Sunday, October 18, 2009

BABBLE Ride, October 17

Yesterday, the newly formed and loosely associated group known as BABBLE had its first ride. BABBLE is Bicycle Authors, Bloggers, Boldfaced Liars and Exaggerators. It was formed by a number of bloggers who write about cycling in the Fort Worth and Dallas areas. We thought it would be cool to get together and take a little ride, have a little lunch, and make up a funny name for ourselves.

We met at the Texas & Pacific Rail Station Park & Ride lot at the south end of downtown Fort Worth. There are about a half dozen of us, so we weren't expecting much of a turnout. Word got out on some other local blogs and message boards, though, and we ended up with lots of unexpected riders- almost 20 of us!


Chris of Pondero blog ponders the collection of bikes.


This is Frankenbike, the creation of Steve A of DFW Point-to-Point. This bike is far uglier in person than than I would have believed from the pictures I've seen. ;-)


Chris's Homer Hilson, on the other hand, is gorgeous.


Mounting up!


This is Rose; her propulsion was provided by her dad, chimericslashes.


Artsy bike picture.


Another one.


Finally we begin.


A motley group.


First stop: Panther City Bicycles.


Refreshments available include Fort Worth-brewed Rahr beer on tap.

Onward we go.


Oops! That was a quick light!


Another stop for the BABBLE posse...


...at Colonel's Bicycles near TCU.


BABBLErs gawking around in Colonel's


Riding near Colonial Country Club.


Getting on the Trinity River Trail at Overton Creek.




We got off the river trail at Trinity Park.




Cutting through the industrial area that leads to...


...La Familia for lunch!


Wish you were here, R A N T W I C K!


The enchiladas were excellent!


A great time was had by all! BABBLE founders include Chandra (Green Commotion, bright yellow shirt), Steve A (DFW Point-to-Point, blue shirt), Myles (Rat Trap Press, red shirt), me- Paul H (Doohickie, next to Myles), then next to me Chris (Pondero) and Reed (ChipSeal). I regret to say I'm not too good with names, so several of our new friends will have to remain nameless for now. Maybe on the next ride I'll be better with names. I also regret that I missed the rest of the ride; I had to get home for another appointment and left the group after eating lunch. I took more pictures of the ride; you can see them here.

If you want to see what happened next, check out some these accounts of the ride:

DFW Point-to-Point
Rat Trap Press
Pondero
Fixed Dallas Twitter
Onespeed Dallas Twitter
fixedminusdicks Twitter Pics
Suburban Assault

7 comments:

dickdavid said...

Great pics! Thanks for sharing.

Steve A said...

In Frankenbike's case, ugly is an art form and entirely intentional. I've even considered getting my sister to paint simulated bird droppings and rust on it. You can actually buy decals that do this as well.

Frankenbike could be beautiful, but chooses to stay with me instead.

Frankenbike will also actually stop in the rain, unlike SOME peoples' bikes.

Pondero said...

Nice post, Paul. I didn't think Frankenbike was ugly. I thought it was character taken to the limit.

PennyCandy said...

Looks like everyone had a good time.

GreenComotion said...

Very nice job, Paul. The pics are very crisp!

It was great meeting you in person!!

Thanks for everything.

Peace :)
-Chandra...

Rat Trap Press said...

You took some great photos, especially the Rantwick tribute in the restaurant.

Hey, did you get the BABBLE invite?

MELI. said...

i wanna come ride with all you cool texas peeps, and bring all my girlie bike girlfriends +friends weeeeeeee :D