Nor'easter

By John Wimberly

Alafia State Park, A Snowbird’s Review

A week removed from my Florida vacation and sitting uncomfortably back behind my desk 30 minutes outside of Boston I’m reviewing my Florida vacation pics with amusement and remembering the trip and getting Jay’s email in the middle of it regarding mountainbiketales.com back up and running. The last time I got one of his emails I was gearing up to go to Costa Rica so the coincidence was not lost on either of us. The biking pics are few and somewhat disappointing as I crashed hard on a hand that already had a deep bone bruise from basketball and subsequently I cracked a bone in it. Oh well, it was good times while it lasted.

I was down there visiting family in the Sarasota/Tampa area and had gone in with the mindset of doing some mountain biking. Google persevered where Lonely Planet couldn’t and my brother and I found ourselves renting a Mitsubishi Rendezvous on a Thursday night in March in order to rent full suspension bikes in the morning. Can’t do that in New England unless you feel like battling the ice, which has been done a few times this year, but is not something I recommend beyond satisfying the occasional craving.

Our destination was Valrico, Florida and more specifically Alafia River State Park (http://www.floridastateparks.org/alafiariver/default.cfm). Pronounced “al-a-fay-a” by the locals although this was a source of debate for the remainder of the trip between my brother and I. I clearly heard a shop guy say it to us this way, but then he may have been making fun of us in his own townie sort of way.

With our SUV from enterprise already in hand we headed for Valrico armed with a dashboard-mounted GPS (at $8 per day a must have for any vacation) to pick up our bikes from AJ’s Bikes and Boards (http://www.ajsbikesandboards.com/) and continue on to the park. We didn’t have any cleats with us so the shop owner had to switch pedals for us, which he did without a complaint and pretty damn quickly too. My brother rambled on about the bikes and components and the forks and the travel etc while I took a long look at the electrolyte pills at the counter. It was 85 and humid out and we were planning on being out most of the afternoon. While I chose my bike because of it’s brownish color (his was lime green and I wanted no part of it) he chose his because he actually knew all about both bikes and the lime green one is apparently better suited for what we were up against. I scoffed at his ugly bike and was pretty damn pleased with myself walking out of there. He would turn out to be right and my choice would turn out to be a bad mistake. Yes, he’s the technical minded brother and I’m the one who’s happy just being on a trail. To put it in perspective, I ride a used Cannondale F400 (tuned up once or twice a year) while he rides a Specialized Epic, which he tinkers with almost daily. And for the record, there’s nothing he can do on his bike that I can’t do on mine. Ok so there is, but there’s nothing he can do on his bike that I can’t. And oh ya, I’m not the guy stopping every five minutes when we throw them on our backs and clamber up the various small mountains New England has to offer. For the record I rode a brown Specialized Enduro Expert with what my brother described as stock parts and his was a lime green Specialized Stumpjumper. Whatever, bikes cost us under fifty bucks and we had to have them back in 24 hours. Good deal townie.

Alafia State Park is a must visit for any Mountain Bike enthusiast who happens to be in the Tampa/Sarasota area and apparently it’s made a list of top national rides in my brothers mountain biking magazine. All I knew was that it had a variety of trails that held the promise of good times on a bike. And it was infinitely better than playing another round of rusty winter golf with the family. Upon getting to Alafia I saw a couple mtb’ers with a serious looking getup coming off the trail so I started to get a good feeling about the place. There was a map with varying degrees of difficulty ranging from easy to intermediate, difficult and extremely difficult. After trying the intermediate trail about all I could say was “the scenery was nice”. It was time to move on to bigger and better things, which this park held the promise of providing.

Now let me start this part by saying, I’m not the kind of guy who’s gonna get all Lance Armstrong’d up with spandex, pads and gear. I’m more the type to go without a shirt, because this is Florida in March. Since we’ll be renting a place on one of the top beaches in the world later on in the night, I want a tan. That said I made some critical errors in my trip, going shirtless while biking was one and I’m blaming them all on alcohol- From the night before. Or whatever.

Labelled “extremely difficult” the trail (named Roller Coaster) started off easy enough, but soon turned into one of the narrowest and steepest singletrack drops I’ve been down and it continued on this theme. I quickly became a bike critic as the medium frame Specialized seemed a bit big for me and the tires and overall bike were definitely far too large for this type of trail. While I could control it to some degree, I didn’t have complete control of it at all times and I longed for my familiar Cannondale.

After enough fun on the various loops we decided it was pic time and chose an easy enough little hill to do some camera work. After a few runs I crashed hard into the brush cracking a bone in my hand on a rock. The combination of heat and blood rushing to my hand made me dizzy and I had to limp off the course riding one-handed and wait for my brother to satisfy his biking thirst. My hand wouldn’t be able to sustain any sort of weight on a handlebar anytime soon. Alafia: 1 John: 0. Bring on the Siesta Key beach and the bars you can stumble in after a long day of beaching and stay till the wee hours of the morning…and if you’re lucky make your way right back to the beach after the bar.

Bottom line for Alafia State Park: more mountain bike-specialized trails than most dedicated trails I’ve been on, yet it still didn’t live up to my favorite New England runs. Some good challenges and enough trails and diversity to keep you busy for an afternoon, but I wouldn’t visit on the weekend cuz it seems like this place that would be mobbed. In the words of the townie working at the LBS it was “epic rides”. Still, all factors considered the trip rated a solid 8/10 and a damn good bang for your buck.