Wonderful Things

My philosophy as a writer is best summarized by Franz Liebkind in The Producers:

"You are the audience! I am the author! I outrank you!"

Sometimes my blog gets as many as three hits a day.

This is technically antithetical to what I'm learning in my UT advanced writing class, by the way. But I'm settling into the groove of it now.

A couple of wonderful things have happened in connection with this writing class. First off, well, it just feels good to be there. It's a casual class, couched as an opportunity to expand one's skills in a supportive setting, rather than a trap where points are docked for technical errors. The professor is nice. The other students are nice. It has a vibe, and the vibe is good. And hey, writing is fun - right?

So last week, as we went around the room and introduced ourselves, the professor (who's been at UT for many, many years) mentioned that he's a great fan of Shakespeare, and used to teach literature classes in that subject. I suddenly remembered the Shakespearean plays class I took at UT on my first go round, and realized that my professor does seem kind of familiar. And I asked: Did you teach an introductory Shakespeare class in, oh, I'm not sure, 1987?

He laughed, because that was a long time ago. He's taught who-knows-how-many classes since then, and considering I don't remember him clearly enough to be sure he was the instructor, there's hardly any reason he'd remember. But when I brought it up, there was a big "awwwwww!" from my classmates (who incidentally are, for the most part, younger than my two older kids. But who's counting?).

Well, it's not a big deal, I guess. But I did check my transcript at the first opportunity. You like to know these things, right? My transcript doesn't list the instructor name, but does have the course unique ID, so I called up the English department and asked them if there was any way they could look up who it was.

Second wonderful thing (if the first wonderful thing is that all my classmates said "awwwww," though that might be the third or fourth wonderful thing already depending on how you count stuff - or the 537th), whoever answered the phone at the English department did not so much as entertain the idea of considering my request to be frivolous. Did not even offer it a glass of ice water. No, he put me on hold for about seven minutes, during which time he probably had to descend into the secret UT tunnel system* and pull dusty, moth-eaten PAPER FILES out of ancient mildewed FILING CABINETS. And, third (or eighth or 956th) wonderful thing, when he returned, he seemed genuinely excited to tell me that it was, in fact, the same professor!

Possibly he was just really relieved to see the light of day again.

Wonderful thing number I've-lost-count-(who's-counting) greeted me, upon arrival to the next class meeting. My professor said he'd pulled his rosters from 1987 and found the class I was in. I almost cried!

"You know who else was in your class," he told us all, "Scott Blackwood, who's a very successful writer today, was enrolled in that session. We keep in touch still," he told us. "Really a big name now, he's made a big name for himself."

Well, I'm still fairly young.

These are many wonderful things. I do wish I could take part of my generalized anxious energy about school and transport it back in time and magically kablooie it into 18-year-old Beth, who got a B in Shakespearean plays, but didn't do as well in U.S. History or U.S. Government or anything else that would be considered boring, such as the entire core curriculum. At that point I thought that if you took four years of electives, you ended up with a bachelor's degree at the end; it turns out that there are very few majors for which that's true.

So far this semester I can't sleep on school nights because of nerves. Leaving work at 3 on Mondays and Wednesdays to bike to class, I feel almost physically ill with apprehension. This doesn't help me smell any better when I get there.

It'll settle down after a while. Life is full of wonderful things, possibly as many as three a day. But who's counting?

-----

*That everybody has always known about forever

The Right Start

Yesterday morning my cube neighbor rushed his kid to a band trip, arriving just in the nick of time, only to discover he'd forgotten the kid's trombone.

There's a special sound effect tailor-made for just such an occasion - but you need a trombone to make it.

Sometimes life is like an O. Henry story.

But then, sometimes, it's like this:

This is my new morning commute, the boardwalk I was looking forward to a few months ago. It's so worth the wait. The boardwalk portion is about two miles long, and completes the 10-ish-mile hike-and-bike trail loop around the river-shaped lake thingy in the middle of Austin.

