I have been wandering around this Wiki site looking for plot ideas. It isn’t just TV. There is some interesting and useful stuffins here:
This looks like fun:
Announcing Food Tours in Dallas!
Dallas was voted the worst city for Bicycling in the country. Still, this ride looks like fun:
Group Ride: On the Trail of Lee Harvey Oswald, June 16th History Tour
10 Reasons You Should Skip Traditional Publishers and Self-Publish Ebooks Instead
This cartoon wrote a sweary word on your toilet wall.
We all hate wasting the ketchup that sticks in the bottle. Finally, at MIT, scientists have designed an FDA-approved, nonstick coating called InstaGlide that solves the problem. This is truly the best of all possible worlds.
It seems like there is nothing on to watch… so all you have to do is check another one off of this list:
The 50 Best Movies on Netflix Instant Streaming
Bicycling Magazine ranked Dallas as
The Worst Cycling City in America
There are a lot of people working on this… and the suburbs are better than Dallas itself… (I live in Richardson and it was chosen locally the best Dallas neighborhood for bicycling) but there is still the heat and all those giant pickup trucks. The problem isn’t that, though – it’s the beauracracy.
It’s official: Dallas is still the (one and only) worst city for bicycling in the entire country
Conversely, Dallas was cited as one of America’s worst cycling cities for the second time since 2008 for creating almost no new cycling infrastructure even after its adoption of a bicycle master plan. Cycling advocates in Dallas, who were vocal in their frustration with the city’s progression, expressed hope that the “worst” designation will serve as a catalyst for a faster, more concentrated bike-friendly movement.
“Baby,” I said. “I’m a genius but nobody knows it but me.”
An English Photographer Goes to California for Milk and Ping-Pong Balls
Looking for something worthwhile to read?
Nearly 100 Fantastic Pieces of Journalism
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I didn’t feel like it (I was exhausted and my head was pounding) but I went for a little bike ride after work. My bike was in the back of the car so I drove down to the nearby Forest Lane train station – one that the Cottonwood Trail runs by. I changed clothes in the car, which is difficult for me, and pulled the bike out of the hatchback, which is easy. While I was getting my shit together I noticed this advertising sign stuck in the grass border around the parking lot.
For Family & Friends
This saddens me. Not so much that somebody has started a shuttle service to the local prisons (For Family and Friends) – if there is a need, there should be someone to fill it. It saddens me that there is such a need.
And look at that bus! I can see chartering a van to take my friends and family for an afternoon visit at the slammer… but who could fill up that bus? That thing has a dual rear axle – that’s a serious hunk of bus there. Are they are thinking about more than mere visits? That bus would be useful for a prison break. You could take a whole unit over the fence and drive them to a nice afternoon at a baseball game all for one low price. I wish that was true… over the obvious fact that there are enough folks up the river that you can fill a bus up on visiting day.
Across the parking lot is a cheap gas station that has a constant flow of shady characters moving in and out with bags full of bottles. I guess the people that run the shuttle service figured out (maybe with extensive research and a focus group or two) that friends and relatives of incarcerated jailbirds tend to walk through this lot – maybe carrying their cheap booze to the train. People riding the train with alcohol won’t have a car they can drive to the pen. They would need a shuttle.
I haven’t seen that ad anywhere else.
So I climbed on my bike and went for a short ride. My head never stopped pounding, so I only went a half-dozen miles or so, stopping at a shady bench to read a short story on my Kindle. While I was loading my bike back in the car for the trip home I watched a few folks walk through the lot… but nobody asked for a pen so they could write the phone number down.
The looping trails through the Spring Creek Natural Area converge on a little footbridge over the creek. There is a nice bench there - a good place to rest and get away from the city for a few minutes.
This is the time of the year full of those rare North Texas days of cool mornings and warm afternoons. I can feel the killer heat of summer crouched on the horizon, ready to pounce. But in the meantime, it is so nice, so much of a shame to be cooped up in a cubicle for so many hours. When the whistle sounds, I want to be outside – to capture as much of this time as I can in preparation for the blazing oven season ahead.
There is this spot – the Spring Creek Natural area – where the concrete bike riding trails enter some thick creekbottom floodplain woods and loop around to give a bicycle rider the illusion of being outside of the city for a few minutes.
