Black Friday Ride (There was Blood)

I have a few little bike related lists in the back of my head. Places to ride, bikes to buy, accessories bike related trips, wheeling and dealing, the usual bike obsession things.  This was my short list for Fall, before the snow gets too deep:

- Ride the trails off of High Drive.  How can you be a biker in Spokane and have never ridden the trails up there? I live on Spokane's North Side, but it's really just a short bike/car ride over there and I've been meaning to do it all last summer.
- Seek out the fabled Northwest Passage bike route.  It was going to be more of a Southwest Passage for me, starting on the North Side.  I've ridden the River trail a few times, but I was hazy on the rest of the route.
- Bike to Central Food, David Blaine's new restaurant in Kendall Yards.  We've been on the lookout for a good weekend breakfast place ever since the Top Notch on Monroe closed down a few years ago.
- get rid of some belly fat
- get some of the Scoop's Hot Buttered Rum mix. It's bike related.

I was able to cross 3 of these items off the list in one fell swoop on the day after Thanksgiving, thanks to John's (Cycling Spokane) Black Friday bike ride.  About 10 of us met at the Scoop around 8am and soon hit the trails.  The trails off High Drive are fun.  I got separated from the group at one point and took a wrong turn.  You think it would be easy to track a group of guys on mountain and cross bikes, and one guy on a fat bike, but no my tracking skills failed me.  Luckily Bill was with me and we managed to find our way to Hatch road - apparently no matter which trail you take, it's most likely you will end up there.  To get to Hatch, Bill and I may have had to climb over a gate between two houses into a housing development and this may or not have been trespassing.  There was no sign on the side of the locked gate we were looking at that said "Stay out" or "do not enter" so we figured it was ok.

Somewhere between the Scoop and Hatch, rolling along on my mountain bike, I did the old hit-the-front-brake-too-hard-when-the-front-tire-is-rolling-over-a-rock trick and the rear wheel lifted off the ground and I went tumbling off the bike.  Scraped my leg up:

Actually did this twice, same leg, for good measure.  I have trouble switching from usually riding a bike with canti brakes to bikes with disc brakes, and I have a tendency to hit the front disc brake a little too hard sometimes.  The hydraulic discs on my mountain bike definitely take an easier touch than I am used to. I think I will finally upgrade my blue Redline to disc brakes so I will be mostly riding one type of brake.

We all regrouped on the other side of Hwy 195 and took a trail off of White Road.  Luckily, I remembered to turn my Garmin on and have a map of where we went to help my memory.  A quick, short, vague description: From White we rode on some trails (sorry can't get much vaguer than that!), came across the Eagle Ridge development, went back across 195 and through Vinegar Flats, to High Bridge Park, regrouped at the parking lot at Peoples Park/Sandifur Bridge and there to the River Trail below Riverside Cemetery and the Mega Church, up Doomsday Hill and to West Central.  I think I'll be able to find the trails again, it'll be fun searching them out. Some really great trails and a great variety of terrain.

by Sandifur Bridge, heading for the River Trail

some of the bikes parked at Central Food

The Hub Stout at Central Food tasted great and went down easy even though it wasn't yet noon.  I didn't realize how close the Centennial Trail will be to Central Food - it will go right in front of the patio.  A great spot.

On Howard Street, heading back to the South Hill

It was a great ride with a great group.  I knocked off 3 of the items on my list. Don't think I actually got rid of any belly fat over Thanksgiving weekend, and we knew ahead of time that the Scoop would be closed so will make another trip for the hot buttered Rum Mix.