A Beautiful Bike Ride

[dreamshark]

Yesterday was the first day of Labor Day weekend, and the weather was perfect - about 70 degrees, breezy, high puffy clouds in a blue sky. My friend Trisha, the one that always goads me into getting out and doing stuff, called - "Let's go biking!" While I waited (and waited and waited) for Richard to show signs of life, I looked up bike trails on the Internet, and decided that the north end of the Gateway Trail looked just lovely. After several phone consultations with Trisha, during which we almost decided on the Luce Line instead before remembering that crushed limestone trails get dusty in dry weather, we agreed on the Gateway. Richard finally woke up and wanted to go along, so we threw our bikes in the van and drove to Trisha's house in the Cherokee section of St. Paul. From there it was a 45 minute drive to the trailhead at Pine Point Park a little north of Stillwater. We learned that Pine Point Park used to be the equally alliterative Pine Point Poorfarm, and admired the solidly built (and very clean) restroom building with the alarming picture of a tornado on the door, indicating that it also functions as a Severe Weather Shelter. All in all, a nice little prairie park in an oh-so-very-Minnesota way.

The Gateway Trail runs about 18 miles from the aforementioned PPP right into the middle of St. Paul. We rode the upper half of the trail (to Hadley and back). I can't speak for the St.Paul end of the trail, but the part we rode was a perfectly lovely ride for lazy weekend bikers: smooth asphalt with enough gentle dips to keep it interesting, but no big hills. It feels like you're totally out in the country - most of the time you can't even hear traffic. Most of the trail is through second-growth forest, so there's plenty of shade - it would be a good ride for a hot day. Periodically you come upon a sign that warns enigmatically, "For your safety, announce your approach." This makes a lot more sense when you realize that the dirt road paralleling the bike path is used for horseback riding, although we weren't entirely sure what the correct ettiquette might be for "announcing your approach" to an easily spookable horse. Probably not yelling, "Hey, HORSE!" as you cruised past...

The total ride was 19.2 miles, which is a long ride for all of us. It's a little less than my roundtrip ride to work, which I have been doing at least a once a week for the last 6 weeks, but with no 8-hour rest in the middle it seemed longer. Richard hasn't been riding that much this summer, but he figured he could make it (and he did, although he was very tired). It was a good bike ride. Even Richard's flat tire was all for the best, since it gave us a chance to rest for half an hour while we bumbled around fixing it. Trisha had gotten ahead of us at this point and somehow failed to notice that we weren't right behind her any more, but we were able to send her a message via bike courier [we weren't the only bikers out on that trail] so she just lay down and took a nap while she waited for us. Once we were finally reunited we drove into Stillwater for a much-appreciated dinner. We ate at one of those restaurants with tons of outdoor tables and little to recommend it beyond the view of the Old Lift Bridge, but it was quite a nice view. The sun had sunk below the horizon before we started home, giving us a perfect view of a particularly scenic sunset all the way home. On top of all that, Trisha gave us some fresh tomatoes from her garden - a real treat . In fact, I think I'll wrap this up and go have a tomato-cheese sandwich right now. Yum.

Comments

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

That sounds like quite an adventurous day!