Candy and I have swapped cars for a few days. The car I have now is a tiny hatchback – much smaller than the one I drive on most days. With the back seats folded, however, I discovered my bicycle can fit in the back without even taking either wheel off. Maybe I’ll keep driving this car and carry my bike with me – get in some quick rides in different parts of the city. Maybe I don’t have to spent my money on a folding bike.
Candy was worried about leaving my bike in the car. “I bought it for used for ninety dollars twenty years ago,” I told her. I remember now, I was saving to buy a bike and then found this one at a pawn shop. I figured it could get me by until I saved enough for a decent one. I guess I have my money’s worth. “You’ve put a lot into it, though,” she said. Well… not really. Tires and tubes, of course. I had to buy a new brake lever/shifter set – but I found that on clearance and paid less than fifty dollars for it. I need to buy a new chain – but those are cheap – the thing has been slipping cogs if I push too hard and I think the chain is worn.
The bike is a hunk of crap – but I’ll take it apart, clean and lube it… one more time.
I rode around the Spring Creek woods, taking it easy. I’d stop every now and then at a place with a bench and read a story on my Kindle. Sometimes I’d check the baseball scores on my phone. That’s a nice way to waste a day.
After hanging out in the dappled sunlight of the woods for awhile, I thought about how nice it would be to have other people do this. We could ride along the central trail along 75 to Eastside and grab a burger, maybe a cold beer, then ride back. Never happen, but I rode the route anyway, just to see if it was doable. A nice little ride, actually. It’s a shock to leave the deep, muffled forest and be suddenly along a screaming eight-lane highway, though the trail makes the ride easy. I didn’t get anything to eat, but sat on a bench at Eastside for a bit, watched the folks come and go before cruising back down into the woods.
The crowd at Ciclovia Dallas on the Houston Street Viaduct with the Dallas downtown skyline
Saturday, April 14, was a day I had marked my calendar quite some time ago. It was the day of the first Ciclovia de Dallas, and that looked really cool to me. I had never heard of a Ciclovia before. It means bike path, or in this case, the temporarily closing of a road to automobiles so that it can be taken over by cyclists and pedestrians.
The good folks at Bike Friendly Oak Cliff had organized this event and the City of Dallas had closed off the Houston Street Viaduct to cars. The viaduct is a long bridge that reaches out of the skyscrapers of downtown over to Oak Cliff across the vast Trinity River Bottoms. Over the decades I’ve lived in Dallas I have driven across the Houston Street Viaduct many times and I knew it would be a dramatic place to hang out and ride a bike because of the view of downtown and the long drop down into the river.
My intention was to get up early and get to see the whole thing, but I had a rough Friday the Thirteenth the day before and I was so upset I didn’t get to sleep until about five in the morning. So I slept in and it took quite a bit of willpower to drag my aching and worn out body from the bed and into the day. My mind kept racing and coming up with a million reasons not to drive down there and ride my stupid crappy bicycle over an old bridge.
But I persevered, took my bike apart (reminding me why I want to save enough money for a folder) and shoved it into the trunk. Then I drove downtown and proceeded to get caught in several massive traffic jams and lost and lost. I was hungry, frustrated, and sleep-deprived and couldn’t find a parking spot or make the right turns. I fought my way through downtown at least four times, crossing over the Trinity, then making a mistake and ending up on a crowded Interstate going the wrong way. Twice, I went by so closely I could see the folks on bicycles riding back and forth, but couldn’t find a place to stop (or at least couldn’t spot one before I drove by it). I was getting very close to packing it in and going home, but I thought I’d take one more drive across the river.
Finally, after wasting an hour driving around, I gave up and turned down an obscure side street in Oak Cliff, deciding I’d park there, assemble my bike (reminding myself why I want to save enough money for a bike that folds) and ride around looking for the bridge on my bike. After heading off I realized that the entrance to the bridge on the Oak Cliff side was only fifty feet on down the road.
I was late and a lot of the Ciclovia festivities were past, but there was still a nice crowd there and it was a lot of fun. I rode back and forth over the bridge enjoying the views of downtown and the Trinity river bottoms and looking at all the interesting people.
Music at Ciclovia Dallas
Unicyle riders - I was too slow to get a photo of them riding.
Bicycle Polo on the bridge
Bicycle Polo player
It was so much fun I didn’t pay much attention to getting photographs – I missed the bicycle powered smoothie maker. Didn’t get photos of the unicycle riders on their single wheels. There were food trucks on hand so I was able to get something to eat and I felt a lot better after that.
