playing hooky

What a beautiful weekend! The only problem was I had to work. Well not all weekend. Saturday I spent most of the day outside at work and even though the temps were awesome I was still at work. I tried hard not to pay attention to all the various posts of Facebook and my local mtb forum about who was riding where and when. I knew that if I kept looking at them I would go crazy.
I tried to think about my Saturday evening plans instead. About a week ago Mellow Mushroom opened up a new restaurant in Johnson City and I've been chomping at the bit to go and see what's on tap. A few friends, Melinda and I decided to brave the crowds in anticipation that the wait to be seated would not be ridiculously long, what the heck with 60 taps on the wall I figured we could easily find something to do while we waited for a table. I was proved wrong with a 2 hour wait and a line into the parking lot that made us switch to plan "B", Jacks City Grill, although I had my mouth set for pizza I settled for a mexican quesidilla instead.
Sunday the weather was shaping up to be even better than the day before and Melinda was texting me all morning at work tempting me to burn some vacation and take her mountain biking. It didn't take long to convince me to do so and by noon I was running out the gate.
Not really sure what to expect in the way of trail conditions we decided to stay local and hit Bays Mountain. The fire roads were a bit messy in places but who really cares about fire roads, we were looking for singletrack. I think the fire roads took quite a beating this year as search vehicles trashed them looking for the 2 wolves that escaped a couple of months ago. It's a good thing 4 wheelers don't fit on singletrack or we might have had a bit more added to our growing list of trail improvements this year.
The singletrack trails were in great shape with the exception of some debris, but a few days of riding should remedy that problem. I couldn't have asked for a better day on the trails especially in February.