Car Less Ohio

In years past, I’ve done a fair amount of winter riding. This year, however, I can’t seem to get the motivation to bundle up and get out on two wheels, so I’ve not been very good at promoting going by “car less.”

Not that I have any shortage of bikes to ride, but another thing distracting me from my off-season riding is this year’s round of winter bike projects. Each winter, I seem to go through a set of changes to the configurations of my various bikes; not that any of these changes are really necessary, but it’s just something to do to keep things interesting. The problem is, the bike projects are inter-connected, e.g. I can’t finish Bike A because it needs the handlebar from Bike B, which needs the wheels from Bike C, which needs the old crankset from Bike A, etc. I feel like I need a project manager to keep track of it all, but on the positive side, there are worse problems to have.

I’ve been pretty good about putting in some time on the indoor trainer to stay in shape, but yesterday I got out to do some of my favorite cross-training activity, cross-country skiing.

The temperature was about 31 degrees when I left home; I figured that would be perfect, as it was still cold enough that the show would not be wet and sticky, but a relief from the bone-chilling cold in the teens and single-digit temperature ranges that we had over the past weekend.

I drove up to Punderson State Park, in Newbury in Geauga County, Ohio. I skied the Huron Trail (1.3 miles), the Cayuga Trail (2.2 miles), and the unofficial unmarked loop around the perimeter of the golf course (I’m guessing about 2 miles). The snow was in good condition as I had hoped. There were some tracks from previous skiers, although it looked like the last traffic had been before the latest dusting of new snow that had fallen. The only other person I came across was a guy on a snowmobile, which helped in a few cases, as his track packed down the snow in a few spots where the ski track was not well established.

There’s a Sports Center building on the left side of the park access road, but the trails mentioned above (and most of the other trails) are on the right side near the golf course. The Sports Center has a sledding hill, and I’m guessing they probably have snacks, restrooms, and a warm place to hang out and change if you need it, but the web site doesn’t list their hours or services. If you don’t need any of that, then it’s easiest to just park at the golf course (follow the signes) and hop right onto the trails from there.