Lunchtime Ride -- Offroad

Today's lunchtime ride was great even though I rode alone. I chose the Minnesota River Bottoms, but only rode the east end, east of Lyndale Ave, that is. I encountered four other riders. I noticed that a couple of them had 29ers. It's easy to spot those big tires, even when passing oncoming single-track traffic.

I performed trail maintenance by cleaning up three piles of dog poop. At least I think they were dog poop. I just missed the first pile and decided to stop and get it off the trail. I've ridden through it before and figured it would be best to save someone else from having crap sprayed on their helmet, jersey and bike.

Not far down the trail, I saw another pile. I used the same reasoning to justify stopping and moving this beauty off the trail also. When I encountered the third pile, I was a little ticked off. I mean, that's a lotta poop! Each time, I grabbed a branch from the trailside and just flicked the offensive material into the weeds. But the third pile was extra ugly. It looked like the owner of the poop had eaten a gray haired thing. The poop had lots of hair in it.

I'm not even sure it was left by a dog. Although, if a dog ate a bunny, it might result in this style of poop. All the piles were exactly in the middle of the trail. At first I figured they were left a by a hiker's dog, but I'm not so sure now. I imagined wild, or mostly free-running dogs could be the owners of the piles. Most dog owners are more careful and it seems unlikely that it would happen three times in so short a distance. They were freshies too.

Anyway, if you ride the MN Riverbottom trail, thank me for your poop-free experience.

And the ride was great today because riding is great, not because I got to examine too much scat. That was really just an interesting side note.