After a week up at my mountain cabin I was a bit frustrated at the lack of mud on the 4x4 trails. I had taken my street-legal dirt bike up on the truck just to have some mud fun and ended up staying way too clean.

On the way home I stopped at an undeveloped industrial park that has become an impromptu dirt bike and 4x4 mudding area. The mud holes there are great and I've enjoyed some good wallows there when no one was around. But in another disappointment, I found new signs saying NO MOTORIZED VEHICLES. Rats.

Once I got home and unloaded the bike I was ready to get dirty. The neighbors said it had been raining a lot while I was gone and that always gets my attention. So after dinner I headed out to a huge construction site where they are building lots of new roads and thousands of new homes on the site of the old airport.

As usual for summer riding/mudding, I was wearing a favorite snug pair of 501s, 18" logger boots, tight t-shirt, Levis jacket and my motorcycle helmet, gloves and goggles. When I got to the site it was just starting to get dark. There were lots of mud puddles to ride through and several spots with some deeper mud (knee high) worth getting off the bike to stomp around in.

Then I saw one of my two favorite mud sights - a very large depression with what looked like a pool of silky smooth clay mud. I got off the bike and walked down to it - and then walked into it wearing all of my biking gear. It was warm, it was deep and it was perfect. Soon I was swimming around in it. The mud was very much like the quarry tailings ponds I used to play in back before they all got fenced in and patrolled.

It was more liquid in the middle and thicker around the edges. I scooped it into my 501s and t-shirt and spent an hour playing around in that glorious slop. I could army crawl around the edges where the mud was thicker and float in the middle where it was thinner.

Wanting to check out more of the site while there was still a bit of daylight I went over to a nearby pool of relatively clean water and rinsed off. Then I went riding around more, testing out my new more aggressive dirt bike tires. They had much better grip in the deeper mud than my old tires so that was good.

By now it was dark (but with clouds and sky glow from city lights) and I decided to go back to the deep mud pool just to get my boots a bit muddy for the ride home. I had put on a clean, dry t-shirt and work shirt for the ride home. This time I took off my helmet, goggles and gloves.

Well, as you can imagine, one step into the slop and I couldn't resist getting back into it. Another 45 minutes of play and then I got back on the bike - dripping liquid mud. I rode around for a while, finding more spots to test my new tires and then decided to head home. Another dip in the pool of water to rinse off and since it was cooling off and all of my clothes were wet I put on my Carhartt jacket to keep warm.

On the way home I realized that it was still relatively warm and I was not ready to quit yet so I went to another construction site where they are building warehouses. There I saw my other favorite mud sight - large piles of fresh dirt next to large pools of water.

I walked around the water and then started along the base of the dirt pile. My booted feet started sinking deeper into the dirt until I hit the spot where the dirt was saturated and soon I was struggling to move in thick chunky mud that was above my knees.

I tossed off the Carhartt jacket and started working the mud, soon lying down to wallow in the stuff. A few runs up and down the dirt pile ending in the mud below got me coated in a thick layer of chunky mud. After another release of jizz inside my 501s, I grabbed my jacket and got on the bike for the ride home.

The city streets were fairly deserted since it was now after midnight. When I got to the car wash a few blocks from my house I realized that both me and the bike were muddier than I've gotten in a long time. $10 later, the bike and I were clean enough that I wouldn't leave a mess in the back yard when I parked the bike. I hosed myself off a bit more in the yard as I stripped and then enjoyed a nice hot shower.

What a great way to wrap up my birthday. Too bad it was all solo. It's difficult to find real mudders here in Denver.