Saturday -- Long ride recap

Oh where to start???How about opening the garage door?Yep, that ‘s a good place… Ok, so it’s Saturday morning and I plan to meet Brandon in the bowling alley parking lot about 5 minute downhill ride from the house. I open the garage door and what do I feel? Sprinkles and the road is damp. Oh no no no! Mr. Weather guy said a nice day was on tap. I walk back in and flip the tube on and no rain around. Says it’s high fog and will burn off about midmorning.I met up with Brandon and we head toward the river. I was feeling good. We ride the river and meet up with Keith on the bridge and head down the LR side.1st stop was Central High. (http://www.nps.gov/chsc/) for an insiders look. Brandon’s folks work there so he gave us some cool facts. I felt excited and ashamed at the same time. Excited that I was seeing it close up for the first time and ashamed that this was my first time to visit this historic place. It’s huge! My goal this week is to find out what the 4 statues are on the front of the building. Who are they and what do they mean?

There is a Mobil gas station that is a museum and then across the street is a memorial time line. As I was looking at the photo on the timeline, I was looking at the Mobil station and then as I looked up I was looking straight at it in real life and it’s exactly as the photo from 1957.

Afterwards we rode over to the hospital expecting the Miracle Walk to be coming around but they were still over at the capitol doing the rah-rah stuff so we rode over there. We got to the start point and over to the side and off they go. I was a walk and not a race but the kids at the front were running to keep up with the pace car who slowed way down when he saw this.

Next was a ride through the heart of downtown and over to the Heifer Project. Keith told us about the building and I didn’t pick up all of the conversation but the put I did was really neat. I plan to get him back over there sometime when I can hear so I can get all the details.

Ok, play was over and it was really past time to get some long riding time in. We rode back to the BDB and Keith pulled out to ride home. He had already been running that morning. JMar had jumped in and rode with us a while. Then we headed over the BDB and he jumped out at Cook’s where his car was. He had already been on a farmlands ride (a fast one at that!).

Brandon and I rode out to Maumelle and at the turnaround I told Brandon I was going to get a little cash out of the ATM. So here I am doing that and not really watching what Brandon’s doing. It’s a Saturday and even though there were no cars going through the bank was open but he didn’t know that. He’s over there pushing the buttons and the canister goes flying up the tube then the voice comes on to ask if he needed help! HA!!

We take a back road back through Maumelle and it’s great because the wind has picked up and it would have been some stiff headwind coming back but it wasn’t bad since we were hidden in the trees.

The rest of the day was ride, ride, and ride. Brandon rode on home about mid afternoon and I rode the river some more. It was nice and then it was not nice. I enjoyed having folks riding with me and when Brandon left I sort of didn’t know what to do with myself. What I mean is that while he was riding I didn’t have to worry about being a deaf rider because he knew where my phone was, he knows Terri, he could talk to other riders or let me know if cars were in the area. It made for a semi-stress-less ride with him around. Brandon, if you read this, thanks for riding most of the day!I finally rode over to my office and waited for Terri to pick me up. I was tired but felt a lot better just stopping in a cool place for a little bit.

When I got home I got cleaned up, ate and rested a bit then went out to the garage to check over the bike. I had been having computer problems on the bike and knew that I had 6 miles more than Brandon when he left off. I added and subtracted and then just sat there. Oh man, 99.7 miles! UGH!!!I still really enjoyed the ride and getting to learn about places around my own city. Thanks guys!