In Which We View Fish And Rescue An Asian Lady

On a trail bridge over Dry Creek. I think Amelia is enjoying the morning ride.

My son-in-law was headed to the Des Moines area for a race today, so my wife asked my daughter this morning if she and the kids wanted to come over. We were to go to the gym first, and then pick up two of the kids at dance class—my daughter and her oldest daughter and youngest daughter would then join us after dance class.

Audrey suggested that I put the toddler seat on my bike and ride it to the gym in case Amelia was willing to go for a ride. Then, after we exercised, my wife would drive to the nearby dance academy, while I biked.

When we got there, we asked Amelia if she wanted a bike ride. She grinned, but didn’t answer. So, I took her out of her car seat and put her by the bike, and began to put her helmet on. She’s not a shy little girl—if she didn’t want a ride, she surely would have let me know at that point.

Apparently, she was willing to ride. I finished getting her ready, strapped her in the toddler bike seat, and off we rode.

On the way back to my house, we came to Walgreens. We could either go left and head down C Avenue directly home, or go right and go down the Lindale Trail to the Boyson Trail. I asked Amelia what she wanted to do. I figured if we went on the trail, it would only be for a short ride, because it was cool and she didn’t have a sweater on.

By now, she had rediscovered language. “Trail,” she said. So we went right.

Along the way, we passed a girl jogging, a couple walking a dog and heard several birds. Then, when we reached the Boyson trail, traffic picked up a bit, and we saw a few more walkers, joggers and bikers.

I headed north right away, figuring I would take take the short leg of the trail to Boyson, rather than riding the whole trail, which would have taken an hour or so. When we got about 2/3 of the way to Boyson Road, we noticed a middle aged woman with a mountain bike stopped, looking at her chain.

We stopped. “Is your bike OK?” I asked.

The lady smiled at me, and mumbled something about her husband, gesturing north along the trial. English was clearly not her primary language, but from my bike, I could see that her chain had jumped off the front cogs. When that happens, a chain can get pretty tightly caught, but it didn’t look like hers was. I thought of taking Amelia out of the bike seat, but that would take a while, or of asking the lady to hold my bike for a minute, but I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get her to understand that I was intending to fix her bike. So, I just hopped off my bike, and with my right hand I grabbed the central bar of my bike, holding it and Amelia steady.

With my left hand, I first pushed her rear derailleur forward, taking tension off the chain. Then, I ran my first finger along the chain, until I looped it around the front cog. With a quick flick of my finger, her chain was pulled out of the area between the cog and her bike frame, and now rested on her cog.

She looked a little startled, but knew enough English to say “thank you.” Amelia had no comment.

Then, I hopped back on my bike and continued north. When we got to the bridge over Dry Creek, we turned to stop at the bridge for a few minutes, because I knew Amelia loved watching water. Luckily, there were lots of fish visible in the still pool of water under the bridge. It’s been dry lately, and there Is not much flow in Dry Creek, but that probably concentrates the small creek fish in the remaining pools of water, which made watching them easy and entertaining this morning.

After a few minutes, I crossed the bridge, turned around and headed for home. I was on Sussex when my wife texted to let me know we were going to Skype with my daughter who lives in England. We made it home just in the nick of time.

So, we had time to both rescue an Asian lady and watch some fish. That makes for a pretty good ride, which I think Amelia enjoyed almost as much as I did.

A Cool, Cloudy Ride Turns Sunny

view of bridge on the trail.

Me and Mr. T on the the "brand new bridge."  He's too shy to look at the woman taking the photo.  Or perhaps just too focused on the creek.

Bare trees and clouds reflect in Indian Creek from what Tristan calls "the brand new bridge."

Late in the ride, headed north, towards the old railroad bridge.  Nice day in late fall.

There have been plenty of cool morning rides lately—an entire week of lows in the 20s.

That has made it a really good biking week.

