Riding like my head's on fire

Ride #88

Saturday, July 16th
13 miles on the American River Parkway

Although I am still recovering from minor shoulder surgery, I dragged my sweetheart and his college-aged son out on the bike trail today.
First ride since surgery!
They had some fresh air and sunshine, and I had minions to unload my beautiful orange beast. Even with the ramp, it is still more than I should lift right now. AND someone else got to pump up 7 tires, which I usually do.

There were a lot of people out today, all enjoying the clear, warm, but not blazingly hot weather.

Since this is the American RIVER parkway, we got to hear (and catch glimpses) of dozens and dozens of happy people in various bright-colored watercraft floating down the river. We could have even stopped for fresh produce along the way!

High racer recumbents, several trikes (hand and foot powered), folks with cruisers with baskets (one with a dog, a-la Toto in the Wizard of Oz), fast-moving skinny racer types, kids on little bikes, pedestrians, lots of equestrians.
I saw one sulky, but it was not hitched up. I'm not sure a sulky is suited to off-roading on dirt (which is where most of the horses are) and I know of no horse (not even a heavily sedated one) that would be OK traveling on the paved trail surrounded by hordes of bright fast-moving scary predators.

There were a group of about 8 bicycle tourists traveling from somewhere over to the group camping at Negro Bar. I'm going to say they were coming up from Davis, since they had sort of a laid-back college-town DIY vibe. I saw one enterprising person who had sewn pieces of bandanna to the back of a shirt for improvised jersey pockets.

I finally dug out my little Kodak Playsport video camera as well as my trusty digital point and shoot. Since I spent more time with the video running than taking stills, I needed to clip scenes with which to decorate this fascinating post.

So that meant I needed to load the video editor on my newish computer, and then remember how to use it. And you, the reader, can't tell, but there was a significant gap between this paragraph and the rest of the post.

I had cleaned up my bike, wiped down and re-lubed the chain, and sorted through my bike bags before I headed off for shoulder surgery.
It took me a while to get back in the groove of what stuff I wanted with me, but I eventually figured it out.
However, there was a lot of standing near the car, pondering, remembering some missing item, going inside to look for it, coming back out, going back in for something else. And it took about 5 minutes of hunting to find the sunscreen. Don't you keep your sunscreen on the kitchen counter?

And I finally have a new helmet, one of the Nutcase ones. In orange, remarkably close to my trike's color, and with FLAMES. Which I suppose ought to make me faster. Or at least odder. And the gray flames match my gray hair.

Does it get any better than this?

No.
No, it does not.

(Today's route was from Sunrise boat launch to William Pond and back)