Oh, and I inspire people (see Item 6). MSILOFB*


*My Sis-In-Law's Own F'ing Blog

That looks like a nice ride! We have a cycling road along the local river and it looks NOTHING like that. Hopefully it will be better soon as they are ripping it up and fixing.

The Trinity River Trail is pretty nice. I knew it existed but only started riding my bike on it during the last year when I started riding more regularly.

The southwest section of the trail, the branch that gets the most use, is the one you see in my blog post. It has several apartments adjacent to it and it has a lot of "traffic" in terms of pedestrians and cyclists, especially on weekends.

It crosses the river at several points with low level dam crossings. There's a ramp down to just above normal water level, you ride across the dam, then a ramp back up to trail level on the other side.

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On New Years Eve, I rode two other branches out to their ends, one that goes north from downtown and one that goes northwest. Both of them are less traveled, more remote, and not as well cared-for. At the end of one, though, there was a work crew extending it, so the city is aware of them, even if they are a little more neglected.

I think the paths are a byproduct of flood control projects along the river (which flooded in the 1940s resulting in massive flooding in Fort Worth). So the river has well-defined banks, levees protecting nearby low-lying neighborhoods, and a basic stone path for service crews to get around. It doesn't take much to use a finer grade of gravel to turn it into a bike path. The busier paths eventually were paved with concrete.

The other nice thing about riding a bike in Fort Worth is that it is a novelty. When motorists see a bicycle on the road, the vast majority give the bicycle a very wide margin (almost too wide sometimes) because they are just kind of shocked that we would have the cojones to get out in traffic on a bicycle.

Also, wherever there is a major road that crosses the river, the path snakes under the bridge, so we don't have to deal with car traffic.

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There's usually a path up to the road as well if you want to get off the path there. Sometimes there's even a parking lot where you can drive up to the path, take your bike out/off of your car, and start riding the trail.

Seriously? It was -15°F here today. I still saw someone on a bicycle, though.

(I'm just jealous because I'm a wimp with the winter-cycling thing.)