Birthday Ride & Milestones

Last Sunday I had a birthday ride with some of my favorite people.  My niece Mary and her daughter Alex and my Godson Andrew.  It was the beginning of a week of recovery rides after my intense riding of the preceding two weeks.  For starters we had perfect weather, neither too hot nor too cold and nothing but sunshine and blue skies.  We rode one of my favorite trails, the border to border tail in Ann Arbor from Brandemere Park to Gallup Park.  Along the way there is a fun passage over Argo dam, it's a very narrow bridge with high railings and about an inch of clearance for your handlebars on each side.

Then we spent a fair amount of time exploring at the Argo Cascades watching  kayakers shoot the series of nine drops, the kids were enthralled as I knew they would be and I promised a return trip with tubes on a nice hot summer day.  This is a short 20 second video clip from YouTube of a canoeist at the Cascades.  Crossing the bridge you can see the cascades in the background.

And some photos of our time spent there.

 This poor guy on the right was trying to get some peaceful reading in so we shooed the kids away to play on a different drop.

Just prior to the Cascades there is a bike jump course right off the path and of course we had to stop and check it out.  Alex, brave young gal that she is, got right into the swing of things and tried out the mini moguls first then it was on to the bigger ones when we stopped there again on our way back. I knew it was on her mind to try the bigger ones because she kept asking if we were going to pass this place on the way back. Even Andrew got in on the action on the second stop.  

  

Our short 10 mile trip lasted nearly 3 hours because of course when you are out exploring with kids everything must be examined and there is not a piece of playground equipment that we passed by that didn't require a stop for a swing, climb, jump or play.  We laughed our heads off when the 11 year olds even wanted to stop at the little kiddie playground but we also indulged them because we knew it won't be long before they will scorn such juvenile stuff like playing on swings and being out with adults and moments and memories like these are to be savored and stored away for cold winter days

Of course the "older" kids, Mary and I, enjoyed it as much as they did and we had an obligatory stop for Popsicles and a prance through a butterfly and hummingbird garden.

When we got home the kids continued to play and the adults shared an ice cold brew!

All in all it was the best way to spend a birthday day and it was capped off with a dinner with the rest of the family.   Thank you Mary, Alex and Andrew for sharing this day with me!

Drum roll please...and now for the milestone...my little blog has reached over 10,000 views as of yesterday!  Imagine that!

Brandemer Park Last Friday

This is the view of downtown Ann Arbor as you come into town from it's northern entrance in Brandemere Park via the bike pathway.  It's a whole lot nicer view than what you get by automobile.  From the road it is a bit run down, shabby and very industrial, the saving grace is that as you first exit the freeway you get a view from the hilltop of the downtown skyline plus a good view of the University of Michigan Hospital complex, Huron River and Argo Dam.  The photo comes from an article about the lack of an attractive northern entry into town.  The section of blight is short but it's one of the first things you see after the great hilltop view.  It's an incongrous, from beauty to blight and on to big and bustling downtown.  It's like it doesn't make sense, it doesn't flow.  You can read the story by clicking here.  I was on this path on Friday as part of my 9 mile ride, I had started just to the north of this spot by about a mile from the parking lot of Brandemere Park at US23 and Whitmore Lake Road.  I was headed in the opposite direction of the cyclist pictured and right after you come off this section you travel over Argo Dam which is pictured in the distance just beyond the RR bridge, where you see it crossing the river.  As soon as you come off the dam you enter the new renovated Argo Cascades where a quiet and murky spillway lined one side of a small isthmus.  Before the 1.17 million dollar project that created the cascading falls and series of drops the water was stagnated and mostly covered with algae.  As that section of the path was the only one not paved, it was pretty rustic and not much more of a rut in a very narrow strip of land that dropped sharply off into the scum filled water on one side or the tree tangled fast current river on the other side.  Falling down either bank was not what I wanted to do at all and I generally held my breath through that section and would be happy every time I made it through unscathed.  

