Last week Matt and I were able to sample only a portion of what OP Schnabel has to offer mountain bike riders. After looking the park up on Google Earth, I found a couple more trails that I wanted to try before heading back to the bottom of Leon Creek to ride the creek bed.
Since we got a late start, I decided to eat breakfast, which I usually don't do before a ride. Typically, I'll have a couple of cups of coffee and a couple of granola bars, which tide me over until after the ride. Today I decided to have eggs and bacon, which I rarely eat anyway. I'll NEVER do that again! For the first hour of our ride, I felt weak and thought I would toss my cookies at any minute. To top it all off, it was pretty warm outside, so that didn't help.
Yesterday I bought some new Forte pedals, which have a larger platform, plus one side has clips so you can clip in, or flip the pedal over and ride with regular shoes. I think eventually I will like the pedals, but I found myself being very tentative on technical sections because I'm not used to them yet.
We found some cool new trails at the front of the park that were a little challenging, but a good warm up. After resting for a few minutes, we headed to the creek bed. Along a portion of the creek bed trail, we found a high cliff with an overhang that some people were walking under. By the time we stopped so I could snap a picture, they had moved on. Here is Matt standing in front of it to give a perspective of how high this cliff was.
Then we headed to what we call the "whoop de do" section of trails just north of the Alamo Country Club Golf course. These trails are literally up and down, up and down, up and down, WHOOP DE DO! We both nearly ate it a couple of times, but survived.
We started heading back to what we thought was the park, but we wound up getting lost and Matt had a flat. We were pressed for time because Matt had an afternoon commitment, but we seemed to keep getting more lost than before. At one point, we actually made a circle and wound up where we had initially started.
FINALLY, after a 3 hour ride, we made it back to the truck, our legs burning with every pedal rotation. Totally spent, we loaded up the gear & bikes and headed out. We hope to ride OP again next week, since there were still more trails we could have explored, but time and stamina wouldn't allow....
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