Well many of you have heard me talk about the awesome system of trails we have in Madison County. They cover over 85 miles of beautiful scenery and they are SO nice! The weather was awesome on Tuesday so we decided to get out and go for a little leisurely ride around E-town. Or so we thought…
We tried a different route than we’d done before and ended up at a “trail construction” sign. Hmmm…where to now? Chris made the great suggestion that we go through town and ride down St. Louis Street so we could check out the homes (without looking creepy and taking pictures out of a car window). At the end of the street we had the option to turn around and go back the way we came or go down a ways to jump on another trail. So we said what the heck…it was still light out and we were feeling kind of adventurous. When we got to the trail I noticed that it was gravel and very “off-roady”…then I saw a woman coming up the hill looking like she wanted to die. The look on her face should’ve been our warning sign saying “TURN AROUND”. And did we? Sure didn’t. We just kept going for about 20 minutes of true mountain biking. The scary part about this was we had no idea if/when/where this trail would end. Needless to say, it was a beautiful sight when finally spotted a paved path up ahead with lots of people walking on it. PEOPLE!!! Then Chris made the observation, “all of these people look like college kids.” Oh my gosh, somehow we’d biked all the way to SIUE…the university that’s a good 6 miles from our house. I know what you’re thinking: 6 miles on a bike is nothing. You’re right, it’s not that hard until you have to peddle another 6 miles…when the sun is about to go down…when there are no paths (or sidewalks for that matter)…on the gravel shoulder of a highway.
So if you’ve ever seen those obviously inexperienced bikers on a really busy road where they had no business being…that was us on Tuesday night. Lesson learned…next time take the Garmin!
