The sun broke through the clouds, ushering in the start of a run of nice, warm weather. I looked at my daughter and said, "It's time to solve the Bear Basin Delivery Man problem."
"What?" she asked.
"The Delivery Man problem," I said. "We need to spend our Saturday morning figuring out how to ride the named trails in Bear Basin in the shortest possible distance."
She rolled her eyes, but agreed. So, I laid out the rules.
- We had to ride the following trails WITHOUT re-riding any section or as few sections as possible. The goal was to beat last year's record, which was 14.1 miles. Here's the list of trails, in alphabetical order:
- Baby Bear
- Blue Ridge Loop (including Short Cut)
- Della's Delight
- Ditch Witch
- Grand Traverse
- Lower Drain
- Sleepy Hollow
- Short Cut
- Too Short
- Upper Drain
- Westy
- The shortest distance wins. The tie-breaker, if we end up at the same distance, is time.
She laughed — and we agreed to tackle the project the next day.
That night, I put on my engineer hat and mapped out a route that was, on paper, way more efficient than last year's. I still had two small sections that had to be ridden twice, but, try as I might, I couldn't find a way to eliminate them, so I locked in the route and went to bed.
The next day dawned sunny and beautiful. We loaded the bikes on the tailgate, ushered the dogs into the backseat, and headed off to Bear Basin.
We tackled the route I had laid out. (I debated some other ideas that came to me in the middle of the night, but I threw them out because they didn't seem as short as my original plan.)
We rode leisurely, enjoying the first day that truly felt like summer, chatting about this and that, and laughing at the dogs as they wandered to and fro.
An hour and 52 minutes later, we pulled back into the parking lot and stopped our watches. It was here I learned a valuable lesson – no two GPS systems are the same. According to our Garmin Instinct watches, my daughter had completed the Delivery Man project in 11.44 miles. Riding right behind her, I had completed it in 11.45 miles.
"That's bullshit," I said to her.
"Maybe you should pick a better line – you know, maybe ride your bike straight," she said and then laughed.
I'll admit – the thought added an interesting element to the challenge. Not only did you have to map out an efficient route, but you needed to ride it efficiently. It also mattered where you parked your car (or turned on your watch) — closer to the trailhead start meant a few feet shorter. It left me wondering if I could ride the same exact route and still cut off distance. Maybe.
Anyway, now it's your turn. Head to Bear Basin with your own riding plan and see if you can beat 11.44 miles. I've created a Leaderboard on our website. If you take on the Delivery Man project, post your distance, time, and, if possible, a screenshot of your final GPS map to the comments section, and I'll add you to the leaderboard.
I figure we'll run this until Labor Day and see if some smarty figures out a way to ride the route in under 10 miles.
Have a great start to summer – and hope to see you out there.