It's about a half-mile coast down a quiet neighborhood street to the boardwalk ramp off of Riverside Drive. It's a beautiful ride in the cool of early morning, with the last of an overnight mist burning off the smooth surface of the water.

Unfortunately, you can't follow the same route back because the afternoon traffic pattern is much less conducive to jaywalking across Riverside - traffic is backed up just enough to get good and angry, without quite coming to a stop - so you have to cross half a mile away at the light and climb up a much steeper street. And it's 97 degrees.

But you don't need a trombone, so that's something.

The Unexpected Falls

Ah, summer, vacation, travel... Tahiti, Banff, Venice, Paris! And Wichita Falls!

Completely different subject, I wonder why no one's ever approached me to advertise on my blog?

Having been there a couple of times now, you know, I really like Wichita Falls a lot. It's - I guess the word I'm looking for is scrappy. They've now been in Stage 5 drought for a while, so eventually they just shrugged and started recycling all their water. Yes, all of it. I heard that one city official bought a bunch of coffee mugs shaped like toilets and slapped stickers with the city's logo on them. And you can now buy a T-shirt that says, "Wichita Falls: Our water is the S#!t."

My contact at the city sighed and shook her head, telling my boss and me about this. "Well, what can you say?" she said. "It is what it is."

It is that, and I admire the calm spirit and clear eyes with which the good folks of the Falls cast aside squeamishness and embrace the practical. In fact, practicality is one of the striking features of this town. This is the town that was named for a set of rapids and falls in the Wichita River, so when a flood washed them away, they just built some new ones. They're very pretty. Sometimes the city turns them off.

They build stuff there that you might not expect in a town that size. There is a paved hike-and-bike trail nearing completion, which will completely circle the city, over 20 miles long. There are mountain bike trails aplenty. Wichita Falls is, of course, the home of the Hotter 'n Hell Hundred, so there's a certain cycling mentality there. They get mad props for the logo alone.

But to me, maybe the most charming thing of all about Wichita Falls is that it isn't charming. It's not cute, it's not precious, it's not the kind of town where you go to buy fudge and knick-knacks (though, that said, you'd be pretty silly to miss out on The Pecan Shed - and there is an antiques district downtown, if you must).

To understand fully what I mean, go visit the Bar-L, or the P2 (I'm partial to the Bar-L because of its beautiful, smoky, unapologetically grungy retro-glamour), sit in your car under the awning, and have the carhop bring you a red draw. In your car. In a to-go cup, if you ask for it.

Not that you're likely to get drunk off them, because a red draw consists of light beer (Bud Light being the preferred variety) mixed liberally with tomato juice. The cognoscenti order them spicy, with creole and salt, so that in effect, you're drinking a Bloody Mary with limited sexual experience. Or the carhop will just bring you a bottle of beer. Whatever.

You can go to an actual dinner theater in Wichita Falls. Who has dinner theater anymore? If you're me, you get the backstage tour, which is incredibly cool because the Backdoor Theatre is housed in the old icehouse, and behind one stage you can see the pulley system for hoisting blocks of ice up from the loading dock. At the spectacular River Bend Nature Center, our guide let us pet snakes, lizards, turtles, and a tame prairie dog, and demonstrated how brown recluses will just back away slowly if you stick your finger in their cage and try to touch them (warning: do not try this at home). I'm itching to get into the Railroad Museum, which has lots of vintage railroad cars and is next door to the old depot, which now holds a farmers' market on weekends. But best of all the Railroad Museum holds the little hut that was the very first Texas Travel Information Center in Wichita Falls, circa 1936. Made me mist right up, it did.