When I got home Friday, the grandchildren had already arrived.  We were keeping Nikayla, Tristan and Amelia, ages 4, 2 and 1, overnight.  Tristan assured me that I was his friend, something he often tells me, and he bestows the title of “friend” very parsimoniously.  His grandmother, who he adores, is not his friend.  Neither are the most important people in his life, his parents.

Why do I earn the coveted, rare title of Friend of Tristan?  Well, when he tells me I’m his friend, he usually also explains:  “You take me on bike rides.”

Anyway, on Saturday mornings, Nikayla has a dance class, and Amelia, who often tries to emulate her older sister, loves to go watch.  So this morning, Audrey took the girls to dance, while I took the boy for a boy bonding journey, a friendship fiesta—a bike ride.

We started out about 9:30  It was cool and cloudy, fairly quiet on the trail.  After a week of frosts, the bugs are gone, though not the birds.  We had not gone far when we started to hear and see some birds, including a big red-headed woodpecker who landed on a dormant tree just beside the trail.  It was closer than I’m used to seeing this bird, and I stopped to try to take its photo, but it sped off.

No matter, on we went.  Tristan had asked that we go check on Thomas—he remembered a recent Wednesday ride when we headed down the Cedar River Trail to the railroad tracks near Cedar Lake.  I knew today I didn’t have time to ride down to Quaker Oats and back, so I suggested the Boyson Trail by pointing out that we could cross many bridges, and he agreed.

He was a bit subdued.  He had slept in and was in a contemplative mood.  He didn’t narrate the ride, as he usually does, but happily replied to my questions, and quietly commented now and then, such as noting that a “plane is in the sky” when we heard the sound of an small single-engine prop-powered aircraft.

We proceeded down the trail, crossing and recrossing the bridge that leads to the Marion High School football field.  I rode on the new trail down to Menards, and when we turned to go back, Tristan wanted to cross the “brand new bridge” again—it’s the longest bridge on the trail and Tristan calls it that because it was brand new the first time we crossed it.

We stopped at the bridge to watch the water and so I could take his picture.  A jogger came up, and asked us if we wanted her to take our picture.  I said “yes,” but then Tristan was too shy to look at the camera woman.

We headed down to the park end of the Boyson Trail and then north again.  When we got to the north end, Tristan said he was ready to go to grandma’s house, so we didn’t go back to the trail that goes behind Walgreens, but instead went directly home.

As we had ridden along, the sky slowly cleared, the wind died down and I was rather warm by the time we finished.  I think Mr. T was too—I had put leggings under his pants and two pairs of socks on him, and Audrey had found him a thin hat to wear under his helmet.

All in all, it was a very nice ride.  I took some pictures along the way.  The photo that I found most interesting was one of Tristan during our bridge stop.  He looks sad, and a tear is rolling down his cheek.  It’s a heartbreaking picture—boy of sadness—and totally misleading.  His mood was upbeat all ride long, even if a bit subdued—he was happy and pleased to be out on his bike seat.  I think he looks “sad” only because that’s his thoughtful face while he gazes at the stream.  He was happy to be there and I was glad to have him.  His older sister has outgrown the bike seat, and he is starting to get a bit tall for it, too—I’m afraid this will be his final fall riding this seat with his friend.  We do have a trailer that larger kids can sit in that we attach to Audrey’s bike, so I’ll still be able to take him biking some.

But, sometime in the months that follow, after he has turned 3, he’ll just be too big to ride on this seat anymore.

I know today his tear was not of sadness at all.  It’s just a reaction to the cool breeze of the ride and some dust in the air.

Yet it seemed to symbolize, to me, the coming end of our biking partnership, at least in his present form.  Granted, that’s not for a while—but that day will come.

For Christmas this year, I’ll be looking so see if I can find some other form of device to attach to my bike so I can continue in the new year to cycle with my friend—and hopefully with his older sister, too.  And the small seat in front will be for younger grandchildren, new biking friends of the future.

Why the tear?  He is not sad.  In fact, I think he loved the ride.

Friday, sunrise over Kenwood School.  The week has been full of this kind of morning--a good reason to be a biker.

