As all but people recent to State College, I lived there for about ten years. The whole time I was there, many folks can attest to my stating “I am getting out of here soon.” Well finally I did move to DC in July 2007.

For the ten years I was there, I was spoiled with the 100’s if not 1000’s miles of single-track, double-track and nearly abandoned fireroads. I could easily ride for ten hours and never see any other mammals except bears, deers and porcupines of extraordinary size. Folks I knew living in PA that had lived in DC warned me loosing ready access to those riding resources was going to weigh heavily upon me. They were right, but the DC metro area is not without great riding.

My UMD colleague David and I finally found the time to go to the Tuesday night MORE-MTB in Wakefield. Wakefield is in Northern Virginia just outside the beltway and south of Route 66. We left College Park around 5:00 PM assuming we would easily make the 6:30 PM start time, we were wrong. Traffic was more snarled than expected and we missed the exit from Route 66 to the Beltway. Between doubling back and driving slow to ensure we did miss another turn, we arrived as the groups; advanced, beginner plus, beginner, and intermediate were leaving. The beginner group contained only three riders and they were willing to wait for us. The other groups, each with more than a dozen riders could not wait. We took a few minuets to put on shoes, duct tape David’s light on and depart. David went with the beginners and I took off at full stream looking for the other groups. I never found them. I rode all over the place getting lost and disoriented over and over.

Finally I decided to give up, go back to the car and wait for David’s group to get back. Then another rider, Lynn, showed up also looking for the other groups. She was a veteran at these rides and had the cell numbers of some of the ride leaders. She led me to the place all the groups were coalescing. Lynn and I reached an intersection of trails under a powerline. She was going to wait for the intermediate group; I decided to jump into the beginner plus group when it came by. We started by climbing up a trail under the powerlines, it was a series of switchbacks, smooth but dusty and pretty steep.

The way down was cooler, a series of well thought out and built dusty switchbacks. The turns were tight and well banked, obviously built by experienced trail building mountain bikers. We then went into the woods. The trails were a blast, twisty, well maintained with occasional log, rock and dried stream beds to change things up. This group was pretty big, about fifteen riders, and diverse. We had to stop every so often to allow the group to re-group, make sure people do not miss turns and so on. I was fine with this as I was racing a 62 mile cross race later in the week and did not need a hard workout.

I did however start to get bored with the frequent stops as it was hot for October, around 80 degrees and humid. The intermediate group came by, with Lynn sweeping on her single speed, so I told the beginner plus sweeps I was leaving and gave chase. It took me a while to catch them on my low geared single-speed, a 32:19 29er. I then got to see all but one of the seven riders were on single-speeds making me feel slow. We then rode pretty much non-stop for about one hour more. We went over these twisty trails again and again. For such a small area the trails very well thought out, twisty, taking advantage of all the hills and dales but not crossing each other too often nor getting so close that we blinded each other with our headlights.

The lasting impression was how cool the Tuesday MORE night rides are and how good Wakefield is. I am jonesing to go back there in the daylight and go to the MORE Thursday night rides which are rumored to be much larger.