You can tour a city founding father's home at the Kell House, or browse the galleries and sculpture garden at the Kemp Center for the Arts (the city's first public library building, and conveniently right across the street from the Bar-L). The Museum of North Texas History is huge and extensive, and takes up the former offices of a bank downtown, still decorated with the cheap paneling and shag carpet that defined the well-dressed 1970s workplace. And oh, my gosh, the Fire and Police Museum! They haven't got a building yet, just a couple of tin quonset huts, but they have a breathtaking collection of fire engines, fire chief cars, police cars, artifacts, and memorabilia, all carefully stored away with military precision and brought out to display on special occasions.

And, of course, there's the Littlest Skyscraper, the generally accepted story of whose origin seems fairly unlikely, but there it is.

Just outside of town, Lake Arrowhead State Park remains beautiful, though the lake is terribly low. A huge prairie dog colony shares space with picnic arbors and campgrounds, and the prairie dogs have probably eaten their share of french fries, exhibiting neither shyness, nor the girlish figures that wild dogs have. They are ridiculously cute.

So that's Wichita Falls: go there if you can, bring your mountain bike or your road bike or both, and you don't have to drink the water if it bothers you. Just stick to red draws and you'll be fine.

gone crazy. back later.

Anna, who is now almost 13 years old, visibly winced last time I used the term "cray cray." She probably has a point.

For the last several years, the advent of spring has meant two things in my little world: wildflowers, of which I get to be the Voice of the Official Report, unless I'm out of the office. In that case, it's Joe. Joe is not flowery by nature. Joe reads the script like a broken man. "It looks to be a wonderful year for wildflowers," he reads, miserably. "Vibrant displays carpet the slopes of the Central Texas Hill Country."

You can totally hear how badly he wants a riding lawnmower.

And of course the other harbinger of spring is my descent into madness as I put the finishing details on our annual travel conference. In a former life as a corporate meeting planner, I worked with mostly stationary targets: hotels and conference centers, caterers and audiovisual contractors, and attendees who tended to sit quietly in the same spot for 8 hours a day. But "tourism boot camp," as one of my regular attendees calls our conference, is a little different: 12-hour days on three buses, sweeping through a region with choreographed precision; discharging 100 participants for a sampler-platter taste of museums, restaurants, parks, restaurants, educational exhibits, and historic sites; splitting up and rotating to fit in the smaller-capacity attractions; meeting up at the next appointed time without missing a beat - usually staying 25 minutes, tops, at each stop.

Since everything is planned to the minute, the slightest delay or mishap can cause the whole carefully crafted schedule to come crashing down, which is why I get a little hostile if anyone requests a bathroom break.

However, since it's apparently still winter, I slipped away for a long weekend to visit my aunt Barbara, who lives in Charleston, South Carolina, and see a concert given by my sister Jessie from Brooklyn and her little violinist friend, and catch up with my cousin Gwen, who is very awesome. When she was 16 and I was 12, Gwen was the coolest human being on the face of the earth on account of having permed hair and driving an MG Midget. But it turns out she's still cool without those things. If you get a chance, ask her for some pointers on pool.

Plus I got the opportunity to explore Charleston by rental bicycle, which is a good idea if you're going to subsist on shrimp and grits and drink as much wine as my aunt and cousin do. (My aunt is widowed now, but was married to an Italian, and drinks accordingly.) It's bike-friendlier than I anticipated, though there aren't many dedicated bike lanes. There are a lot of cyclists, few helmets, and plenty of bike traffic on both sidewalks and streets.

And there's a separate pathway, with clear delineation for bikes and pedestrians, that runs across the high Arthur Ravenel Jr. bridge over the Cooper River, which is a shipping lane. It's almost the only climb Charleston offers as the land between the Cooper and the Ashley is completely flat. On the other side, Mount Pleasant offers a park, pier, and gift shop, where you can't buy your daughter a model ship even though she'd totally love it because it would get crushed in your backpack on the way home.

I think this year I'll put my attendees on 100 bikes and see how that works out. It'll be cray cray.

Bend. Big Bend.

Can you think of any reason you might not want to attend the Chihuahuan Desert Bike Fest?

