The Easy Way and the Right Way

It's said that life it's a constant struggle between the easy way and the right way. This morning I chose the right way when it came to decide what kind of workout I would do for the day.It was already a dark, cloudy morning; so I could have stayed in bed and do nothing, however my wife brewed some coffee and made pancakes which got me off the bed quickly.
Slowly I gathered my things and got ready for the day's workout. I decided I would go for a mountain bike ride as most other Wednesdays, yet again, the easy way would have been to go for a easy road ride along the coast.
A few weeks back I had discovered this off road heading East from Uvita and away from the coast. The road gradually climbs out of town. There are a couple of shallow creek crossings then after crossing the third creek there is nowhere else to go but up. When I say up, picture your toughest local climb then make it a few degrees steeper and a little longer. Add tropical humidity and you have what I consider one of the toughest sustained climbs in the area if not in Costa Rica, and I chose to ride that today.
The cloudy day seemed like a good day to try and ride that climb all the way. Last time I attempted it, I failed about 2/3 of the way then I ran out of water and had to turn around. Today, prepared with a Camelbak full and an additional bottle just in case and the total absence of direct sun I thought I would conquer it, however less than a kilometer into the gravel I saw bulldozer tracks. With the recent rains, I figured they would be doing some minor repair work on the road. A couple of kilometers up the road I came up to the bulldozer already on it's way back. Just the amount of dirt displaced by its tracks was making the road muddy and the sticky mud was adhering to my Geax AKA summer tires, but this was only the tracks, no sight of earth moved until I reached that third creek.

The once considered my toughest climb was upgraded to my toughest hike a bike. Mud ankle deep and the steep grade made the slow walk up the hill an all out effort. I stopped a couple of times to catch my breath. At one point, I couldn't believe I had ridden this a few weeks ago. Granted the ground was hard and dry but the grade was the same and now I could barely walk up it. 45 minutes later I reached the spot where I had turned around before. The whole climb had been redone by the bulldozer so it was impossible to ride, however that's as far as it got, from this point on the road was in its normal condition. A little wet and still really steep but not too muddy, so I rode all of it, including sections near or above 30 degree incline until I got to this.

This was unrideable, in fact even hiking up it was difficult. As always, the pictures don't do the justice for the climb but this should help:

Little upper right corner of the Garmin says the gradient was 31 at this point. The climb continued for another kilometer or so before reaching a huge quarry with an spectacular view of the Whale's Tail in Uvita.

This view made all the struggle to get up the hill well worth it.
After refueling and taking in the scenery I continued on to a town called El Socorro where I met an old guy that was pretty sure I was crazy for riding my bike. I asked him some directions to close the loop and continued on. After a little more climbing I reached a town called Aguas Buenas sitting on a ridge line about 1100 meters about sea level. From there it only took 30 minutes of brakes squealing, behind the saddle downhilling to loose all the vertical gain and get back down to near sea level.
Cruising home, I took a look at the mountains in the distance where I had ridden and knowing that perhaps that wasn't the easy way to do a workout, but it felt like the right way!