A Ride Into History

I decided to take a little motorcycle ride this afternoon, and in particular through an interestingly historic area.

There's a lot of old history around here, but some more recent history too. In this case, the history is a stolen road, which some residents up in the hills tried to take from the public by posting a bunch of signs and putting up locked gates. The whole saga is documented here and to this day the gates are still there (though unlocked and open).

My goal for this ride wasn't so much to see the gates (which was, nonetheless, interesting to see), but instead to check out another gate on the edge of some MidPen Open Space land.

What I wanted to find out was whether this gate was another fake, or whether it was actually a legally closed/restricted area. As it turns out, and as was confirmed by the friendly MidPen park ranger, this particular road is, in fact, legitimately closed. Or at least as legitimately as MidPen can close something. Which is probably pretty legitimately.

The ride itself was quite an adventure too, as it was mostly on gravel, and I was riding Rabbit Season which is a bike very much not entirely suited for going off pavement. That said, it handled it quite well, and with little drama, though the ride was much rougher than it might have been on a more dirt-oriented motorcycle.

But a dirt-oriented motorcycle is something for the future. Probably next spring, who knows.