Well, if you're you, there might not be a reason, because it's awesome. Riding a bike off-road is awesome. Big Bend is awesome. Here, by the way, is the moon setting over Terlingua at sunrise as we headed towards Big Bend Ranch State Park's Lajitas station, where most of the rides begin.

Just think what I could do with an iPhone 5!

The only problem with attending this event, of course, is that we suck. The boyfriend is slow, but soldiers on through moderate obstacles, whereas I tend to stop and dismount if I see anything likely to exhibit unpredictable behavior, such as a rock.

The people who sign up for the Bike Fest ride off cliffs as a matter of course. If I go to an event like this, I am participating as obstacle, not rider.

Nonetheless we put in several very fun miles along the easy routes (fire roads) and met some extremely friendly and tolerant people. Not to mention brightly dressed. One tremendous rider dropped off a steep descent and flew past me, walking my bike, and overtook my boyfriend, riding (but slowly and cautiously) a couple hundred feet ahead.

The rider was wearing a bright pink kit, the same shade as my jersey. For a split second, as he approached and passed, my boyfriend had a momentary impression that I had grown a pair. It only takes a moment - and one can only hope that, as the actual serious badass biker blasted past, he found encouragement in the heartfelt shout of "GREAT JOB, HONEY!" that he received.

Otherwise, better luck next year.

For the Record

In case it ever comes up, which one ardently hopes it doesn't:

I post this because of the way the news media typically report cyclist deaths: A texting, speeding SUV driver jumps the median and swerves across three lanes of oncoming traffic, taking out a cyclist in the opposite bike lane before attempting to flee the scene and ending up wedged through the front window of a laundromat. "It wasn't clear whether the cyclist had lights," the article will conclude.

The laundromat is usually presumed to be innocent.

The driver is as well, unless it turns out that s/he was intoxicated. Being spectacularly and fatally unable to control a motor vehicle while cold sober is perfectly normal, and nothing to be concerned about.

I also wear a helmet every time I ride these days, though I'm doubtful of its usefulness in the above scenario. Helmets are really designed for lesser collisions, such as if you suddenly lose your balance for no reason and fall on your head at five miles per hour. This does actually describe my cycling style pretty well. In fact, I should probably wear it for walking too, and definitely in the shower, though getting it wet might void the warranty.

But one thing I adamantly don't do is advocate for helmet use. I really can't stand sanctimonious helmet-pushers. I was chewed out by one, after a helmetless excursion, a few years ago. She wouldn't drop the subject and actually grabbed my arm and yelled at me for my wanton disregard for my own well-being, a cigarette dangling from her free hand. I haven't gotten over the trauma, and to this day, if I saw her coming the other way on the hike-and-bike trail, I'd take my helmet off and throw it into the lake rather than let her see me wearing one. You don't want to encourage these people.

This was a great weekend to get a little biking in - highs in the mid-70s today, and beautiful and sunny, after wintry mix last week and another bout of sleet and possible snow in the forecast by Wednesday. But one unfortunate side effect of wildly bipolar weather is that you end up getting too sick to enjoy the good days. We did a few miles on the South Walnut Creek trail yesterday. Today, I contented myself with giving the bike a bath and charging up my lights.

Tomorrow I'm reporting for jury duty in District court. Those are typically traffic violations. I'm hoping that if I show up sneezing, shivering, soaked, helmeted, and bitterly resentful, they'll just send me home.

The Long Dark Weekend of the Soul

The problem with government employee holidays is they always sneak up on you. There you are, innocently minding your own business, and you suddenly realize that LBJ's birthday falls on the next Monday and if you don't make spectacular plans for it, you're completely frivoling away one of your few chances to thumb your nose at the private sector.

One excellent plan would be to visit the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historic Park in Stonewall. This is the site of LBJ's ranch, and by the way, the only state-designated Ranch Road in Texas (Ranch Road 1). We have lots of other state-maintained roads colloquially referred to as ranch roads, but they're not. They're really Ranch-to-Market Roads, which are the same thing as Farm-to-Market Roads (technically the same classification), so you can call them RMs, but they are really FMs, and RRs? Nope, just the one.

