The Last Ride

Our friend, Eric, is heading to Calgary for work. To send him off we thought we'd take him out to eat. He had other ideas. Instead he wanted to round up the old gang and head up to Hardwood Hills for one last ride like we used to do back in the early 2000s.

When we were younger we used to go somewhere to mountain bike nearly every weekend in the summer. Hardwood Hills (just north of Barrie) was one of our favourite places to go. It's a bit out of the way, but they have a lot of great trails there.

Not everyone was available to ride that day. I went up with Jim, while Eric took his son and picked up Kathleen along the way. Peter took his niece and nephew out.

I have to say this was my first ride of the year. It's a bit embarrassing I know, but age has started to catch up with me. Over the past few years my right knee has been giving me problems if I overdo it. So I really have to be careful.

The drive up the 400 was slow, slow, slow. We headed up on Saturday of the Thanksgiving Day long weekend. The same time most cottagers were leaving town for possibly the last outing of the year.

It wasn't overly busy when we arrived at Hardwood. The parking lot was less than half full. We got a group rate from the girl selling the day passes (normally around $13 per person) and soon were off.

We rode the 8-km Fun Trail first. It was relatively easy. A good way to warm up.

Next was the 11-km Serious Trail. It was enjoyable. Though, by the end, most of the guys were drained. I don't think any of us had done much riding this year. I was most concerned about my butt. Normally if you haven't ridden much that's the part of the body that hurts the most after your first ride.

My rear end actually didn't cause me any problems but, once again, it was my right knee. I was beginning to feel it near the end of our second run. Still I felt fairly fresh and after taking a short breather decided to go out again.

Everyone else was too tired to ride except for Eric. He decided to join me on the 8-km Crank'd Trail while the others rested.

I have to say, when we first started up the gradual incline at the beginning neither of us had as much energy as we thought we did. It was a slow ascent. Still we rode through the trails until I noticed my Cannondale HeadShok fade to nothing. Fearing I might damage my frame we stopped riding the trail and took the gradual hill back to the start/finish area. That was that.

In the evening we met the others for dinner at Frankie Tomatto's (on Woodbine north of Steeles) to pack on all the calories we had ridden off during the day. Marilyn, Jan, Rob and Lester joined us there. And Dennis made a surprise appearance with his girlfriend having already made plans beforehand.