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.

Yellow is the New Black

Me, in my own personal fashion shoot, wearing the vest. Models like me would give PR designers some heartburn, I'm thinking.

CR Biker is slightly bummed this morning. When I pulled up Blogger, planning to write this post, I noted that Tom & Lorenzo had blogged about episode 1 of Project Runway all-stars.

And that reminded me that my sister had asked on Facebook if I had watched that episode.

Horrors. A season of Project Runway is underway and I’ve missed episode one! Given how bad recent seasons have been for us veteran PR watchers, that might not sound like a big deal, except that according to T & L, the gay gods of taste who watch over and blog about Project Runway, the first episode was pretty good. And I self confess that I will find a bad season of Project Runway more entertaining than practically anything else on TV, excepting a Rick Perry meltdown during a debate.

Well. In the immortal words of the doofus Gov. from Texas, “oops.”

So, bike blog friends, what does this have to do with the price of chain lube in Iowa?

Just this: I’m sporting a bit of new fashion myself this morning. Ben flew back from England yesterday, and brought the final piece of Christmas bling for CR biker. Thanks to the British branch of the clan and my wife for this wonderful conspiracy that now has me clad in a bright yellow reflective bike vest.

I have long wondered about winter coat design. Even an old straight man like CR biker knows you don’t wear white after Labor Day, but why are winter coats, worn during the darkest months of the year, so somber in color? Seems like a recipe for bikers and walkers being creamed by cars.

My bike jacket, named for a brand of camera I don’t own (I’m a Nikon shooter and a Canon jacket wearer, although I like Canons and have bought them for the MMU student newspaper, which has something to do with the jacket—the photo on this blog, by the way, is from my little Kodak point-and-shoot so it’s not even a part of the whole Nikon v Canon jihad), has a dark blue hue, bisected by a nice white stripe, which makes some sense—except the stripe is only in the front. The back is totally Navy, which means only the cars I can see see me—the one’s I don’t see don’t see me, either.

Hmmmm.

Anyway, all of this is cured by the vest. Hooray for the vest. I’m sure it makes me look like a total dork. But a biker with a flashing red triangle on his head, tire valve covers that blink red and neon yellow leg straps obviously is comfortable with his dorkdom.

So, for me at least, neon yellow is the new black, or Navy, or something. Anyway, it’s cool in that totally un-hip cool way that I prefer to be cool. Although I do wonder a little.

What would Tom & Lorenzo say?