The more you know.

Anyway, the LBJ Ranch features the Texas White House, a nice, reasonably modest old frame house which houses the late President's office-away-from-the-office. There's a set of throw pillows there - no, really, this is where the joke about Dubya came from - embroidered with a saying of Mr. Johnson's to the effect that this is his place and he'll do as he damn well pleases, except that for some reason the word "well" is left out. Probably the same reason that my grandfather said "a-TALL" instead of "at all." It's some weird old people thing.

There's also a very cool collection of some of LBJ's cars, including the amphibious one he used to drive into the lake with unsuspecting passengers in tow just to see the expressions on their faces, and the ranch's specially bred herd of cattle.

Now - and this perked up my biking bits; God help you if you have a mental image of what those might be - there is also a 9+ mile circuit of paved roads throughout the ranch on which you are encouraged to tune out, clip in, and spin to your heart's content on your road bike, free from the terrors of traffic. It sounds enchanting, to me, because the countryside out there is gently rolling, never terribly steep, you can do as many loops as you want, and Texas winter weather is on the mild side of schizophrenic.

There are loose livestock to contend with, of course. But as long as your own character is irreproachable, this is nothing to be concerned about.

But my boyfriend wants to go to Big Bend Ranch State Park and bring the mountain bikes. Which is a whole nother issue.

Sure, there are loose livestock - I mean, I'm sorry, but cattle are what they are. But there are also heavily armed cacti, javelinas, and other general hazards, including rocks. Generally speaking, I love mountain biking, but would really prefer if the trails were paved. And I had smooth tires. On, you know, something a little more nimble and lightweight. Also, my boyfriend has an unfortunate tendency to be a wheelsucker, which doesn't end well when we're mountain biking and I find myself required to dismount suddenly because tree.

Those fuckers come out of NOWHERE.

So one way or another, we're going on a road trip, in honor of whichever holiday is coming up this time (I can't be bothered to look it up if we still get mail delivery on it). Happy whatever it is, all of you who are stuck in the office! I'll be fending off the advances of cattle and running into the underbrush.

Cedar Blows

A sunny, 82-degree day sandwiched between freeze warnings in January demands a bike ride, but a ride along the South Walnut Creek Trail on such a day is basically the same as snorting a 14-mile long line of cedar pollen.

So keep a few tissues in your jersey pocket.

The paved trail runs from just north of Govalle Park to Loyola Lane, roughly parallel to US 183. The total paved distance, for now, is about 5 1/2 miles. But the trail continues north a mile and a half or so further, unpaved for now, so today we brought mountain bikes to see just where it goes.

If you want to avoid the cedar, you can follow the example of many visitors to Govalle Park, and enjoy the beautiful weather from inside your car with the windows rolled up and the engine running. There's presumably a reason people do this - I've seen a lot of it, at this particular park, on several different occasions.

Many people where I work also seem to feel most at home in an idling car, spending their lunch hour in the parking lot ensuring that their personal pollution quotas don't go unmet. But then, you kind of expect that from state employees.

If you're going to drive to a park, it seems reasonable to expect that you might get out of your car once you get there.

Then again, this level of cedar would make anyone a little irrational.

Bless you!

True Blue

A flat tire is no way to start the new year.

Well, technically it was the end of the old year, since it happened on Dec. 31. But the bike wasn't back in rideable condition until today. And that's just shameful.

The tires on my commuter were CSTs. I bought them for one reason and one reason alone: they are a deep, vivid blue. The bike is a shiny black Cannondale with white lettering and electric blue pin striping. Shimano makes a frame-mounted minipump in black and electric blue, which looks great on the bike and, as a bonus, worked quite well on the couple of occasions where I actually had to use it. And I found a couple of electric blue water bottle cages, which pick up the color scheme nicely.

