Katie and I used to spend a lot of time riding together. Since we’ve had kinds, not surprisingly, this has become a lot more difficult to do. When it was just the one it was a little easier to deal with as it wasn’t really a huge ask to have family watch her for a little while. This was even easier as she got a little older and was actually fun to hang out with. I’ve admitted this before and will again, I’m not a huge fan of the babies under 8-10 months. It is nice they aren’t mobile and don’t talk back but it’s kind of boring in my honest opinion. With that being said every stage since then I’ve really enjoyed and almost hate to see them go. Adding the 2nd child really makes the opportunities to get out with just the two of us even more challenging. This is particularly tough when both kids are at such different stages, trying to balance both for someone who isn’t used to it is a lot and we don’t really like to put that on too many people at this point.

This weekend however we had a chance. Lizzie’s pre-school program, Pisgah Collective, was having a parents morning out and the babysitter we have used with Chris was available for the whole morning! Leading up to the weekend we watched the weather and it managed to hold out. Things came together and we got out. We first had to go up to West Asheville and enjoy a fine breakfast at one of the first places we ate when we started coming to Asheville, Early Girl Eatery. After a fine breakfast we were headed to the trails! My original plan was to be able to stop at North Mills and ride some trail we don’t get to ride quite as often but time constraints pushed us to ride closer to home. Which is ok, the trails closer to home are still amazing.

Katie had it in her head she wanted to ride Buckhorn Gap from Clawhammer down. I tried to talk her out of it knowing that trail doesn’t get much winter riding since the bottom of it has 5 creek crossings. There are bridges over the creeks but it’s a lot of on and off your bike. She couldn’t be talked out of it, she wanted a technical trail that wasn’t in her normal mid-day realm at the moment.

We started our climb up Clawhammer and saw a bunch of other folks out getting while the getting was good, most of them turned up Maxwell Cove to head to Black Mtn but we soldiered on. Katie actually managed the climb pretty well for someone just really getting back into working out after having a killer pregnancy and a 5 month old who has decided that sleeping at night is for the birds. The best part is she always seems to keep a great attitude, even when you know she’s pushing hard.

Once we got to the descent it was obvious there haven’t been many people on the trail recently. There was still so much debris in the trail along with some trees down. However that didn’t stop Katie. She rode far more than I thought she might on a pretty technical trail that could really use some love right now. Only stepping off in a few places and mostly just out of surprise I think. It was a lot like old times and something I hope we’ll get to do a little more often.

In order to get some intensity in my riding on Saturday I actually hopped on the trainer early Saturday morning before everyone was awake and it was time to get things ready. I was able to knock out a few of my end of the week things I needed to review and put in some effort on the bike.

When Sunday rolled around I snuck out early, the plan was a fairly low intensity ride. For these lower intensity rides I like to head out towards Dupont State Forest where the climbs aren’t as long or as steep as they are in Pisgah. I could just ride the valley roads but I try to incorporate as much gravel as I can. This morning with the way things timed out I hit the colorful part of the sunrise just as I came to the clear part of the road looking over Cascade Lake. I was already late getting back home but I had to stop anyhow. It was worth it, the colors, the reflection, pictures are cool but they really don’t do it justice. However the intensity for the rest of the ride was a little more than low intensity, which seems to happen to me more than it should.

All and all it was one of those weekends that’s really hard to complain about, except for maybe the little one could sleep more at night.