Blazing A New Trail Near Our Home

My shadow as I pull up late in the afternoon..what is that beside the sign?  A new trail!

I’ve been seeing a “Road Work Ahead” sign on the Cedar Rapids end of the trail that runs behind Walgreens on C Avenue NE in my neighborhood, and cynically assumed it would take years for the city to actually do anything with this trail.

Well, CR Public Works, I take back my cynicism.  Suddenly, in the course of maybe a week, a sleek new limestone trail has magically appeared.

I noticed, as I zoomed by on C Avenue Monday night on my commute home, something looked a bit different, so I turned around to investigate.  Sure enough, a new access to the old rail line had been created at the end of a dead-end street.

The start of the trail looked a bit mushy—we had two inches of rain over the weekend.  And Audrey was due to come home soon—we had planned to go for a walk.  So I rode home, texted her that there was a new trail, and we decided to walk it.

Well, it was slightly mushy in parts, but in surprisingly good shape.  As far s I can tell, the city is done putting most of the limestone down, and just has a bit of shoulder fill to move in before Miller time (or should it be Fat Tire time?).

The shaow of the walkers--Audrey and I head away from the sunset along the new trail.  Clearly, we are not cowboys or we would be going the other way.

We walked a loop, first going to Lindale Avenue in Marion, then back north through a quiet residential neighborhood to the short west trail that runs beside the longer Boyson Road trail.  We headed back home, passing by Bowman Woods School on Boyson Road.  The loop we walked was about an hour long—which makes it just about the perfect length for the occasional evening constitutional, and along this walk we crossed no busy streets at all.

Well, cool for you, CR.  Thanks for putting in this trail.  My late fall bike riding has just gotten better.

Eventually, years from now when the CENMAR trail is finished, this new trail will be my commuting route, and I’ll be able to ride all the way to MMU with only the short sidewalk jaunt to Walgreens being pre (or post) trail.

Yeah, it was a nice way to end a very nice ride.  Although the ash trees are spent, there were still lots of pretty maples to enjoy on my ride.  Happy trails!

This photo and below are in the neighborhood east of Harding Middle School and Noelridge Park.  I had taken the Cedar River Trail north through town, not knowing that there were more trail adventures in store.

Some Ducks And Other Wild Things

Why does the baby duck cross the park drive?  Clearly, to get its image in my blog ....

Happy Fourth of July! We celebrate the letter our ancestors sent to the king of England, telling him we weren't going to eat scones or drink warm beer any more.

I went on two short rides today. In the morning, I did the Boyson Trail in Marion on my way home from the gym. I did the same trail again in the evening, when I went on a ride with my son-in-law, and then he and I rode over to Noelridge Park to meet more family members there.

It was warm in the morning, hot in the evening, but they were short rides and I didn't overdo it.

The theme of the evening ride was “Where the Wild Things Are.” I was telling Brandon (my son-in-law) that I had seen deer often on a new stretch of the trail, and he had just replied that he also often saw turkeys during his rides near Monticello, when a turkey strutted across the trail maybe 30 yards in front of us.

Later, on the new rail line trail headed towards C Avenue, a deer calmly walked across the trail in front of us. It was too far away, maybe 50 yards or so, to even tell for sure if it was a buck or doe, but it was still a deer encounter.

Finally, at the park, we met the family at the duck pond and saw lots of cute baby and mom ducks.

Well, shucks. Despite the heat, the rides were pleasant.

I've done well this week, I figure I have more than 100 miles already, but today was a lighter day. We'll see what tomorrow brings—but tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter than today, so I doubt it will bring any long ride ….

Me and Mini-Me Try Some New Trails

Father's Day, Tristan and I read for our ride in our matching bike vests.  Not quite matching--his closes better than mine!

Well, the Father’s Day biking news is that the trail situation in my neck of the woods is looking much improved.