I'm stupid about colors. My first "real" bike (after the old Walmart Schwinn, which by the way held up pretty damn well with next to no maintenance for about four years until I gave it to my son and he left it outside a convenience store while he ran inside for "just a minute") was a women's Trek 7.2. I really had no idea how much of a difference it would make to go from 26-inch MTB wheels to 700's mounted with city tires. I felt like I could fly.

But the bike was a nauseating shade of pale powder blue reminiscent of Care Bears and mental hospitals, and in the end I just couldn't get past that. I sold it after a year and got the Cannondale instead. (And might have picked up a couple of other bikes along the way.)

Anyway, I ran those tires for several months - $12 apiece, as I recall - and they proved quite reliable. I liked the way they looked, though they were more royal than electric blue, and since they're 25's they are not nearly as well suited to the crushed-gravel trails which are a big part of my daily commute. Also, they looked really sharp only right after a bath, because it turns out roads are not all that clean. Worst of all, I couldn't even mount the tires myself when they arrived. I ended up just taking the wheels off and doing the walk of shame to my friends at Tsunami (which is fortunately only about half a mile from my house, but even a half-mile walk of shame is about half a mile too far).

So, when the front tire flatted out on the way to work the morning of New Year's Eve, it was time to put the old boring black 32's back on. And somehow knock my front brake completely out of whack in the process. Anyway, it's all fixed now. Thanks Tsunami!

They are so good to me. But I can't imagine they think I am very bright.

Anybody know where I could get an electric blue saddle? The one I have is super comfy, but I'd swap it out in a heartbeat for something that really ties the bike together.

As if a Million People Were Silent, Then Suddenly Cried Out in Terror

So I took a couple of years' break from my blog. You might have noticed, except that assuming you were one of my three regular readers, you stopped checking for updates by early spring of 2012.

This was all part of my master plan.

Writing is a wonderful thing, very therapeutic, not to mention that organizing one's thoughts (or attempting to, anyway) to the point where they are not only comprehensible, but maybe even interesting, to complete strangers, is excellent mental exercise. And God only knows I need it. I've been watching too much TV.

But having an audience adds pressure. That being said, I guess it isn't clear why I don't just keep a paper diary or take advantage of one of many available software programs which process words, which are what I produce by typing, assuming I lay off the wine.

Yeah right!

The topics on my mind seem off-limits tonight. A man I never met, but consider a kindred spirit because he was a fellow bicycle commuter, blogger, parent, and 44-year-old, was killed yesterday on the frontage road of I-35 in Round Rock on his way to the office.

His poor family. Those poor kids. I am so terribly sorry. God bless and keep you.

To spare a little pity for the driver who hit him, as well: We live in a society deeply entrenched in the premise that driving is safe - that, if you slip up a little, the worst anybody is likely to suffer is a little property damage and maybe a stiff neck. This mindset is in the process of changing, but there's a sense that, behind the wheel, drivers are almost entitled not to have to worry about these things. Well, I never did when I was driving, not until I really got out there and felt the vulnerability of knowing that a momentary lapse of attention on someone else's part might kill me. They'd feel shitty about it, and I'd actually feel really sorry for them having to go through that, except I'd be dead.

My daily danger zone is my daughter's middle school. I walk with her there each morning, through our quiet residential neighborhood, walking the bike I ride to work after dropping her off. She's in seventh grade now, so at some point fairly recently, she stopped holding my hand (though when I occasionally take hers, she doesn't yet pull away).

Everything is fine until we get to the school itself, where we walk across the narrow neighborhood street where the cars pull out of the school driveway after dropping off kids. That place is a hellish free-for-all slice of mayhem.

The people waiting to turn out of the driveway rarely signal, so you have to guess if it's safe to cross in front of where they'll be pulling out if they're turning left. Meanwhile, cars are approaching from both directions in the street, sometimes to pass through, sometimes to pull up to the curb and drop off a kid, again not often signaling. Many of the cars departing the school are trying to get the hell out of Dodge via the cross street on which my daughter and I are approaching. Signaling? Whatever. It's like fucking Frogger.