While I was eating I noticed a guy along the bridge sitting there with a manual typewriter. I’ve wanted a manual letter-hammerer for years and I asked him what he was up to .
His name is Thomas Cantu and he types up little chapbooks on that manual typewriter. I bought one (A Mexican American’s Guide to Your Parent’s Homeland) and chatted with him for a minute. Thomas writes about the Mexican-American experience and how drug violence is destroying Mexico. He says the typewriter is nice because people come up to ask about it and it’s an easy introduction. I told him I’ve always wanted one to put a roll of paper into – he recognized that was how Kerouac wrote.
Thomas Cantu and his typewriter.
So I rode one more lap of the bridge and then went back to my car, took my bike apart, and loaded it into the trunk (getting grease all over and reminding myself about how nice it would be to have a folding bicycle). It was a lot of fun, I hope the event was enough of a success for the city to take the ball and run with it. It would be a great annual thing – to close off the bridge and allow one day of slow riding and walking.
A Ciclovia… what a great idea.
My old bike. I bought it for sixty bucks at a pawn shop over fifteen years ago.
I’m finally feeling back to my normal mediocre self and Texas is having its handful of decent weather days so I’d like to get some bike riding in. It’s tough during the week because I’m so tired when I get home from work that, even though I might have a few minutes of sunlight, all I can think of is to fall into bed and decompress, even if I don’t fall completely asleep.
Well, in this modern age, you have to try and do double duty in everything. There is no time left – it feels as if it has all been used up. Not only do you have to be doing something all the time, you have to be doing two things if you don’t want to fall further behind. In that spirit, we were out of milk. So I decided to ride my bicycle to the Target Superstore and buy a gallon plus a few other sundries that we were in need of.
That’s doing double duty. Shopping and exercise. It isn’t very far – about a mile, plus no real traffic – I can ride the new trail down to the park and then cut over on a little-used feeder road. Then across the back mall parking lot. Our neighborhood strip of big boxes sits where a big ‘ol traditional mall used to squat. For years it was declining, used more as a foul-weather walking route for elderly folks than as a place to fleece excited shoppers. At any rate, they bulldozed it, leaving the anchor tenants on the end and filling in with a row of familiar warehouse-style establishments. The food court was replaced by a line of fast-food slinging eateries strung along the main road like a string of pearls before swing.
But behind this capitalist extravaganza the huge old mall back parking lot remains empty and immense, used only to give motorcycle lessons on weekend mornings – two-wheeled newbies slowly winding between long groupings of red plastic cones. Today, though, it was deserted except for some guy out in the middle changing his oil, an occasional truck coming in to pull and replace a smelly dumpster, and one pair of isolated cars – probably teenagers hooking up. It’s easy for me to cross this vast desert of asphalt – the only thing to look out for are a few drainage grates with long, wheel grabbing slots, always facing the wrong way – parallel to the direction I’m riding.
There is nothing as stupid looking and pitiful as an old fat man riding a bicycle. I feel so idiotic and silly, but I have had a lifetime of experience ignoring my ridiculousness, so I pedal on.
I had a surprisingly difficult time getting there. It’s a bit of an uphill slog coming up from the creek and then, crossing the lot, I ran into a strong headwind. Off to the west was a black roll of approaching storm cloud and the humid south wind was spinning into the complex, feeding the tempest. Still, I caught my breath, downshifted a cog, and kept on going.
Locking my bike and backpack to a steel bench out in front (the nice thing about having a fifteen year old piece of crap bike is that I don’t need the highest security lock) I went in to get my gallon of milk and other stuff. I noticed that once I stopped pedaling and started walking around the cool store, my shirt became spotted in sweat. I looked extra stupid amongst other, car borne shoppers. The Next time, wear a dark t-shirt – mental note.
So I stuffed my gallon of milk into the backpack (it fit easier than I expected) and headed home. I guess I underestimated the wind, because I was able to get almost all the way back without even turning a pedal – propelled by the brisk breeze at my back.
Buoyed by my success, I made a list of close in destinations I could ride my bike to. Along this route, there is the big box variety/grocery store, two hardware stores, a couple of Pho places, tons of fast food, an office supply store, and a haircut place. The other way is the big Vietnamese shopping center – and I can get there without leaving the trail. If I want to go a little farther, I can cut through an industrial area and get to the DART rail station, library, and a whole complex of diverse ethic eateries.
