Amstel Gold

 The bike race not the beer! Why else would anyone get up so early for a hike?!

Visit #1473, Sunday 14 April 24, 6:15-8:45AM, 5.7 miles, 13.4 lbs. of litter.

Temps in the high 40s/low 50s, sunny.

The Ardennes spring classics, European bicycles bicycle races in where else but the Ardennes region which encompasses France, Luxembourg, and Belgium, are held in April. The Amstel Gold classic was today and due to the time difference, could be viewed on-line Sunday morning. But that meant finishing my weekly hike in time to get home.

Below you can watch the finale. I made it home in time to watch the last hour of the race.

The cold/flu which kept me off the trails last week has mostly subsided, or at least the symptoms abated enough to endure a hike.

Rounding the road by the retention ponds I discovered some clearcutting by the White Trail entrance. You can see the path turning right and up the hillside. What's this about? I would trim the entrance to this trail once or twice a year to prevent it from being overgrown. Looks like I won't have to do that anymore.

I later stopped by the water treatment plant to hang a trash bag...

...and saw the rows of piping. I'd guess the water department will be installing some sort of drainage to follow the road...

...to add to the flow of the brook.

Hiking behind the water tank, I found this smashed plate.

While I've encountered these plates before, only this morning did it occur to me that this smashing plate business has to be a "thing". So I did my googly searching and yes it is.

They're called "Letting Go" plates and they're covered with pithy sayings. Apparently letting go includes letting someone else clean up the mess.

After picking up the pieces I now had a heavy trash bag which was getting punctured by the shards of porcelain so I double bagged my litter and "let go" the first bag at the water treatment plant, above.

The plate partially explains why my trash haul this week weighed so much.

Hiking up toward Castle Craig I found some new-ish graffiti on a rock at the bottom of the Orange Trail.

I plan to hire an expert to remove it in the near future.

After last week's eclipse with a viewing party at Castle Craig, it was suggested to me by more than one person that there might be a large amount of litter at the peak in the aftermath. While I did not find that the case, I did clean up the parking lot and surrounding area. I proceeded to walk the road down the Merimere Reservoir.

The spillway was performing its duties in bleeding off excess water from the past week's rain.

And just like those Letting Go plates, painted rocks are still a thing. I spotted one roughly fifteen feet from the road, high above near a pair of trees, as I walked back to the park. In the photo above, it was near the two close trees at the top of the photo. You don't see it in the photo because I had already clambered up the slope and grabbed it.

I returned to the park to drop off my last bag of litter and race home to watch Amstel Gold, not HAVE an Amstel Gold!