Taking it slow
After a few weeks of not riding my OneWheel, I figured it was time to get back on and go for a ride before it gets too cold. I needed to find a new place to ride though because when I ride in my neighborhood, I tend to go too fast on it and while I am still recovering from my injuries, I need to be sure to take it slow.
I was previously riding with the "Delirium" setting which made the max speed 20mph and I got used to going way too fast on this thing. So today I decided that I needed to ride my OneWheel a bit different than I was before and I switched to the "Sequoia" setting which has a top speed of 12mph and is more set up for trail riding.
I decided to go to the Jordan River trails that are a couple miles away from my house and go for a ride on them. I have wanted to go ride them for a while now and I figured this would be a nice quiet ride that I can take slowly. The trail follows the river as it winds around near some neighborhoods.
As I was riding, I saw a tiny snake on the trail at the last second and ran over the back of it.
I am sure this little guy is going to die soon because some of its guts shot out of its butthole when I ran it over. I moved it off the trail and it scurried away, so hopefully it survives, but I don't think it will. It made me watch out for more critters as I was riding though since that was something I never really had to worry about when riding through my neighborhood. I don't need a rattlesnake biting me now that I am riding again.
One of the coolest things about the OneWheel is its ability to go wherever you want it to go. As I was riding, I saw this dirt trail and had no clue where it led to. If I were riding a skateboard or anything else, I wouldn't have been able to just hop off the trail and start riding through the dirt like it was nothing.
Along this trail, I kept seeing these wooden birdhouse type of things and I didn't really pay much attention to them until I rode past like three of them.
So I stopped and decided to check it out. Turns out they are little houses for bats. I stuck my head up underneath it to see if there were any sleeping in there, but I didn't see anything dangling in it, so I guess they had moved out.
Further up the trail, I came across this weird little area. It is a small airstrip for people to bring their remote control airplanes where they can take off and land. There are bleachers to the right in the picture where people can sit and watch the planes do tricks. It is a pretty odd thing out in the middle of nowhere along this trail, but it is a cool area to ride around in the grass.
My feet started to hurt after a while and I knew that I needed to head back. My feet aren't used to riding as long as I used too, and riding off road uses more of the tiny muscles in your foot, so they tire out a lot faster too. I am not sure how far of a ride I went on today because I didn't have that great of a GPS signal to track everything, but I think it was about 4 miles or so.
One thing I did learn is that I love riding off road. I am going to have to go up in the canyons and do more trail riding. It is nice to get away from houses and just be in nature with some good music playing in my ears and float along the trails. It is good to be back on my OneWheel.