Jeez – if the weather was nicer for more of the year I could get rid of the car.
I’m still pretty stupid looking, though.
A few weeks ago, looking around I found out about a trail that I had barely heard of nearing completion in Dallas. It isn’t very long and it goes nowhere, but it looks pretty cool.
When they built the DART rail line along the Santa Fe rail right-of-way going across the Trinity River into Oak Cliff, they constructed a new rail bridge over the river. They left the old Santa Fe iron trestle next to the new concrete bridge. Right from the first, there was talk of trying to preserve the old trestle, both the iron bridgework and the wooden timbers. It was decided to build a hike/bike trail over the old trestle. The first plans were to simply build the trail where the rails used to be, but the Corps of Engineers wanted to clear away the old wooden timber piers to allow debris to wash through during flood periods. So the design was modified with new big, curving, concrete approaches to the metal bridge over the river itself. Over the last few years construction continued, cleaning up the old bridge and putting the new trail causeways into the river bottoms.
I found notice that the construction was nearing completion and although it wasn’t officially open, but the trail was walkable. Sunday I wasn’t able to get some of the things done I had planned, but as the day went on, I was running out of time, but I guessed I would have time to go down and check out the trail as the sun set.
There is parking at the Corinth DART station and the entrance to the trail is across the street. It’s a short walk through the swampy river bottoms (there was a lot of water, mud, plus flotsam and jetsam from the recent heavy rains) and then the trail begins to rise along a long, curving elevated causeway. They are still working on the landscaping, but otherwise it looks pretty much finished.
The sun was setting as I reached the bridge itself. It was pretty cool – the path is wide and smooth and there are nice benches set along the way. I enjoyed watching the DART trains going by a few feet away and there are great views of the downtown skyline contrasted with the vast open areas of the Trinity River Bottoms.
The entrance to the trail near the Corinth DART station.
A view of the Dallas Skyline from the trail. (click to enlarge)
The trestle trail going over the Trinity River.
A DART train rumbles by with the biking/hiking trail in front. (click to enlarge)
I didn’t stick around very long – this is not the part of town you want to be hanging out in after dark. As I was walking back to my car I heard some chanting in the distance. As I walked it was closer and I realized I was hearing some sort of yelling through a bullhorn. Finally, I could understand what was being yelled:
“Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Columbia Packing has got to go!”
Oh, crap, Columbia Packing. That was the place that became infamous last week when they were busted dumping pig blood into a creek that ran down to the Trinity. I did not realize I was so close to the place. It was only a block or so away and I was walking along a stand of trees that bordered the contaminated creek. There was a demonstration going on trying to shut down the plant.
I want to go back to the trail with a group of bike riders during the day once the park is completely open… it’s a cool place even if it doesn’t connect with anything else (yet) – but still, I was glad to get back to my car and get headed home.
A video of a ride across the bridge from a while back. The construction was a lot further along this weekend, and the water in the river was a lot higher.
I wanted to go on a bike ride on Saturday. After thinking about it I came up with a plan – get up and drive down to White Rock Lake with my bicycle in my trunk, then ride the Santa Fe Trail from there to Deep Ellum, eat breakfast at Cafe Brazil, then ride back.
Unfortunately, when my alarm went off and I dragged myself out of the sack I felt like crap. Tired, sick, and achy – the last thing I wanted to do was go out and put forth physical effort. So I shuffled around the house and felt sorry for myself. By eleven I was feeling a little better – took some deep breaths, and went ahead and set out. I filled the water bladder on my new pack and drove down to White Rock.
I worked on my bike in the parking lot for a bit. The old thing needs some serious work, and I didn’t have the parts, tools, or mechanical knowledge. The worst part is that the seat is crapped out. The front plastic part has broken off and the rest of the seat simply is sitting on the rails. Against my better judgement, I set off on the trip downtown. It isn’t that far, really, and I decided to simply gut it out.
The Santa Fe trail is very cool. It follows the abandoned rail bed of the old Santa Fe railroad and runs from a connection with the White Rock Lake Trail down to Deep Ellum near downtown Dallas. Near the lake, the trail winds through some thick woods but as it emerges into East Dallas it runs straight through some neighborhoods
And that is what makes it so cool and unique. It has a real urban feel to it – although it is straight, smooths and away from traffic. The mostly Hispanic neighborhood, full of brightly colored car repair spots, small churches, and Mexican Restaurants seems to have embraced the trail that cuts through their midst – a lot of the houses along the trail have been cleaned up and repainted and the folks sitting out on their porches smile and wave to people riding by. Music pours out of open windows and bass beats from passing cars.
