The Ride: Something goofy.......

"You're never too old to do something goofy." Ward Cleaver

Now in its third day, a better title for The Ride might be We're Three Days Behind and Burnin' Daylight!, but that struck me as a tad lengthy.

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.

In the days ahead we will be exploring Holliday Creek in depth and watching for the completion of the final construction.

So break out a bike, and let's hit the trail!

Where the sidewalk ends....

The Mongoose, my late-life-crisis two wheeler, was left out of the shed last night which seemed like an omen: Ride! Ride like the wind!

Right. With Our Sun near her highest and the air temperature creeping past 90F, and when, exactly, did you say was the last time you were on a bicycle?

Not like we were thinkin' road trip. Not anytime soon...anyway. More like a simple shakedown pedal, just down to the construction on the River City Parks Loop and back, to check out the bike, a Wallyworld special Mongoose paver. Not exactly the 20" Western Flyer I started out on way back when, but a serviceable ride for a sexagenarian with enough sense to stay off the main drags. I just don't own the wardrobe to pull off riding that publicly!

Nearest access to the trail from The Cave is behind the flea market on Holliday Rd. Back when I first came to River City, the flea market site was Haven Amusement Park where I learned to cuss over miniature golf (18 holes for a quarter) and learned that cotton candy is an icky, sweet, cheap high! At the very back of the park, beyond the handful of carnie games, was this HUGE! public swimming pool that would not figure in this four-year-old's life for several more years.

I cannot tell you how drastically this neighborhood has changed in the five decades since I first knew it! Most obviously, an entirely different channel has been dug for the creek and freeways channel traffic flow overhead. On a skateboard I made myself with a 2X4 and one of my sister's sidewalk skates, I was one of the first to actually put wheels to pavement before those overhead lanes were opened to the public. Nearly all the old car lots of the fifties are long gone now from what remains of old Jacksboro Highway, back then the main highway in from Fort Worth and points south.

This section of the hike 'n' bike trail east from the flea market is one of the newer stretches. The trail gives out to construction right about where it ducks under Jacksboro Hwy. It picks up again beyond the heavy earth movers to skirt River City's Eastside and follow the river back to the west to Lucy Park. Once these final few hundred feet are finished later this summer the trail will link Lucy and Lake Wichita Parks.

But for today this is where the sidewalk ends. That old sun isn't getting any less intense, and my cell phone is spittin' out text message alerts as if the Mayan end of the world was ahead of schedule. We'll come back this way every now and again, just to make the workers wonder what the old geezer with the digital camera is up to. Right now there's a pitcher of tea on the top shelf of the fridge with my name on it.

Last one back is a rotten egg!