Tristan has a new bike vest.  Audrey has been looking for a vest like my bike vest, and found one that she thought could be cut down and reworked.  Katy did the sewing, so now Mr. T can be a bike Mini Me.  He was pretty excited to wear the vest today, and readily agreed to a ride, so we headed over to the Boyson Road Trail, where we made some pleasant discoveries.

The city of Marion has snuck up on me with two new trails.  Last year, there were a branch trail off of the Boyson Road trail that went through the Frisbee gold course and then petered out.  That trail has been extended all the way to Highway 100.  You can see Menards up a hill at the end.  There are some nice woods, a fairly long bridge over Indian Creek and an as-yet unexplored other branch along this trail.

Mr. T and I crossed the bridge at Thomas Park—the one that leads to the athletic fields—just because Mr. T likes to cross the bridge.  Then we rode to the end of the trail and turned around.  I was curious to see if the side trail had been extended and asked Mr. T if he would like to ride on a new trail.

He would and we did.  And I was pleasantly surprised at how far we went.  The new trial is probably as long or maybe even longer than the Boyson Road trail, and it was a very pleasant route through meadows, and woods, and over a new bridge.

It ended abruptly like it wanted to go under a bridge of Highway 100, and I wonder if it will be extended.  It’s not terribly far from there to the Sac and Fox Trail—will these trails eventually connect?

Anyway, on the way down, I noticed the barriers where they have been building a new trail along the railroad line that leads to Walgreens on C Avenue have been removed, so again, after we headed back north on the Boyson Road Trail, I asked Mr. T if he wanted to try another new trail.

Of course he did.

And the whole trail, in Marion, is done!  We could walk to the Boyson Road trail and follow the rail line back.  We always could, but it used to be that the old rail line was a bit hard to manage because it wasn’t a finished trial, and the hillside was hard to climb to get to the line.  Now, a gradual incline from the rail line to the Boyson Trail has been installed.

Well, I knew that they were working on a new north end of the trail, which makes the whole thing more accessible from my Cedar Rapids neighborhood.  I didn’t expected the rail line trail to be done so soon—nor did I have any idea how much new trail was lurking behind the branch that began near the golf course.

And no flat tire!  It will be a nice new trail ride for shorter RAGBRAI practice runs.

The Data Suggests That We Need More Data …

New trail is being installed  on a rail line that runs to C Avenue in Cedar Rapids.  This is the Marion end, where an access down a hill side, shown at sunset, is having aggregate installed before the limestone finish.

I know I’m a slow biker—after all, I’m using a hybrid bike that’s not built for speed, and that’s my story and I’m sticking to it—but how slow is “slow?”

My computer is busted, so on a roughly 20-mile ride today, I was estimating my speed by timing my one-mile runs on the Cedar Valley Nature Trail north of Hiawatha.

I varied between 10 and 12 mph.  Maybe that’s not quite tortoise pace, but definitely nowhere near the hare.

So, I decided to run a different test.  The weather was nice, it was early evening (around 7) and there were lots of bikers on the trail.  Let’s just count how many I pass and compare that to the number who pass me.

Well, that wasn’t very helpful.  I passed two.  Two passed me.  Am I going the median speed?  Anyway, the data clearly is not adequate due to small sample size, and even that sample is pretty hinky.  I stopped to tie a shoe, a teen girl passed me, and after I was laced up, I passed her.  So of the two who passed me and two I passed, one person was in both categories.

Hmmmm.

Anyway, I had a shorter ride today after my RAGBRAI simulation Sunday.  I went north on the trail, then, on the way home, rode the short trail to Marion behind Walgreens on C Avenue, and then the Boyson Road trail in Marion.  I came home via Brentwood Drive, just to include that hill in the ride, and did fine.

It was a fairly relaxed, fairly slow ride.  But, to do 20 miles and feel no ill effects from yesterday’s long ride is, I think, a good sign.  And I have only 30 miles left this week to break 100, with a long ride already set Saturday in Des Moines.

