ready to roll it was a little late in the afternoon for that kind of ride. I knew there was an dirt road that headed out east of town by the country club, so I figured I'd head out that for 30 minutes or so and turn back. A quarter of a mile out the road, not even out of the view of the houses over there and I come across a National Parks Service sign with saying "trailhead - 500 yards". Sweet!. I bust up there and apparently there's a network of 11 miles worth of trails that on their south end hook in to Passage 31 of the Arizona Trail. Unbelievably sweet!

My last choice of residence was based on proximity to great riding and it turned out that it was basically weekend only riding during the winter because the parks closed at sunset. The place I'm at now I chose because it was in Flagstaff and it turns out that I'm barely a mile from singletrack, and then barely 5 miles to the Arizona Trail! Granted, I doubt it'll take the place of Little Bear, or Rocky Ridge up on the mountain, but still it's great to be this close to singletrack where I can get out and stretch my legs when time's tight and it's hopefully low enough that it won't get hit too bad once the snow starts. Yeah, the Catwalk at 9,000 feet in January is probably not going to be fun, but a few inches down here when you don't have a veritable cliff to one side should still be a blast.

In other news, I started with the race resume submissions today. Got a letter off to my first pick today, so hopefully something'll work out with 'em.