I ride my “home trail” over and over again. Backwards and forwards in every season of the year. I ride it, race it, run it and hike it. Hell, I’ve even snowshoed and skied on it.
The trail might not be the best trail in the world; there’s not all that much climbing, not that much descending, it can beat you up with sections of embedded rock and lumpy “newness” and there are days when it’s the last trail I feel like riding. Yet I still think it’s a pretty awesome stretch of dirt.
I’ve broken hundreds of dollars worth of bike parts, bruised body parts and drawn blood on my trail. I’ve seen deer, hawks, squirrels, owls, chipmunks, snakes, spiders (and their webs which you can see below) and something that may or may not have been a bobcat (then again, it may have been a big fury house cat for all I can see through sweat glazed eyes).
I’ve ridden as little as .25 miles before blowing apart a wheel and as long as 40 before I blew apart me. For being my “home” trail, it’s not all that close to home with a trail head nearly 25 minutes away by car.
It’s not even MY trail, I didn’t construct it and other than moving some fallen trees now and again I’ve never done any maintenance (not for lack of asking, the trail crew just likes to keep it small and legit). Despite that, I still consider it my trail and probably will for the foreseeable future. And all of that is fine by me, a 15+ mile ribbon of dirt to ride the hell out of and use all year round is pretty damn sweet.
My trail is no different and probably no better than your trail… consider this a friendly reminder to love your trail. Love it by using the hell out of it.