Sweet Midwest Singletrack

I headed down to Peoria this weekend for the 2008 Midwest Mountain Bike Festival. It moves locations every couple years, but for the last 2 years it's been located in the mighty Peoria, IL. Peoria isn't much of a town, okay, it's kind of a shithole, but it has some of the best MTB trails in the midwest. I met up with some ol' pals from the Chi-town area that I used to ride with.

Left to Right: Blatz, Double-D, JTM and me.

The weather started out kinda shitty, but turned out to be pretty nice. Got a lot of riding in including a kick-ass night ride. The festival was held at an area that doesn't allow camping any other time of year. The down side to that is no ground fires are allowed. We were going to try to muscle through with out one, but on a cold and windy Saturday morning, we decided to all pitch in for a fire pit. I collected the dough and headed into town, breaking my "my truck isn't moving until Sunday" promise to myself. The camping was made even a little more interesting by a neighboring farm. See, Farmdale Reservoir sits in a low area surrounded by ridges. Up on one of the ridges is a farm with a few roosters. Even all the beers I drank didn't keep me from waking up to those sons-a-bitches cock-a-doodle-doodling all morning starting at 4am.

All in all it was a great time with some great friends on some fantastic trails.

Me and JTM on some singletrack

Me on a fire road stream crossing

Off the skinny and up the teeter

The teeter coming down onto another skinny.

I love camping as most of you know. But it sure was great getting home to these two, well, three if you count Stacey.