you can't win them all

Saturday I headed over to Panthertown with a few friends. We met at the Pisgah Tavern where Sam tried to scam us into borrowing a good map of the area but we assured him we had a map and would be just fine without his charity. I've ridden Panthertown before and have always remembered it fondly, especially the trails over Big and Little Green Mountains, but with new trail signs up showing most of the trails are now closed to bikes we had a hard time finding much to ride. We smoked through the first 10 miles of trail and road and then found ourselves standing on some gravel road somewhere in North Carolina trying to make sense of a map and gps that didn't add up to anything we were finding on the ground. Eventually we got it together but before we got to Riding Ford Broussard's fancy new wheels decided to drop a few spokes so we just headed back to the truck and back to the Pisgah Tavern! The ride was a bust but that's okay - you can't win them all.

Sunday I should have headed back into the Blacks to continue my business there, but I just never could get quite motivated to drive all the way up there. After a lazy morning I finally got around to taking Duma out for a mini and we loaded up and headed to Turkey Pen. I set out without an agenda or route but after we got moving I decided to do:

South Mills River > Mullinax > Squirrel Gap > Bradley Creek > Riverside > Vineyard Gap

We got almost run over by rude mountain bikers on South Mills River and then for whatever reason I turned right on Bradley Creek instead of left. By the time I realized my mistake I was already too close to the other end of Riverside that I didn't want to just turn around but I couldn't convince myself to tack on an extra 3 miles of Riverside to get to Vineyard. So we bailed the rest of the way up Bradley and rolled around in the river for a few minutes before rolling back to the house.