[Captsteveb ✓ supporter]

San Felesco in Gainesville, non-technical and the best hills you’ll find in Florida–Conquistador trail will give your lungs a good workout. Paisley woods in Ocala National forest, nice rootless cross country style, no navigation needed just straight out and back. Mostly pine-needles over sand,  ride after a rain and you’ll never know your on sand. Croom in Brooksville, more cross country that you can put some miles in, mostly non-technical. Santos, a little of everything for all riders–the trails stretch east and west between the towns of Santos and Dunellin, take a look on the map, it’s quite a distance. Alafia and Balm Boyette and Carter road ridge-lines  are okay if you like tight and technical, they’re basically like giant pump tracks, gets a little boring after a while but are a good workout for sure, don’t fall off the ridge-lines as there’s gators in them swampy pits. Like all Florida trails you’ll find the roots among the oaks and the smoother areas around the pine trees. The heat, humidity and bugs are oppressive during the summer months, some like that–for me mountain biking is winter season only. Cold fronts start pushing into Florida by late October and we have nice riding weather until March-April. Last winter I did a ride in Gainesville,  hitting the trails at 7:00 A.M. and 34 degrees–SWEET!

[Captsteveb ✓ supporter]

My first off road bike was a Huffy mono-shock, back in the mid seventies. The bike was built like a tank, and weighed like one too. I replaced the oversized seat with a ten speed style seat and changed the high rise bars and stripped off the stupid looking fenders. That bike took me to paths in the woods and power line trails that stretched on forever–what a world of fun! For some reason, perhaps after discovering girls and drinking beer, the fun of riding bikes in the woods disappeared.  Though some thirty years later, I rediscovered all that off road fun on a GT Karakoram hardtail twenty-miner–the start of a mountain biking obsession.

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