It’s nice to see some changes to that Boyson Road trail.  The new sidewalk connecting it to Cedar Rapids and to the new walkways Marion has installed all along Boyson Road is open and pretty good.  What used to be a gravelly, slow and slightly treacherous trek to the trail is now slick cement, a concrete glide.

New sidewalk which links two Boyson Road trails in Marion to my neighborhood in Cedar Rapids.

 And a new trail is taking shape that will hook up with the old rail line behind Walgreens (see photo at top of this blog post).  Well, cool.  I’m afraid it won’t be done in time to do me any good for RAGBRAI training, but maybe this fall Audrey and I will be able to use it for biking or walks.

The Bike Is Back … For 24 Hours

Tristan on swing at Thomas Park after first ride, before second one.

The bike shop finished with my back spoke just in time for me to ride my bike to campus on a very cloudy, cool Thursday, the final day of May—and Kaj said this morning on KCRG, it’s also the first time in recorded weather data that the coldest day in May was the final day of May.

Well, after meeting with a prospective student and finishing some newspaper paperwork, I headed over to the lower Andreas parking lot to meet the MMU crew for a ride.  Which didn’t take place, due to some unexpected situation in residence life.

Better luck next week.  I rode home, and put the bike to good use this morning.  Audrey and Katy had planned a run with jogging strollers on the Boyson Road trail, and I volunteered to take one child for a bike ride so that they would not have to push all three.

The plan didn’t work, at first, because the designated rider, Tristan, didn’t want to ride.  In contrarian 2-year-old fashion, the one thing he loves to do he just didn’t want to do this morning.

So I went up and down the trail for a while, but the second time I passed the jogger group, Tristan had done the expected—he had changed his mind and now wanted to ride.

So Mr. T and I, on this cool, sunny morning, enjoyed a short ride on the trail until we met the ladies at Thomas Park and played there for a time.  For the return journey, Mr. T was adamant that he would ride, and the rest of us were in agreement, too.

We went to the south end of the trail before turning back north towards the Boyson Road parking lot where the vehicles were parked.  We passed Katy and Audrey and Nikayla and Amelia, and even gave up a water bottle to try to make Amelia happy.  We rode a loop in the trail several times, passing the ladies several times, before turning north and passing them one final time on the way to the parking lot.

There, as soon as he was off the bike, Mr. T wanted to run down the trail to meet his mom.  I should have kept my helmet on, because I wasn’t walking my bike, I was trotting it to keep up with the energetic Mr. T.

After the kids and ladies loaded into their vehicles, I took off south again along the trail—the sidewalk on Boyson Road has been poured but isn’t open yet, so I was headed to streets in Marion that would lead me to the trail that parallels Blair’s Ferry Road.

But as I got close to the trail, my turns felt wobbly and mushy.  I was worried some serious structural flaw has crept up in my steering bearings, but when I felt the front tire, ta-da!  It was soft and getting softer.

So I had a walk along the trail and shot some butterfly and bee photos on the way.

Bee on clover flower on trail that parallel's Blair's Ferry Road.  I'll have to learn what that trail is called, because "trail that parallel's Blair's Ferry Road" is an awkward name.

OK, this one is a lie.  This is astilbe blooming in my garden, but I saw butterflies like this one as I walked my bike.

This one is not cheating. Something about the slightly dark background made this butterfly in sunlight glow.  Either that, or the demon that keeps attacking my bike was just toying with me.

Well, a flat is easy to fix, and I need to get a spare tube to take on RAGBRAI anyway.  I’m off the bike for a few hours, but hope to fix it soon and get some more miles in.  I have ridden about 35 this week—65 to go to break 100, and I’m sure that, although I will ride more than that distance on most days of RAGBRAI, I don’t want to do all those miles in one ride!

Bad as a flat tire is, the universe wanted me to know I had nothing to complain about.  On the way home, saw the aftermath of a car accident at the corner of C Avenue and Brentwood Drive (or Ashton Place on that side of the road).  Whoever was in the car, I hope he or she is OK--his or her morning was much worse than mine.