Jay Richards

Jake and I had dentist appointments today so that meant a trip over to Park Rapids. Jonell's mom works for a dentist in town so the reason for going over there for some teeth grind....Yikes! Always works out nicely as either sneak in a ski at Soaring Eagle/Shingobee or ride in the area if it works out.

Since I started mountain biking, every other year or so I try to get in a ride in at Paul Bunyan State forest land. The first time I went there I hooked up with Steve Wenzel and some other Fargo/DL people. Since then, I have always gone solo, starting in the Steamboat road forest road just north of Akeley on the west side and ridden a loop from there. A mix of atv, forest road and dirt bike singletrack. Seeing that Steve just was there last weekend and knowing I might head over there, I touched base with Steve and he filled me in on some stuff to the east.

When the atv scene expoded, the trails just got annilated and they closed the trails to motorized to try and figure out a solution. So in recent years, they have regulated the trail use and have dirt bike only trails. You sense this after riding by the signage. And from what I could tell, looks like it is working pretty good so far. A high school friend of mine, Parker Thilmony, twists the throttle pretty hard and he was upset when they closed the trails because he said the dirt bikes weren't the problem. So a lot of dirt bikes either bailed on forest riding and went atv or build a back yard track. Driving along 34, driving up to I Falls/Bemidji pretty much all over the state, there are moto tracks etc. for dirt bikes all over the place. What this means for a place like Paul Bunyan is that there really aren't many dirt bikers roosting the singletrack and makes for some incredible mountain biking, singletrack mode.

I thought a two hour ride would be good but we started riding and one of those deals you couldn't stop. The trail went on and on. Jake and I rode about 1.5hrs and then went back on the same trail making close to a 3 hour ride. It was such fun riding. Both ways were unique with tight and twisty, quck drops and climbs and really nice flowing stuff. Coming back you didn't feel like you were riding the same trail. We were drilling the hills pretty good and didn't stop all that much and was able to ride proably 98% of everything.

There are a couple corners that works nicely to do a James Kennedy, riding your front wheel around a corner while you lift your rear wheel up and swing it around in the air. Some of the ups/downs are really dug out and hard to keep balance...one time Jake's body was outside the singletrack but his bike was straight. Fun stuff. There is also a lot of pumping the downhills since they get whooped a bit and you never feel like thing get dicey. Since the dirt bikes berm up the corners and turns so nice, you feel total comfort just letting it go and if you need to brake quick, the tight corners are sandy you have plenty to bite into and make the turn. Yadda yadda.....

I didn't bring my camera with me riding but did have the new camera stashed in the car. When we got back I was going to take some pics but the battery was dead. Lame move on my part. I did have the gps going with no hr monitor (haven't used the hr monitor much this year, just like to ride) and downloaded the ride if interested in seeing where we went.
Highly recommend riding this as it truly is some of the best singletrack riding I have done in the Midwest, from the trails I have ridden, anyways. Talked to Steve afterwards and he said there is some more stuff to the north and lots of trails. Curious how far the trail went from where we were/stopped. There was a three way intersection and could of gone back up to the forest road or deeper in the woods. It was signed and I am sure there are good maps but I am not much of a map person, just like to explore and figure things out on my own.

Go back home and Jonell had already gone up to Moorhead for Jon's scrimmage/game with his Moorhead team. Worked on a few things then went up to catch the action. They were playing against a team from Grand Forks. One of Jon's team mates checked a GF player, clean check, the kid stuck his arm to catch his fall but went into the boards funny and broke his arm. He was laying on the ice just screaming and yelling "I don't want a broken arm etc." Just awful. When he turned over you could see it was a bad deal as the arm was laying on the ice all crooked and did not look good. He lifted his arm and it just fell over. Just made your stomach sick. The ref got the kid to stop moving his arm before the coaches came out and then they took newspaper and wrapped it around, making a hasty splint/sling so he wouldn't move it. After that they said no more checking because they knew the kids would start taking hits on each other. Ended up fine but not a pretty sight I tell ya. Doesn't exactly give you warm fuzzies as a parent but as I told Jonell, its all part of hockey and fluke things can happen any time.