Take your bike to work day?

The professional and the personal met for me this past Saturday when my clients told me they wanted to look at a property on mountain bikes. We were looking at 400 acres way out beyond Willits. The roads were not passable by car due the amount of trees that fell during the snowstorm earlier this year. We also had limited time, so hiking would not have allowed us to see as much as we could with bikes.

We started with the house, of course, which they had seen one other time; this made for a quick walk-through to refresh their memories. We then got the bikes ready and headed out - first toward the back of the property but with Rocktree Creek running behind the home and the banks quite high, we then turned and headed in the other direction. The property beyond Rocktree Creek is steep and heavily timbered and we weren’t able to readily see any roads to check out either.

We rode down the road a little ways and found a road headed north; this road was on the eastern boundary of the property and sat a little ways above Tomki Creek. We road out this for about a third of the length of the property. We had several trees we had to navigate over or around - I have a scratch to prove that. We also came to a ravine that was too wide to take the bikes across but not so deep that we couldn’t ferry them by hand - one person in the ravine and one on each side of the bank. We rode as far as we could until we ran out of road, then found a way down to the creek itself and a road that meandered alongside it. This we took out to the end of the property.

We decided to stay on this lower road on the way back, which worked quite well for about half the distance. Then the creek did what creeks do, meandering over what had been a road, forcing us to cross the water at least three times. The first two weren’t bad - I was able to get enough of a head start so that I could coast across and keep my feet dry. The last was the full width of the river, at least 40 feet wide; this required pedaling all along and getting my feet, socks and shoes soaked. Fortunately, it wasn’t cold. After that we found the road again and pedaled back to the house and our cars.

Overall, it wasn’t a long or hard ride - only about 3 miles. But it was an efficient and fun way to see the property. I can only hope that more of my clients want to do this - at least on some of the gentler pieces - not sure I would want to spend an hour or two climbing in hot weather. But it did make for a memorable showing and a fun afternoon.