El Paisano Restaurant along the Santa Fe Trail in Dallas. Menudo!
The trail has a long, slow, uphill climb before it drops down into Deep Ellum and I could tell that I was not feeling very well. I toughed it out, though and did pretty well until I left the trail and was wandering on the streets, cutting over to the restaurant. The seat fell off my bicycle and the best I could do was to jam it back in place. It would slip back off every couple blocks, which made riding uncomfortable and difficult.
I locked my bike to a meter in front and went in and ate. I took a table where I could see my bike – though I can’t imagine anyone stealing that piece of crap. Instead of breakfast, I had a late lunch, and then headed back.
On the trip back up the Santa Fe Trail to White Rock I had a full scale bonk. Bonking is where your blood sugar gets so low that you lose your strength, energy, and will to live. I had eaten a lunch but it wasn’t designed for quick digestion and was actually making me sick. I was having to stop every few minutes to try and find some way to keep the bicycle seat in place – that didn’t help much either. It is pretty exhausting to ride a mountain bike without a seat on it.
But I made it back. It’s humiliating to have so much trouble on such a short bicycle ride, but I’m working on it. I’ve done this before – but I was a lot younger then. I remember the difficulty of getting back into the habit of riding regularly and riding hard – it is the bonk days that do you good. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.
Actually, I’m complaining too much. It was a nice day out (a little warm – our cool spell is already fading) but I enjoyed riding around Deep Ellum, taking some pictures, and cruising through the ‘hood.
Now, I’m thinking of getting my old Raleigh road bike out and fixing it into riding shape. It’s not as good of an urban bomber as my mountain bike, but it is a much more efficient trail machine. I can start stringing rides together – Preston Ridge, Cottonwood, then White Rock Creek, then White Rock Lake, then Santa Fe Trail. I could ride from the Collin County Border all the way to Downtown Dallas, hang out in Deep Ellum and then ride back. No way could I manage that right now… but maybe… A good goal.
A sliver of a vacant lot along Elm Street was piled with recovered building materials. Cool stuff.
An old water tower rises above Deep Ellum.
An old sign for the Boyd Hotel
The Boyd Hotel is one of many historic buildings in Deep Ellum. Built in 1916, it is one of the oldest hotels still standing in Dallas. This building is one of the few remaining cast iron front buildings. Bonnie and Clyde and many of Deep Ellum’s Blues musicians stayed at the Boyd. Now it’s the home of some upscale offices and a fancy restaurant.
Elm Street
A lot of interesting stuff is painted on the walls.
Club Clearview and Blind Lemon - in the heart of Deep Ellum. The entertainment district has seen better days (several times over the last century) but it is hanging in there. So are we all.
A DART train crossing over the White Rock Creek trail a mile or so north of the lake.
Whenever I can, I want to try and ride my bike after work – at least while there is a bit of light and the weather is bearable. On Wednesday I was only able to get a quick trip up the Preston Ridge trail, but on Friday, I had a little more time so I drove from work over to a little park at Hillcrest and LBJ. I was going to ride the White Rock Creek Trail.
Living in one city for a long time means that whenever you go somewhere you not only see what is in front of you, but also layers of memories and nostalgia of things that have happened before. The White Rock Creek trail certainly has decades of memories for me.
But today, I had to get my bike working, the seat is falling apart, the gears are out of adjustment and, of course the engine is all gone to crap. I pedalled around in the parking lot adjusting things – watching the front dérailleur while I pedaled, I rode smack into a steep curb and fell on my ass. Not a good start.
I thought about bailing, but went ahead and barreled on down the trail. The trail runs from north of LBJ on down to join up with the trail that circumnavigates White Rock Lake. The lake trail is the first real major trail in Dallas, and the creek the second (as far as I know).
I was living near the lake when it was built… maybe ’83? – at any rate I rode it right after it was built. That was almost thirty years ago. Though my bike riding has some huge gaps in it – only now am I getting serious about getting back again – there are a lot of memories of riding that trail. I’ve been down it hundreds of times.
The trail is about seven and a half miles long and flat as a pancake. There is a lot of construction where it crosses Northwest Highway near the south end – so I wouldn’t ride quite the whole thing – I’d leave out the southern mile or so.
