As a non-event attraction...or distraction...The Ride is damned near perfect; ineffective organization and failure to communicate among Staff, Mickey Mouse technical glitches, water bottle water not cold enough and on-going lack of funding. Please, children, can't we just all go ride a bike!?!
At this point I MUST insert a disclaimer. I am well aware that River City's own annual bicycling extravaganza, The Hotter'N Hell Hundred, is familiarly known as "The Ride." So is the Ann Arbor (MI) Transportation Authority, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority better known as the MBTA, at least one rodeo buddy flick, a documentary film about cycling cross country and a country music hit for David Allen Coe. I'm not writing about any of them here until the product placement and sponsorship deals are signed!
The Ride: White, unemployed, uninsured male in his 63rd year takes up touring River City's Hiking and Biking Trails, looking to capitalize his blog leading into that other big bike ride later this summer. What started as a whim three days ago because a bike was left outside is mushrooming into a one man, social and multimedia non-event the likes of which has not been seen since that Alaskan woman's I'm-Not-Running Hysterical Tour.
On the standard grade-school scale I went to school with, I'd give River City a D- for bicycling friendliness. The primary "challenge" to raising that grade would be motor vehicle driver--and I sometimes are one--attitude. Drivers of cars and trucks in this town do not play well with others! Ah, but there is a bright and shining alternate route for those who do not wish to play in hostile traffic; nearly 15 miles of 8 - 10 feet wide paved trail from Lake Wichita Park to Lucy Park that does not cross one single street nor highway.
Day One of The Ride actually was Tuesday, a short check ride from the old flea market on Holliday Road to the last link of trail construction at Jacksboro Hwy. As noted earlier in Where the sidewalk ends...., this final few hundred feet will finish the connection from Lucy to Lake Wichita that is the Holliday Creek Trail, a major stretch of the total proposed loop that ultimately will circumnavigate River City.
Day Two, yesterday, we all but completed the aptly named Holliday Creek Trail from the backdoor of the Country Club (nearest access point to the trail from The Cave) to the top of the spillway at Lake Wichita. Aptly named, I say, because the trail follows Holliday Creek as both creek and trail wind their ways through some of River City's most prime real estate, a green, living corridor that would be the pride of any city whose residents give a good tinker's dam about quality of life.
Today, Day Three, we left the Mongoose in granny gear (partly in difference to the stiff breeze hammering in from the south) to begin to get to know the Holliday Creek portion of the trail. Our ride, therefore, was relatively short from the backdoor of the Country Club to the Native Plant Landscape demonstration plot on Midwestern Parkway.
So break out a bike, and let's hit the trail!
I've only ridden the trail from the start of Hamilton Park down to the Flea Market. Then another day down to Southwest Pkwy and back. I love our trail system. I walked the back part of the system from Lucy Park to Scott Street with my cousin last Sept. and would love to ride that part. It was really pretty back there. However, we saw 2 or 3 loose pit bulls and that scared me off that route. They weren't aggressive, but still....I don't like to take the chance.
ReplyDeletePeggy B.