We interrupt this bike blog…for a winery visit. Rest day included a leisurely drive to secluded hill country winery. Not telling you which one and where you can find it. Don’t want it ruined.
Won’t somebody help that poor man?
1
Red sky in the morning…
…something…something…warning
Set out this morning to glorious sky doodling by Mother Nature. Although I wasn’t so distracted that I didn’t fail to notice the omnious gray to the south. It threatened rain throughout much of my ride. Kept wondering why I didn’t pack my rain jacket. Maybe something about not believing TV weather people any more.
There was one point on the return leg where I thought I was going to get really wet. Stopped under a big tree to mix more electrolyte and eat a snack. She faked me out with a very brief shower.
Actually, having all that cloud cover was nice. Kept the temperature down. The sun didn’t make an appearance until the very end, about the time my iTunes starting playing some Eddie Vedder.
There’s a big, a big hard sun
Beating on the big people
In the big hard world
Pedernales Falls State Park
Was thinking about doing an out & in to Johnson City but decided to head into the park. Been a long time since I was there. One of these days I’ll do S24O and take advantage of the camp ground.
Fun little ride. One hundred kilometers of hill country goodness with some semi-challenging changes in elevation. This includes the slight incline of the “Fitzhugh Wall.” It’s a short hill but the good news is it’s really steep. Well at least for this old man.
Motorcycles
Didn’t see many on the outbound leg. Probably too early for most people. On the return leg, Fitzhugh Road was rocking with motorized bikes. Got a few waves.
Now I’m enjoying my endorphins and trying to decide what I should eat when my appetite kicks in.
Carbo Loading
Preparing for semi-big ride tomorrow.
There are bikers and there are bikers
This weekend Austin is the subject of an invasion. It’s time for the annual ROT.
I rode a motorcycle in college so I can empathize with the attraction of two wheels and noisy engines. And our motorized brethren face some of the same inattention and discourtesy from cagers as we do. So I tolerate this craziness.
Hopefully the country roads won’t be inundated so that I can enjoy sweat and heart rate and beautiful vistas.
Blues on the Green
Outdoor concert with a few thousand of my friends.
Zilker Park
Where Are We?
If it’s Wednesday this must be Dripping Springs
Short out&in to the south and west. Travis Cooke, Old Bee Caves, Thomas Springs, Circle Drive, Fitzhugh, RR12. Forty-one miles of relaxation. And breakfast tacos.
Amazing how far some people will ride to get breakfast food that you get right down the street. They weren’t the best I’ve ever eaten but they somehow taste spectacular after 20 miles of pedaling.
Which way?
Let’s see…Dripping, Johnson City or up to Bee Cave? Popular cross road for cyclists. I heard Johnson City calling me. I’ll probably do that ride Friday.
Stopping for pictures
Lots of neat vistas and scenes. One of these days I’ll spend some time with the real camera along this stretch of country.
Massive Rawhide
We interrupt this bike blog…
…life is good.
Tinfoil Hat Time
“Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
Hey NSA…
…suck on my 4096 bit PGP key. Good luck trying to guess my passphrase. Oh yeah and I can now boot up my computer to a secure operating system that erases its tracks on the internet. Enjoy trying to guess what I’m reading and trying to decrypt all that cypher text .
“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
Don’t Tell Me What Happens
Another book report
This was my first pick from the Yellow Bike book club. Joyride: Pedaling Toward a Healthier Planet. Been reading this off and on for a couple weeks between other books or when the mood strikes me. Not a page turning epic but it does tell an interesting story.
I wish I would have picked up it when it was first published in 2010. It might have numbed some of the frustration I’ve felt watching Austin struggle to become something like Portland. But never too late and all that. From what I’ve read in her story, Austin still has some struggle ahead of us.
Last night I was struck by a particular passage:
“!@#$% cyclist!” yells a motorist out his window, snapping me back to the daily reality outside the warm receptive audience by whom I’ve just been embraced. The norm is not these fabulously fearless freaks in nuclear-waste handler outfits, but the people of North Portland, for whom speed bumps and bicycle lanes are a declaration of war on their way of life, along with business people who regard bicycles as toys, engineers for whom bicycles are an impediment to traffic, and police officers who perceived all bicyclists to be scofflaws.
Sound familiar?
Don’t tell me the end
I haven’t finished the book. Don’t spoil the end for me. Am anxious to discover how things work out for our brothers and sisters in Portland.
Before Gas and TV
Holy Sauna Batman!
Ride down to Yellow Bike this morning was relatively nice. Gray overcast, light winds, humidity. The sun broke out just before I reached the shop. Portents of a sweaty ride home. Weather small talk with the woman working the order window at El Chilito.
The rising temperature was tolerable inside the shop. We had all the doors and windows open so there was some airflow. The humidity was starting to get a little out of hand. And because of recents rains we were visited by mosquitos.
After the shop I rolled my bike to the front door and was greeted by mid-day Austin in June. ”[expletive deleted] it’s hot out here!”
It was indeed a warm ride home. I won’t translate the F to C for my metric friends. Most of you metric users have no concept what hot is anyway so why bother with a meaningless number. Suffice to say I lost a few kilograms coming home.
If you don’t mind, it won’t matter
In an attempt to try to ignore the blazing thermonuclear ball in the sky and the suffocating water vapor I tried to make various observations. Mid-day traffic was particularly manic today and I began to question what all these people were doing driving around adding to the urban heat island. My mind wandered to a recent study that found over 40% of all car trips in U.S. urban areas are of 2 miles or less.
About that time one of my favorite Mark Knopfler songs popped up in the iPod shuffle queue.
Before gas and TV
Before people had cars
We’d sit ’round the fires
Pass around our guitars
We’d go with the flow
When the weather was fine
Sometimes we’d go
Collecting scrap iron
