The weather pattern here in Dallas the last couple of days he been rain overnight / in the morning, giving way to cloudy skies and cool temps the rest of the day. But today, the clouds went away with the rain and it was a pleasant 78 degrees for a high with sunny skies and, an unfortunate amount of wind. My wife and I got rained out of our planned adventure yesterday, so we went for a longish ride today since it was so nice out.
Her Trek Syke S and my new Specialized Crosstrail Sport Disc.
We took our usual route to and through Oak Point Nature Preserve in Plano. Oak Point is a pretty place to ride through and was quite busy today. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t pay attention and must figure they are the only ones in the park. They are the reason we have bells on our bikes. But, it’s hard to be upset for long when you have this kind of scenery:
The lake at Oak Point. I used the Hipstamatic app for this picture.
Once through the park, we went a different way than normal; one we’d never tried before. We wound through some neighborhoods (which reminded us a lot of the ones back in Memphis) until we got to Willow Creek Park and used the trail that runs through it to get to 19th St. From there it was a quick ride to Jupiter Rd. and our first destination… Dairy Queen!
Dairy Queen's logo is known as the 'Texas stop sign.'
My reason for going to DQ was the new Mini Blizzard they have been advertising. For some crazy reason, I thought they were only 99 cents. WRONG. Glad I didn’t try to bring the minimum I thought I’d need. My wife had gotten some extra change off the dresser and we needed it – They are $2.29 each. In actuality, the size is perfect. It’s all the ice cream you need to eat. She got Oreo Cheesecake and I got Strawberry Golden Oreo.
$2.29 of frozen goodness.
After we finished our treats, we headed into downtown Plano via Avenue K. We rode over by the DART rail station and went to a little plaza area I’ve seen from the street but never been to. There wasn’t really much there. A few statue things made from granite and whatever, but there was this metal etching thing - A view of Plano from 1891.
Plano has grown. A bit.
After that, we decided to turn around and head home. We headed back by the light rain station. The light rail is very cool, as you can take your bikes on it as long as it’s not ‘peak’ hours. That’s what we were going to do yesterday, but the rain squelched our plans.
The rail crossing just south of the Downtown Plano DART Station.
We took a different route on the first bit of the ride home from Downtown Plano. Along we way, we passed a Dad and his two teenage sons riding home from the Filmore Pub. One had a BOB trailer and I started to ask about it, but didn’t. We left them behind rather quickly but they caught up to us as we tried to do a good deed. A little Dachshund was running down the middle of 18th Street in front of cars, so Kelley and I stopped and tried to get it to come to us. No luck, but I did follow it into somebody’s carport in the alleyway. Hopefully at least it got off the busy street.
We didn’t really have anything else exciting happen on the way home aside from the constantly blowing and sometimes gusting wind coming out of the north. It really put a beating on Kelley and slowed her down a good bit. She did kick ass and took the ‘long way’ home when she could have shaved off a mile of the ride when I offered to go home a shorter way.
If you’re into that kind of thing, here’s a map of the ride: http://runkeeper.com/user/cyclochip/activity/17199019 We did 25.70 mi in 02:17:50 hours at 11.19 mi/h according to my computer.
All in all, it was a really fun ride with my wife on a pretty beautiful day. I wish I could do it again tomorrow.
Nothing very special, just a decent ride.