Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Morning Eye Opener at Upper Paugussett

My friend Rick is working on the formation of a weekly ride group made up of guys that all live in Newtown. If you are a frequent reader of the Snack and live in the area, shoot me a note if you want to get in on this list: mark [at] cyclesnack [dot] com. Sunday morning was the first group ride, only it was just him and I for this ride. Left the house a little early so I could warm up. I love riding the 'Horse, too.

Everything is working like it did when I first got the bike, but now I know how to ride it. I think the next thing I have to replace is the front fork. The fork that I have on there now is good but I want to be able to control it from the bars. Scored some tires from CList on Friday so I am going to try 2.2 in the rear, too.

We headed up the fire road to the White Trail, over to the Kissing Oaks, where we picked up the Newtown Trailway (yellow diamond trail) - Newtown's first multi-use trail that goes from Pond Brook to Fairfield Hills. The section from the oak trees to Pond Brook is brutally technical but worth riding.

Instead of going all the way to the end we climbed up the Mulikin trail, which by the way appears to be getting a lot of use and not by me, to the Poly Brody. From there we checked out the new horse trail, actually a bypass for the horses because the trap rock is hard on their hooves.

The bypass is nice, it includes a grade reversal, makes use of existing stonewall breaks, and has a little techy section. There would have been a nice log crossing but the builder cut the tree wide enough for an ATV to pass through (oops). The trail goes back to the Poly Brody and then ten yards in cuts back in and then goes straight up the fall line. What were they thinking?

Rick and I climbed up the steepest part of the Poly Brody and then parted ways. He needed to get home by 9 am and it was already 8:30.

I headed down the Gussy and was surprised to encounter quite a bit of horse poop on the trail. I made a few annotations of my encounters on the Upper Gussy Blog that you might find interesting.

Where Rick and I parted company we rode 5+ miles, so he probably got a 6+ mile ride in. At the end of the Gussy the Edge said 7+ miles and including the warm up ride to the trail head and back home, altogether I got a 10 mile ride in.

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