What’s nice about this trail is that even though it cuts through the heart of the city, the wooded creekbottom land it is built on gives the feeling of being out in the country. The trail has been widened and improved over the decades and now is very smooth and easy with well-done crossings under roads and over water.
I wasn’t sure if I would be able to ride the whole 13 mile round trip before it was too dark but I made it without any trouble – even though it was pretty dark when I reached my car. I even took the time to stop under a DART bridge to get a couple pictures of the train going by. That spot is usually swampy with a large lake under the bridge and water flowing across the trail. There isn’t anything left except a wide puddle and a lot of dried, cracked, ex-mud.
Back near the north end is the spot where a favorite sculpture of mine used to be – I wrote about it a while back. Now there is a megachurch sprawling out from the office buildings. I wonder what they did with the sculpture?
This is the mystery sculpture that stood for years in a vacant lot along LBJ freeway. The White Rock Creek trail runs under the bridge in the background.
Here's the same spot today, from the other side. A Megachurch is growing, sprawling out across the weedy fields.
It’s easy to get in a long bike ride on a weekend – the hard thing is to keep it up during the week.
On Wednesday, I gave it a shot – looking for trails near my work. I had my bike in my trunk and chugged as much water as I could in my last hour at work.
I drove over to a run-down shopping center at Coit and Spring Valley – only a couple miles from my office and changed in my car. I should have changed at work, but I’m not ready to walk through the building in shorts and a t-shirt.
I was going to ride the Preston Ridge Trail. It runs north from where I was all the way to the George Bush Tollway in Collin County. It’s the northern leg of the string of trails – Preston Ridge, Cottonwood, White Rock Creek, White Rock Lake, and the Santa Fe Trail which now form an unbroken chain from the northern suburbs to downtown Dallas. Hopefully, soon, I”ll be in good enough shape, both physically and mechanically (my bike is falling apart) to take a long day and ride the whole thing.
Unfortunately, when they built the George Bush Tollway they didn’t put in any connector under the road, and the Preston Ridge in Dallas does not connect with the same trail in Plano running north. If it weren’t for that little gap, you could ride a bicycle all the way from Highway 121 to Downtown without fighting traffic at all. It really aggravates me that when they put in a multi billion dollar tollroad they can’t make a little space for a bicycle to slide under.
I didn’t have enough time to ride the whole trail – my intention was to go north about three and a half miles to McCallum and then turn around and come back. The sun would be setting on my return trip. If you drive up Meandering Way (the street the trail parallels) you will say the road is flat, but it does rise between Belt Line and McCallum – so I would be riding out uphill and into the wind and returning down and with the wind at my back. This is good.
An easy seven mile ride is no big deal – but I am exhausted after work and the temptation to go home, eat, and collapse into bed is a strong one. It took willpower to drive, change, and assemble my bike from the trunk.
The only problem with this route is that the trail south of Belt Line Road slices through a very dicey neighborhood. The concrete is covered with broken glass, spray-painted gangsign cover every vertical surface, and groups of disreputable-looking characters start to gather as the sun starts to go down.
But I made it through alive and in one piece. I might try to find a starting point a bit past this area, though… for the next time.
One of the nice little rest areas on the Preston Ridge Trail. They call it a "node." You can see how the trail runs under the right-of-way for the power lines.
Like a lot of trails in Dallas, this one runs underneath a set of high-tension power distribution towers. This is good because it gives a lot of open free running space, perfect for a connector trail. The only problem is that it is pretty damn ugly. They do their best to spruce it up, with landscaped “nodes” and other plantings, but they can’t put in real trees (because of the overhead power lines) and it’s all pretty much lipstick on a pig.
I stopped for a blow at one of the nodes and chatted with a guy that was there watering the landscaping – obviously a local trail volunteer. He hooked a short hose up to a hidden tap and used two five gallon buckets to shuttle water to the planted beds. The landscaping at this place was done with drought resistant plants but he said it had been so dry he had to walk out and irrigate it every week. Most summers he said he only had to water once or twice for the whole season.
It was a nice ride – there were a lot of people out on the trail enjoying the… if not cool, at least bearable… evening.
I made it back to my car just as darkness filled in completely and the creatures of the night began to creep out. I nice little ride. Now I need to work on a spot where I don’t think about getting my throat cut.
Sunset along the Preston Ridge Trail
Bill Chance 