Originally Posted by SethAZ

OMG, I'm jealous as hell. I'd love to have trails like that to ride on just around the corner. Where I'm at it's flat and wide open, and from home it's all road riding. There are some hills about 8 or so miles away that I've mountain biked extensively, but we always threw our MTBs into a friend's truck and drove there, and he's since moved away. I think it would be a long time before I could get my wife into trail riding or MTBing. Your location seems ideal for it.

I'm glad to see Mrs. Z getting out there. That's awesome, and it looks like she's having fun. I'm trying to help Mrs. SethAZ get into cycling, and it's slow going. After struggling with this crappy, heavy, hybrid that's in need of some serious maintenance, I took my old road bike and re-fit everything for her, lowered and adjusted fore/aft saddle position, swapped in some platform pedals, smaller handlebar, essentially no drop for a more upright position, etc. That frame was small for me, so it's actually OK for her other than not really having enough stand-over height for her with its high and parallel to the ground top tube. She's at this stage where an 8-mile ride on the road is still a reach, but hopefully if she'll keep going out she'll warm up to it and the distance, speed, comfort issues, etc. will improve. If she gets into it enough that I know this is an activity she's going to stick with, my current plan is to buy her an e-assist bike that should help close the chasm of capability so we can ride together more and longer, etc. I'd absolutely love it if my wife ended up really getting into and loving cycling, and it turned from a me activity into an us activity.