The school, neighborhood, and surrounding streets largely predate cars. Traffic control at the school consists of one extremely nice and patient lady trying to keep kids (and the occasional irresponsible bike-walking parent) from getting run over. And the car horns? It sounds like Manhattan up in there. Everybody is PISSED.

I think I've seen one other family that walks their child to school there. It's sad, because our walk is about 1/2 mile across the park and up a steep hill (by Austin standards) and is a pretty nice start to the day, up until we get to the street bordering the school and it gets fugly. And it's a neighborhood school, you know, so not many of the students live more than a few blocks away.

These are things we've lost sight of, as a society. It's not anyone's fault, it just naturally happens when you get in the habit, as pretty much all of us do, of never traveling further on foot than from your front door to your car, your car to your office, your car - in the parking space you've found, after circling the parking lot for 10 minutes looking for a close-in spot, near your grocery store or shopping mall or gym. We all admit this, and it's not your fault or my fault or anybody's individual fault, but maybe we can make a little change and all our little changes together can make something better. We all crave the invincibility and anonymity that cars, or online comment forums, give us. Who wouldn't? It's safe, you can do what you want, and nobody has to know who you are.

I don't have a master plan. I just want us all to be well and happy and not get run over.

On Your Left, Thank You, Have a Nice Day

Yoga is good for your spiritual well-being. There's a lot of talk about why this is, but what it boils down to is that yoga makes it much easier to reach your toenails. One cannot achieve inner peace with a sloppy pedicure.

Fortunately, I've always been flexible, so I'm really more into cycling.

Bicycles are, alas, the red-headed stepchild of modes of transportation. Drivers, who are naturally entitled to get wherever they are going as quickly as possible, get very frustrated at the presence of cyclists. (Less so, oddly, at the presence of thousands of other drivers, who are slowing them down a heck of a lot more; but there you go.)

Pedestrians don't like cyclists either. On shared-use facilities, you're supposed to yield to pedestrians, which is theoretically no problem. But it would be nice if pedestrians on a hike-and-bike trail had more sense that maybe they ought to be prepared to encounter different types of trail users, to keep to the right and try to refrain from taking up the entire width of the trail whilst too engrossed in their dogs/children/conversation partners/phones/navels to notice repeated calls of "On your left!... Excuse me!... Behind you!... On your left, folks!" to the point where you just want to say fuck it and get an air horn for your bike and if they don't like it they can maybe, I don't know, STAY OUT OF THE GODDAMN WAY.

But that's the path to the Dark Side. It's important to be nice. And it's even more important to be nice to the people who piss you off than the people who don't, because, you know, it's easy to be nice to the people who don't. And where's the sport in that?

Today was a nice day, a brief respite from the bipolar swing of "SUMMER! NO, WINTER! NO, NOW IT'S SUMMER! Ooh, spring. PSYCH! WINTER, BEEYOTCHES!" that Texans typically endure from November through February. It's also a Sunday. It's the Sunday after Thanksgiving, which for some people involves second helpings, pie, and - God help us - Cool Whip.* So the beautiful hike-and-bike trail around Town Lake, for which we have Lady Bird Johnson to thank, to the point where you'd think they'd name the lake after her or something, but no, it's called Town Lake, was pretty crowded.

I like the part east of I-35. This picture was taken behind the softball fields at the Holly Street Power Plant, where a giant live oak shades the park bench overlooking the grass sloping down to the water. It's a beautiful spot, the turnaround point of my lunch hour rides, though of course today we didn't have to hurry back. You can also see, across the water, the new boardwalk under construction that will complete the hike-and-bike trail loop around the lake. It's well elevated on pylons above the water, since we do get flooding now and then, and plenty wide enough for three suburban moms with double baby joggers to spread out comfortably and ignore your attempts to alert them to your presence.

