I finally broke the 50 minute barrier on my loop. It happened Thursday evening after a day at the shop. I had a good 20 minute warm-up, and was psyched to break the record. My previous best was 51:10. I knew when I got to the top of Scenic Road and I was over a minute faster than my previous splits that I was on a good pace. I ended up going 48:06. I am going to try to include a picture of my loop from Google Earth. According to my path, it is a 6.5 mile loop. It is very hilly and about a third of it is on dirt. If you check out the map, you will notice that I leave the road a couple of times to run on some very old logging roads and some pretty cool single track. I feel so lucky living out here having these loops to do.

Yesterday evening I rode home from the shop on my new Somec Fixed Gear. I don’t know if I have already mentioned that I built up the old frame that I bought back in 1990. I will get a picture of it in here sometime. It is fun to ride. With a smaller front wheel, it can get a little rough on the bumpy sections of the road. I have it set up with a 39×15 gear right now which seems to work pretty well on the hilly terrain around here.

Today Claire and I are going to pick some apples and pears and made lots of sauce to freeze. I am still waiting for our figs to ripen so I can try drying some of those. There are some ripe looking figs up in the tree, but they don’t want to come off easily. I have read that the figs should be practically falling off when you go to pick them.