The Latest on the Chehaw MTB Trails

Starting back in mid to late 2010, several people began work on converting an old hiking trail and an old mountain bike trail at the Parks at Chehaw (http://www.parksatchehaw.org/) into a great and ridable mountain bike trail suitable for leisure rides and races.

Some of the final parts of that trail have been "cut in" and should be finalized very soon. The total mileage at this point is about 6.7 miles with roughly 316 feet of climb (according to my runkeeper app). The trail really does run through different extremes in terrain and view.

For anyone that has ridden in Ellijay, this trail compares to Ridgeway and is not anything like Bear Creek or Pinhoti Trail. The trail is a large winding loop the goes around the outer edges of the park. It runs beside the Kinchafoonee Creek, Philema Road, the animal park, the camp grounds, and through a low, swampy area and a managed forest.

I rode the trail yesterday and really thought about my previously held belief that you needed to ride in north Georgia to experience true mountain biking. However, this Chehaw trail is beginning to change my opinion on that. It's true that south Georgia is rather flat in comparison to north Georgia but we have hills of varying size that make our trails fun to ride. The new trail has some good changes in elevation with several climbs and drops.

I used Runkeeper GPS app on my phone to create the following map.

First New One in 10 Years.......

This is the first new bike I have bought since my last in 2001. It was September 10th, 2001 at REI in Atlanta. I guess I will always remember that date and where I was when I bought that K2. I was also single at the time and buying a full-suspension mountain bike was a big deal for me at the time. Here it is-

Now, I've only had my new bike for a few weeks and I have no idea what the date was when I bought it. I only remember that although the new bike is far superior to the old bike, I did pay more for the old one. Here's the new one-

The new bike is a 29er made by Specialized and I've enjoyed it so far. I've been hitting the new trails out at Chehaw (https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-6R9nyCAymWMzJlNGFkMGQtN2U1Yy00MDhkLWIzMzMtNmQzMDBkN2FmNDVj&hl=en&pli=1). I'm not sure whether its the new bike or the excitement that comes with owning a new bike but I feel like this bike handles the trail much better than the old.

This bike cost about the same as the old even though there are 10 years separating them. I did get lucky and sell the old bike on Craigslist for $90. I was pleasantly surprised that it sold quickly or at all. That helped ease the tension on cost with my wife although I did pay for this one with cash from Christmas and birthday and not on the credit card as I'm sure I did with the old.

I guess this whole situation and the main reason for this long story is that I'm amazed at what has changed in 10 years and I'm not just talking about bikes and bike technology. I'm very much a different person from that September day in Buckhead. I'm now married with 2 kids, a steady career, and an appreciation for the money it takes to buy a new toy and the physical ability to ride it.

My Youngest Has Gotten Mobile

This past weekend, we traveled down to Orlando and spent 2 days at Sea World. We had a blast and got to spend a lot of time together. While at the condo, I noticed that my 10 month old daughter was pushing her way across my lap to reach the things on the table. She finally figured out how to crawl and that has translated to her doing that on the floor. Check this out-

Jolicloud, anyone?

I've written before about Google Chrome OS and have been anticipating the arrival of some more mainstream cloud operating systems. From a stand point of a tech working around several older labs, I like the idea of taking the burden off of an older machine and putting it on the internet connection with a cloud OS. Chrome OS would be idea because of the manageability of it and Google Apps for Education program. However, it doesn't look like Google will just release the OS by itself. Yes, I can get a copy of Cherry or one of the other distributions but I need something official and stable for use in a k12 school.

I did find and play with Jolicloud which I feel is the next best thing. It's similar and quite useful. Did I mention it was free? It has some great features and would work in my labs but I would not have the same control over creating a mass amount of logins for the students. Here's a screen shot from my login.

If you know much about it then you realize that all of the icons on the desktop are web shortcuts that Windows or Mac could have and not depend solely on the internet connection. The OS is Linux with Jolicloud and although there are some offline settings, the whole point of the OS is to put the weight of the computing on the internet. Google and others are betting quite a bit that this is the direction that they need to move towards. There is a web app for just about anything you want to do.

Wow-No Posts Since Summer????

I've not posted anything since summer and just happen to run back across my blog here while I was chasing my internet footprint around. I googled myself and realized my username was all over the place. Oh well. Here's a pic or two from my last kayaking trip on the Kinchafoonee-

The water level was down so they could work on the dam. It was the last nice day before things cooled off.

2010 2nd Annual Man Weekend

For this trip, we headed to Jackson, GA and camped out at High Falls Campground. We had a great trip despite being rained on and riding on some sloppy trails at Dausett.

We arrived late on Friday night after a quick dinner at Cheddars in Macon. The trip up took about 2.5 hours. When we pulled up in the dark, you could not see the rushing water but you could sure hear it. We camped on the lake side of the park. On the south side of the lake, there is an old spillway that leads to a very fast moving and rocky river. 200 yards or so from the spillway are the "high falls" that the area is named for. Below is a picture of that spillway and a few of the falls.

On Saturday we rode Dausett Trails for a few hours. The trails were about 6 miles from our camp site and had about 17 miles worth of trails. Due to the large amount of rain we got that morning, the trails were a little wet so we got pretty nasty on our ride. There were some beautiful views on the trails and even some wild life.

The camp grounds were full and there was a good mix of tent campers and RV campers. Some were roughing it more than others. Since we don't camp much, we ended up roughing it and doing without a lot of the comforts of home. I escaped without an aching back or any other problems.

We slept in on Sunday and then got packed up and made our way home. The weekend would not have been complete without a stop in at the Bass Pro Shop in Macon.

I'm a New Dad......Again

On March 17, St. Patty's Day, our family grew by one. Kinsley Grace was born at 9:30pm. She weighed 6lbs and is 18.75 long. More to come on everything. We are hoping to get out of the hospital today and get back to some sense of normalcy. Here's a pic of Kinsley with her big sis, Carly. Carly is elated with being a big sis and can't wait to teach Kinsley "the ropes".