372 Whoops in the Pine-Needled Forest

Well, well, well.
Here we are in the midst of another Memorial Day weekend, folks.
That means that I actually have Monday off from jerk, something that doesn't come around too often.
No sirree, Bob.
I'll take it.

That also means I have an extra day to ride the ol' CRF-450X9 if I so choose, and I just might do that.
It's Sunday evening as I type this wonderful bloggy post, and I've already ridden two days out of the weekend.
Should I go for three in a row?
Hmmm.
I do feel pretty good and have a good level of energy, so, we'll see in the morning on that.

Saturday's Pachaug enduro loop ride was good.
I rode my typical route for the majority of it, and it was 50 miles in total.
I felt pretty good, and (knock wood) the shitty feeling I had a couple weeks ago due to (presumably) pollen in the air seems to be long gone.
Instead, I had a good amount of energy, I could concentrate, and I made some good moves while on the bike, something that is always a great feeling, and something that never gets old.
Shit, if it did get old, I wouldn't want to ride now, would I?  ;)

Where Saturday's ride route did differ from the usual was toward the end, at about the 30-something mile mark.
I finally rode down one trail of the Pachaug loop that I'd actually never ridden on before - ever - although I did walk down it on foot once last fall as an investigation of it.
This trail contains one of the "Hero Sections", so named because it is more challenging due to the very rocky, dried-up stream bed on this trail.
It literally is all rock and no dirt on the rocky section, something that I have never enjoyed riding in my whole time on dirt bikes.
It's called a dirt bike, not a rock bike, Leroy.
So, what I did was take the (much newer) bypass trail that some clever riders have recently cut in that runs along the side of this rocky stream bed, and that was much more like real dirt bike riding to me.
All-in-all, I'll have to ride this trail a bunch more times before I have a good memory of it and feel comfortable turning the wick up into the fun zone.
This, I shall do.

Today's (Sunday's) ride was on a different route for a change of pace.
I still utilized the same actual trails, but I put them together in a different order.
What I started off doing was something I haven't done since February (I think it was February, anyway):
I rode some laps around the mini-loop that makes-up my favorite pine-needled, whooped-out sections.
Each lap around that loop is 2.8 miles, and I did that for 10 laps.
That stuff is, as I've written before, basically like a motocross track going through the woods, and it is very enjoyable.
Very physically exerting as well, but that's part of the appeal to me because I want to get a good cardio workout while riding my dirt bikes, Bucky.
Why don't you try that?
God, if only the whole Pachaug enduro loop was like that terrain.

After a water and piss break, I then rode out to the start of a trail section about 5 or 6 miles away and rode that back to where I originally started the day from.
Next, one more loop around the pine-needled section, and then I rode back to the truck.
All-in-all, it was 44.4 miles and I felt good on the bike doing it, so, chalk-up another good ride.

I'm happy to say that the CRF-450X9 felt good, too, and although I still wish I had kept the ol' warhorse WR-250FY, at least I wasn't missing it too much since I simply got with the program and rode the bike that I do still have in a decent manner.
As I realize more and more that the CRF-450X9 feels best while not in the tightest trail sections, I hope I can simply put up with that fact by riding through the tighter stuff the best I can, and then letting 'er rip in the faster stuff where the bike shines and feels very good, indeed.
Hmmmm.
Kinda' like what I did today, Lenny.  ;)

-John