20 January 2011

Chalk it up

Ride # 34
Thursday, January 20th
9.9 miles in Folsom

I'm scheduled to lead a ride on this weekend on the Folsom neighborhood bike paths. They are crowded and confusing on weekends (ok, they can be confusing anytime). So I was out today defacing public property by drawing big blue arrows at key intersections.

My big piece of blue sidewalk chalk is now a little nubbin. I'm not planning on having people slavishly follow the arrows (since I might have missed some spots, and irrigation might wash them away) but I hope it helps. And let me tell you, a trike is the perfect platform for chalking a route: just slow to a crawl, stick a hand down, and draw! After the ride is finished, I'll go around with a waterbottle and a rag and erase them. Maybe I'll follow the route backwards, just for fun! Well, maybe not: since my arrows would all be on the wrong side of the path.

Lots of lovely dogs out today (I got to meet an American Bulldog mix that was OK about the strange orange trike once his owner and I had chatted. I even got a dog-kiss on the chin!) and some couples and families enjoying the lovely sunny weather. Stopped for a while at the pond to check out blackbirds, mallards, geese, and a coot or two. Saw a couple of birders who were more than happy to give me a long list of what they'd seen so far today. mumble warbler, mumble black mumble, mumble mumble, mumble something else. Darned if I can remember anything they said!

Had my ride into the shop to straighten out a slightly bent derailer hanger - shifting better but still some indexing weirdness. Oh well, got me up and down the hills with no problems so I'll worry about that later.

TTFN

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