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For some reason I always seem to forget to take vacation throughout the year. This left me with 2 weeks of vacation to use before the end of the year this year. I ended up taking them in the middle of December, saving me from a lot of the insanity of Rockefeller Center on the way to and from work every day.

My vacation started with a Saturday morning ride at Graham Hills Park. It was an early morning ride with my friend Kim that we managed to sneak in before some rain that day. We practiced a few areas but didn’t stick around too long so we wouldn’t get caught in the approaching rain. If it didn’t start raining I think we would’ve gone around a second time.

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent on the road to South Carolina. On Tuesday I stopped atWhite Clay Creek in Newark, Delaware to try and do some riding, but the trails were too muddy to really enjoy or respectfully ride on. I was looking forward to checking out the “skills trail” to try out a few technical obstacles but even the first one freaked me out, especially because I was by myself:

I arrived in Bluffton Wednesday afternoon and decided to kick off my week there with an evening road ride around the gated community my parents live in. It was also a nice chance to finally test out the helmet light I got a few weeks ago. The combination of the helmet light and a handlebar light worked very well, even in the foggy evening darkness.

Thursday morning I went for a ride with my dad at Pinckney Island, which I’m still not sure how to pronounce correctly. The ride was very pretty, but totally flat. I entertained myself by bunny hopping logs and practicing wheelies, enough so that I ended up breaking one of my pedals.

We stopped at Bluffton Bicycle Shop on the way back home to get me some new metal pedals and see if they knew about any local trails. This proved to be a fruitful stop because not only did I get fantastic new pedals but they also told me about a trail out on Hilton Head in Crossings Park. This place was just what I was looking for! Lots of thin, winding single-track and even a few hills and obstacles to tackle. I rode there are total of 5 times during my vacation.

Towards the end of the vacation my dad decided to give Crossings Park a try and did very well! He even humoured me by filming some footage of me in one of the more fun parts of the park.

My dad and I also checked out Tom Triplett Park in Pooler, GA but due to all the rain in the area it was full of puddles and hard to ride in. We lost the rail several times but I guess it was still a bit of an enjoyable.

One of the more surprising rides was the one my dad and I did at Folly Field Beach. I thought it would be really boring but it ended up being a lot of fun. There were plenty of things on the beach to bunny hop over and the sand helped give me an idea of how far I can hop (not very). There were also a few rocks and branches to traverse during the ride.

I’ve been using my Canon Vixia S HF10 to shoot all my mountain biking videos but I was getting really eager to pick up a helmet cam for some more exciting videos. I had debated buying the ContourHD 1080p Helmet Cam before my vacation but didn’t think it would arrive in time. After discovering the really fun trail at Crossings Park I decided to order one and have it shipped to my parents place. It works great and looks almost as good as the Vixia.

I ended up driving the entire 14 hours home in one day which left me a little wiped the following day. The weekend snow resulted in my two planned mountain bike rides up here being cancelled but it did give Kim and I the chance to go sledding at Rockwood Hall Park. I wanted to record some rides with my helmet cam but we ended up getting there late enough that it was to dark to record anything. It was also a lesson in proper sledding attire -