Happy Trails

After riding my bike to work every day for about a month, I've gotten sort of addicted. On the rare day that I have to drive the car I feel sort of weird - I guess because the daily ride burns up a lot of energy that I later convert into crazy and/or worry.

This week I discovered the Baldwin Trail, this cool 14.5 mile bike path about 5 miles from my house. I've been there twice this week. The first time I figured I'd do 5 miles in, then 5 miles back which is my daily commute. After about 6 miles, I noticed I wasn't dying, so I ended up doing the whole thing. It probably helped that Christie is redecorating the house, and my once mighty Man Room is being reduced to a Man Corner or Man Alcove under the rising tide of beads and fabric, so I felt it was better for me to be away from the house as much as possible.

Today I took the camera with me, since I noticed all sorts of cool animals Monday. This morning I saw a family of wild turkeys, a chicken family, and a big indigo snake, but they were all too quick for my camera. Instead, I got a picture of a cow.


Most of the trail is covered by a canopy of trees so you don't get too hot.


Through most of this ride, I had Toto's "Africa" and a bunch of Journey songs going through my head thanks to some karaoke last night, so it was sort of like I was reliving the audio of one of my 8th grade dances. I did a passable version of Tom Jones' version of Prince's "Kiss" last night but feel I could have performed better had I hit the gin and tonics.

You also get to pass by all these cool looking swampy areas.


And a gun range


A big chunk of the trail goes around the back of people's farms and trailers and stuff. I read a review that thought this was pretty trashy, but it reminds me of growing up, so I kind of dig it. I didn't take any pictures of people's houses, 'cause I was afraid the sound of freedom might be coming after me.

These are the sort of trails you could find moldy old Penthouse and Playboy magazines on back when I was a kid. The internet has made things a lot easier.


Towards the end of the trail, there's this little skatepark. Man, I would have loved a skatepark when I was a teenager. Actually, I probably would have come up with some Dead Kennedys-esque conspiracy theory about how Reagan was gathering all the skaters in one place to ship them off to the camps or something.

Yeah, I was pretty stupid back then.



You see those? Those are the legs of a man, not some car-driving pansy. Suck it, OPEC!