But you can't see it in my picture, so someday when it's open I'll have to brave the crowds and go out and get some pictures of it.

Meanwhile, have a nice day, and maybe get out and ride your bike. Don't forget to yield to pedestrians.

----------------------------------
*I'm sorry, but there is just no excuse for Cool Whip, especially not in this day and age.

Trail's End

You know that path that runs along MoPac just north of the river? I tried to get to that today, but I couldn't find it. How do you get there?

I don't know why I'm asking you. I've got Google Maps same as you have. And I call myself a geographer!

It's fun to enjoy the hike-and bike trail from a different perspective for a change. Normally, of course, I walk on it, along a very specific stretch - as far as I can get from my office and still be back in one hour. My path includes the Statesman, the Congress Avenue Bridge, the South First Bridge; Auditorium Shores, wet dogs, and Stevie; the railroad bridge, pedestrian bridge, and Lamar Bridge; up to Lou Neff Point and back. I scaled it in Arc once - the round trip is about three miles.

On a bike, of course, you can go a lot further, but you have to watch out for obstacles like double-wide strollers, joggers engrossed in their iPods, and dogs - who aren't terribly concerned about whether you run them over or not. The dogs along Auditorium Shores bring down a lot of bikers. But this is perfectly normal, and nothing to be concerned about.

When I ride my bike at lunch, I turn around at the pedestrian bridge under MoPac; but I've always wondered where the trail goes from there. It turns out it doesn't go far, petering out altogether at Eilers Park. What a pity - what I was really hoping for was to find that trail along MoPac and maybe hop up to Camp Hubba Hubba and drop in on Tony and Pinche Robert, who actually went in to work on Texas Independence Day. And they call themselves geographers!

Patriots, I meant to say patriots.

No luck there, but it was still a good day for me. I bought a new pair of shoes - flats, I'm sorry to say, but my jogging shoes were wearing out and there are some things even I won't do in heels. Then I had to go on a nice long walk around the neighborhood to break them in. Keep moving... keep moving...

And I did in fact move all the plants in the world back out front to their summer headquarters, so I hope the weather won't let me down, unlike old blind Romeo, who I can't help noticing is pooping in a potted basil as I type this. You probably don't want to eat pesto at my house.

Happy, happy spring - if it is spring! Here's to new beginnings.

Having Legs and Knowing How to Use Them

I’m all excited because I rode my bike to Whole Paycheck for lunch today. It’s only maybe two miles each way, but it’s a significant departure from my normal route and routine, or at least the non-trail part of it is. I arrived with a sense of accomplishment, locked up my bike next to a pedicab, and spent the next hour on the sunny patio, talking about sex and love and boy troubles over a bowl of organic soup with my gorgeous gay lunch date.

If that isn’t what being an Austinite is all about, I’d like to know what is!

Some of you not in Austin may not know that this is the very first location of Whole Foods, right here:

And here it is now, just a few blocks and a kazillion light-years away.

The main problem with biking places is that I have to change clothes to do it. At work, this means using the women’s locker room, which is equipped with government-issued, cellulite-enhancing lighting and special widening mirrors that make you look like you’re hiding the cab of a semi under your skirt. Baby got MACK!!!

Cheryl’s BITCH is a biker and has been trying to persuade me to join him on the Hill Country Ride for AIDS, but I don’t think I will, for two important reasons:

1. The word “Hill” is prominently featured in the name.
2. It’s 50 miles. Look what a big deal I’m making about riding four!

Still, it’s a liberating feeling, being able to go places – real places – pretty quickly, under your own power, in the sunshine and fresh air. Even in the cold and rain, I still enjoy it, though I cannot stress enough the importance of wearing waterproof mascara. So I really want to start using my bike for going more places more often.

That way, when Robbie finally convinces me to come work with him in Georgetown, my legs will be ready.

----------

Aerial images are from http://maps.live.com. Aren’t they cool?