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!

I hear tell.....

The former Motherland is experiencing the warmest spring since Samuel Pepys begins his diary. Just how warm it is over there right now, my source did not say; only that it is warm enough to bring out British butterflies, foreign and domestic, up to a month early.

That might seem pretty cool at first blush, having some 90 percent of your butterflies arrive way early. But think about it. They are early while their food resources and other essential host plants are not.

"Some of these species are coming out before their nectar sources are present, so will the food available be suitable and will there be anything for the caterpillars to eat?" ~ Matthew Oates, naturalist for the (British) National Trust

Martin Warren, chief executive of Britain's Butterfly Conservation, and others attribute the butterfly pattern shift to climate shift. Insects are responding to trending temperature increases, even if the plants they rely on are not; or, are responding, but at a slower pace.


NEWTON LEROY GINGRICH, who would be your President if he gets his way, also would do away with the Environmental Protection Agency on the grounds that curbing greenhouse gas emissions is bad for Business in general and the Energy Industry in particular. Gingrich, like most other newts, must be living under a rock!