Tour de Fort Worth

I enjoyed an evening ride with Fort Worth's new mayor, Betsy Price, this evening. During the Tour de France, she and her husband Tom do daily rides around Fort Worth and call it, not surprisingly, the Tour de Fort Worth. Having just been elected mayor, she opened up the ride to any and all that want to join her. It's pretty cool that the mayor of a city of 750,000 makes herself accessible this way.

We rode a short route, just under 10 miles, because several riders did not have lights with them. As the "local" who knows the area, she allowed me to pick the route. I touched on some of the best spots the Night Riders go: Cutting through Fairmount, through Berkley Place, down Zoo Hill, up the Trinity Trail to Trinity Park, a quick tour of the West 7th area, and then Downtown before heading back to our starting point. We rode several of the recently installed bike lanes. About the only "political" issue I brought up was the rough pavement in some areas.

Like Night and Day

I'm not commuting on my bike much these days, but I'm trying to get miles in when I can. That basically means night time, or early morning on the weekends. On Saturday mornings I ride with a local club on their breakfast rides. I ride the 8 miles over to the meetup point, we ride to breakfast as a group (usually an hour and a half ride), have breakfast together, then, depending on where we had breakfast I ride back with the group at least part way. I usually cut away from the group at some point and ride home rather than riding back to the meetup point and backtracking. Here are some pics and video from a couple recent breakfast rides. The first was to Paul's Donuts.

Dog Update

Sugar's doing pretty good. She still has a nasty-looking scar on the leg, but it is healing over.

Winston caught and killed a 10-pound possum tonight. He was very proud and happy.

Sugar

This is a celebration of life. This phrase is often used at funerals, but Sugar is still alive. Reading Chandra's recent post on his own recently departed dog inspired me to write about Sugar while she is still with us.

We took her in just for a night or two, intending to take her to the pound after the weekend. That was 1997, shortly after we moved back to Texas, and she's been with us ever since.



This is a picture from when we first got her, posing with my son who turns 24 this month. She is his dog and he is her boy. Unfortunately for both of them, he now lives in New York state.

Pub crawl

On Sunday nights I sometimes ride with the Night Riders on their pub crawl. Tonight was Lounge Night. We met up at the Chat Room.

Baby it's hot out there

I got my first chance to ride my bike in a couple weeks yesterday. I rode to work; I knew it was gonna be a hot one as soon as the sun peeked up a few blocks from home. By the time I got to work I was a sweaty mess. The shower felt great.

I had to work late which was fortunate. By the time I started home the sun was low and the edge was off the day. It was only 97 degrees when I started out. I stopped for dinner on the way home.

My route to the Magnolia Motor Lounge is one of my favorite rides. It starts out with some significant hills on the west side of town- a series of rollers that really discouraged me when I first rode them. It seems you get over one hill only to have another one to climb. With a rig loaded with my work clothes and stuff, it can be kind of a pain.

The route settles down to a steady climb through some nice, picturesque neighborhoods to the River Crest Country Club. The streets are quiet and views are beautiful.

The Nation's Capital

I've been traveling to Washington, DC, occasionally for business, but I never got a chance to get over to see the Capitol Building, the White House or any of the monuments. Last week I finally got a chance. From my hotel room you could see the Capitol Dome.



A couple blocks away there was a bike share station.

"Life is not a race. Do take it slower."

So I did a fifty miler with a couple of friends Saturday morning. I made the short ride over to Mark's house where Larry joined us. We headed down to Crowley on our way to Lake Benbrook. Yay chipseal!