Tuesday Night Mountain Bike Ride, July 15, 2008 -- Lincoln - Cache Creek
By Tom Clark
This is an evolving ride. As a Tuesday Night ride, it has seen many incarnations, starting off as the old Standard Creek - Cache Creek ride, then as the Lincoln - Cache Creek ride, and now it really should be called the "through the woods thrashfest - Lincoln - Cache Creek" ride.
About eleven of us (I think) showed up for this ride, and though there was a little bit of waiting around for the tail end to show up, there wasn't much. This has been a good season for "pace homogeneity". So anyway, what we do is park at the gravel pit near the end of the pavement on Murphy Dome Road and then ride up Richard Berry Drive to the end. There's a cul-de-sac there, and a li'l trail going on up the ridge. We follow that trail. There's a stink about the future of this trail right now -- evidently there is subdivision planned for the area, and this trail will be roughly the centerline of the road. Hopefully a solution can be found. Geoff Orth said that there was talk of relocating the trail on the south side of the subdivision. This is as good a solution as can be expected, so I hope it works.
Anyway, after going up some steep bits, it gets even steeper, and you leave the flagging behind. We stopped at the chair and enjoyed the scenery. After the chair (yes, a white plastic chair) the trail gets crappier and crappier, though at least there is a trail. Amazingly, much of it is ridable. That wasn't the case two years ago. Eventually, you get off the bike and hoof it a short distance, crossing an old burn? clearing? sort of thing before popping out on Old Murphy Dome Road. There's three significant hills to peddle up on the road, and because there's no distraction to the uphill, they seem like a grind. (To me, going up the steep technical stuff isn't as bad, because you are always focused on the trail features rather than the grade.)
After passing a couple of intersections (I stopped for one at the bottom of a hill, and everyone else stopped, losing all their momentum. There ensued a huge bunch of bitching and whining about the lost momentum. What a bunch of sissies -- eithe that or maybe I AM an ass), we met Murphy Dome Road. We quickly descended down to Abraham, the road going in to Lincoln Creek subdivision. There, we divvied up. Folks who were up for a longer ride went down Abraham and out to the end of the subdivision road and down the great descent to Cache Creek road. Others just went down Murphy Dome Road. I went with the latter, and did a high-speed and sometimes hair-raising (due to speed) descent down MDR. I felt like a complete tool for doing so, but I thought it would be a good idea to get home and see Sandy for at least a few minutes. After all, she'd been in Greece for the past two weeks and it was our 19th wedding anniversary, and had returned home while I was on the ride.
So, my ride was over pretty quickly. Damn anniversary. The best part was the climb up to OMDR. That trail is really entertaining and challenging.