I was back in b-town for a visit this weekend. Got some good home cookin’ from my mom, went to the Lotus World Music Festival, enjoyed some indiana mountain biking trails, caugh up with some old friends, and generally had a great time.

The Lotus Festival is a yearly music festival in bloomington. It is by far one of the most impressive music festivals I’ve ever been to. Just to give you an idea, it’s two nights, with 7 venues running from 7pm to midnight. Your pass is good at any of the venues and the music is out of control. I saw a range of bands including ones described as:

  • Rockin’ Klezmer
  • Nordic, British Folk Fusion
  • Traditional Irish
  • Balkan Beat Box
  • Hindustani Slide Guitar
  • Blues
  • Reggae
  • Cajun
  • Old Time
  • Tuvan Throat Singing
  • Italian Folk-Electronica
  • . . and more that I’ve forgotten already

Like I said, an incredible range of music. We skipped around to all the venues throughout the night. One of the most impressive was definitely the Tuvan Throat-Singers. If you aren’t familiar with them, it is a method of singing which was developed in Tuva (near Siberia in Russia). These guys can actually produce up to 4 notes at one time. I don’t exactly know how they do it, but it is a crazy combination of a low drone, a couple mid notes, and a high note that almost sounds like a whistle. One guy can harmonize with himself. It’s really amazing.

I also made the decision that I’ve been traveling a lot lately (and will be traveling more this week), so I rented a bike box from absolute bikes, and loaded up the Gunnar for the trip to indiana. I rode all three days I was there, and had a ton of fun. It’s amazing what sort of speed you can achieve on a slightly damp, hard-packed section of singletrack. Smiles all around. I rode the Nebo Ridge Trail on friday, rocked out Wapehani on saturday, and then checked out some new mountain bike specific trail contruction in Brown County State Park.

Nebo ridge is a fun 16 mile out and back. It follows a ridge, and hence is very flowy and fast. I remember taking 3-4 hours to do that trail when I got my first mountain bike. It took me about 1.5 hours, round trip this time. It was perfect conditions, with super-fast, grippy trails. I highly recommend it if you’re in the area. They have a nice new parking lot on the south end now, which has a trail map and everything.

Wapehani is one of those fun little urban gems. It is essentially a network of about 8 miles of high quality singletrack on about 35 acres about 2 miles from downtown bloomington. It looks like a big spiderweb, and you can ride all the trails in less than an hour, but in that hour, you can have an incredible amount of fun. It’s really cool to see what a little inginuity can cram into such a small area.

The real gem of the trip, however, was Brown County State Park. There are about 12 miles of newly built singletrack out there, and it is only open to hikers and mountain bikers (unlike most trails in BCSP, which are riddled with overuse by horses, and thus very uncomfortable to ride). There are two loops connected by a small connector trail, and then an out and back to Hesitation Point. One of the loops is a fairly easy warm-up, and the other is a bit harder (mostly because of a little more elevation), but not too technically challenging. Finally, the out-and-back to Hesitation Point is a great trail. It climbs about 400-500 feet (which is a lot for indiana) on some nice switchbacks. There is a north-shore style bridge (although it’s about 2.5 feet wide, so it’s not a huge challenge, but fun nonetheless), and a little rock-garden as well on the way up. It was a lot of fun riding, and it really makes me happy to see that there is a lot of mountain biking enthusiasm and motivation in southern indiana.

“Breaking Away 2: Dave Does Dirt”

just think about it. . . .