Connecting with Friends

There was a pretty huge contingency of TMs assembled when I pulled into the Bradbury parking lot.  I hope they weren't waiting just for me.  I was a couple minutes late.  Ian lead the main group across the street to the east side trails.  Mindy, Tim, Dora and I had planned to go long on the Connector.  It was Tim's first time.

Of course there was lots of chatter as we went.  The trail was beautiful as usual, but in a new way.  We haven't seen it on the way to winter before.  The stream crossing was easy.  Amazingly, on the way back, Mindy mentioned feeling like taking a dip.  I think we were all sort of feeling like that.

We'd all planned to go long, but had sort of planned to go back to the car to refuel after 10ish miles.  However, as we got further out the power lines, the idea of actually connecting to Pineland became the plan.  None of us had ever gone all the way.  Running down the railroad tracks, Mindy kept talking about the drop off (we'd run part of the Beautiful Loop with the TMs in early April when there was still snow).  Tim feigned being worried with her interest in the drop off, perhaps picturing a cliff.  Really it was just where Emma had stepped down off the RR tracks into waste deep snow and water.  It was also the place Mindy, Rick and I turned around that day. 

We found the spot.  We were all wondering if we were looking up at one of the Pineland trails, but we thought that it didn't connect directly onto the trails.  Then I noticed someone walking.  "Are you at Pineland?"  She said yes.  "What trail are you on?"  She said the Gloucester hill.  We were all so excited.  She must have wondered where we came from.  We ran a little loop of the before heading back.  Tim sounded like he wanted to all of Pineland before returning.

On the return. we took a slight detour to see the quarry on Tryon Mountain.  It was a good group to do that sort of thing with.  You could point out interesting things and everyone would stop to look.  It was about the trail and the run.

Back on the summit of the Brad, we debated the descent.  I voted for the switchback, but would have taken a longer route if anyone was serious about more mileage.  I think we were all happy with the run.  My Garmin showed 15.7+; Mindy's had 15.3+.  SportTracks said it was more like 15.95.  Yay us!