There were a couple of sections where the rut was eroded and the sand got deep enough to make the hind end of the bike shimmy a bit and fishtail toward the water on either side.  That was always good for a little nerve racking jolt.  However from last fall onward with earth movers and bull dozers at work the top of that isthmus was flattened out, a nice 8 or 10 foot asphalt brand new path with cascading kayaking falls along side it is now open for riding.  The last time I was on this path was the day that a kayaker nearly drowned (you can read that blog post here)on the river side and it hadn't been paved yet so I was unsure what to expect on Friday.  Smooth new asphalt was what I was treated to, looks like it may have just opened a week or two before.  There is a video clip of the cascades available here and a still shot below.  The video and still were taken in the early spring as you can see by the outfits on the kayakers.  When I rode alongside the cascades on Friday I was treated to watching two kayakers a guy and a gal shoot through the drops just a few feet away from me.  It looked like a blast.  After the 4th drop I saw the girl kayaker get turned backwards and shoot through the drop backwards.  I'm still unsure if it was intentional or not but the guy behind her made it clear that he was going through backwards intentionally.  That was wickedly fun to watch.

Day 65

September 27, 2010 Short 5 mile ride but very rigorous. My only time to ride today was rush hour so my killer hill was out because it's a high traffic volume road. So I decided to explore the new path I found in Ann Arbor at Brandemere Park. Some portions were closed for tree trimming so I got off the path and used some small side roads. That's when I discovered THE HILL, this one is even steeper than the hill I wanted to practice on, so steep that the road up it tacks back and forth. I road some, I walked my bike some and I rode some more. That was not the only hill I encountered. Very rigorous ride today and the most fun part is exploring new territory. Besides the need of a bike that has many more gears than I have (mine is an 8 speed) hills are not only a function of the bike but also the condition of the rider. I continue to try to conquer them.

I found a Dirt Bike Jump Course just off the path and have photos of it (I bet kids love that), also the Argo Dam (the one with the real narrow crossing) and the U of M rowing team was practicing on Argo Pond upstream of the Huron River. The Argo hut is a canoe livery that is available at Longshore Park. All pictured here.

Day 63

September 25, 2010 First flat. Was going to go from home to Ann Arbor along Whitmore Lake Road, about a 9 1/2 mile ride one way. I'd hoped to get some training in on hills because the Tour de Livingston course I picked (28 miles) has a lot of hills and I need to practice and train on hills because they are my nemesis!

So I'm cruising through some gentle climbs and small hills and there is a good hill before the killer hill. I'm shifting up into higher gears to help tackle the big one, singing my little hill song and all of a sudden something feels squishy in the rear of the bike, I hate stopping at the bottom of a hill, let alone this big killer hill but...stopped anyway and sure enough - flat rear tire. A good friend bailed me out with a ride home.

So I'm kinda bummed I didn't get my ride in and thinking that this means no riding for a few days but I tried the local bike shop and lo, they were open. Figured that I'd be leaving it until Monday but lo again, they fixed it while I waited. Unbelievable great service. What a stroke of luck.

There is still about and hour and a half of light and I consider picking up from where I left off on my ride but thought better of it because of the time and I was unsure of the distance at that time. So I drive down to the destination to get a good mileage of the route.

Lo again, there is a park and bike path at the end of this journey and I still have my bike in the trunk AND it's still a good hour or more of daylight! Ha! I thought I was foiled and found myself on a new path I'd never known about, winding along the Huron River and parts of Ann Arbor, crossed over a dam and through 3 parks and some pretty rugged trail conditions. There was a lot of variety on this trail and very scenic, there was one part of the trail where the river was on both sides of me.

Life is full of surprises! You think the day or your ride is ruined and voila! something better comes along. I love good surprises like that.

That dam was one narrow crossing, just big enough to bike or walk through, there is no way that two bikers could pass in opposite directions, it was scary, however not dangerous because there was heavy duty fencing surrounding it. What a blast!

So even though I had planned a much longer ride, I still ended up with a bit over 7.5 miles for the day.