Trail: Off Limits

If it were simply the decision of some external authority, I might find a way around it. No, the trail is off limits for very concrete reasons.
I went for a run yesterday on the trail. I wore some standard athletic shorts made of nylon, I suppose in the style of basketball stuff. This was not [...]

Trail Is Functional

Welcome to Loop A. Okay, I still have to mow about 100 yards of tall grass to make it 100%, but as of this afternoon, I can now run a full 2-mile loop without going anywhere near the forbidden zone where the water treatment lagoon rests.
Today I went out a couple of times to finish [...]

Loop A Nearly Open

At my parents’ request, I opened a trail through the first plowed section my trail crosses, so they could climb up the draw and cut straight across back to the start of the trail. They tested it all out today and liked it just fine. This cut-off also allowed me to take a short cut [...]

More Trail: Three Quarters

I have managed to get to the three-quarter mark for the current loop. Today I had some time to get out and chop my way out of the woods and into a grassy field. Turns out, it had been used by some by unknown beings. So once I cleared the trees, there was a distinct [...]

Trail: Extra Loop

Because the management of our trailer park continues to hold forth the “forbidden zone” on the east side, I have decided to bring the trail back around to end, for the time being, on the north side of the park.
What this entails is following more or less the path of the draw which runs down [...]

Trail: Slow Down Again

Because I was able to devote a solid three hours to the trail work today, I took my time going out. It was time to clip off all the little vine sprouts trying reclaim the ground. Also, the increasing traffic has packed down the soil enough to expose a few trip roots, toe-stubbers too stiff [...]

Trail: Surprises

Today was the first bike ride on my growing trail. I did it, not simply to test it out, but because I was tired of lugging the cutting tools on my back and in my hands.
I believe the term used to describe my trail for biking is “technical” — meaning it’s stinking hard. On about [...]

Trail: Around the Bend

It was too cold to ride my bike much yesterday, so I ran my trail instead. When it warmed up a bit later in the day, I could not resist the call to go out and hack at it some more.
By some blind luck, I happened to stumble along the route which gave me the [...]

Trail: Northern Exposure

Today I had the chance to work on the trail some more. After re-entering the largest wooded section, I moved almost straight east for a hundred yards or so to avoid a depression on my left (north side). I managed to get past it and turned north immediately. For another hundred yards or so, it [...]

Trail: Nearly a Mile

Oklahoma is mostly laid out in a square grid, with some tweaking to account for the curvature of the earth at this latitude. Each square is theoretically one mile on each side. Most of the state is criss-crossed by roads which follow these survey lines. We call them “section lines.”
Took a second look today and [...]