The previous weekend I had decided that this would be the day I would finally reach "the Pinnacle" from the other side. The Pinnacle is a rock formation jutting out from the mountains of the Border Ranges National Park, near Kyogle. However, the bottom of it can also be accessed from Pumpenbil, near Tyalgum. It took me a few years to discover this, and even longer to actually do something about it, but this was going to be the day, regardless.
It all started simply enough, Martin joined me for the first 45km, and we took the usual route through Urliup. My legs were caning after the previous day's ride to Binna Burra in the mountains, but I also knew that I could ride myself into form given enough time and distance. The wind picked up from the south on the other side of Murwillumbah, and I prayed that for once it would continue from that direction, keeping the temperature down and giving me an easier ride home.
The clouds continued to hover around Mt Warning as I reached the pretty dirt section along Byrrill creek after Uki, and started the long, gentle climb through the forest passing the usual little waterfalls in the creek. This is one of my favourite stretches of road anywhere, but today it was made a little more treacherous by the local council's decision to water the road into submission, possibly in the hope that it might grow in the same kind of way that their integrity didn't. Of course, they tried this trick on me with a patch of roadwork at Tumbulgum some years earlier that led to me crashing, and the entire Tweed Shire Council were sacked for corruption a week later, and yes, I am going to keep reminding my 3 regular readers about this fact.
Descending off that climb into the grand, sweeping vistas of the Tyalgum section of the Tweed Valley is always a pleasant experience, but today I detoured out along Pinnacle Road, which offered a nice, steady climb for a few kilometers, before petering out at the bottom of Pinnacle Rock. Even without the view of the Pinnacle, the ride itself was pleasant, as it steadily rose above the surrounding area of lush green rolling hills. I was so inspired I later took a side trip along Bald Mountain road to see if it did actually climb Bald Mountain. It didn't, but the view it offered was pleasant enough anyway.
There was nothing left after this other than the return to Murwillumbah for the final climb over Tomewin to get home. This is actually a much more pleasant climb on a relatively cool day, as the bits exposed to the sunlight don't burn quite so badly. Of course, this was also only the second southern ride that has actually finished with a tailwind in the last two years, so that may have assisted in the fact that I had now ridden myself back into form.
The ride home from there was reasonably uneventful, apart from a couple of absolute idiots that I encountered upon returning to the coastal strip. I get the feeling that at least one of them won't be alive for much longer without some major behavioural changes, and the feeling is definitely a comforting one. Just why so many idiots around here feel the need to stop dead in the middle of the road for no readily apparent reason is beyond me, but sooner or later they'll try it on someone driving a bigger car than they are, and the results will end badly for them, but maybe not so badly for the rest of us.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Reaching the Pinnacle
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Tires Did Wonders
This afternoon I took a ride on the hybrid to check out the new tires. Blaine had selected Serfas Seca 700x28c tires. (The bike had OEM Bontrager 700x35c Select Invert B tires.) Did a quick ride to see how they rode. I could feel that I was riding much faster.
After re-setting of the computer, I headed out for a pavement ride. Rode from the bike shop to Trails Center, on to the "Bob Bridge", and back. That ride was 26.38 miles in 1 hour and 49 minutes - 14.52 mph.
My previous fastest ride (regardless of bike) was 14.33 mph on the Trek 4300. On the hybrid my fastest ride was at 12.94 mph. Today's ride was about 12% faster with the new tires.
I could feel some difference in bike handling. The response is faster. This may be the thinner tires and/or the higher pressure. That change I can get used to - is not objectionable. Hell, may be an advantage as I ride the bike more!
Regarding "comfort". There, once again I could feel the higher tire pressure. I could feel the bumps, road/trail surface stronger. That said, it did not make a big change and not objectionable - for the 26 miles. The Ergo grips I have been using helped lots. With the dirt riding I have done, my hand grip is looser - which I think helps the comfort. Will have to see as I do longer rides.
I am looking forward to make some longer rides on the FX next week. Did not ride the Fuel EX with the new tires. Will check that out within the next few days (trail conditions allowing). Watch for details.
OH, BTW - today made another 100+ mile week. Nearly 1000 miles since the 4th of July.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Tourists in Our Own Town
Last Saturday our daughter Lily and her dear husband returned home after a visit with their Austin relatives - but most of that special time is not the stuff of blog posts. We were glad to be together and also glad Austin displayed spectacular blue skies. It's been a long, cold, wet winter in the Pacific Northwest.
When guests come from out-of state, it gives us a chance to act like tourists in our own town - that's the part I want to share with you.
A favorite place to take visitors is a funky mini-golf course on Barton Springs Road, south of the river. Nearly 60-years old, Peter Pan golf was created by the Dismukes family. It's not a tournament-type course, but can present interesting challenges to the players, especially at night.
You might not think of a bike store as a tourist attraction, but when the shop is called Mellow Johnny's and it belongs to Lance Armstrong, it's a must-go-there destination, especially for a guy who bikes in triathlons and a gal who will be part of the Livestrong Challenge this summer. Within the bike store we found a coffee shop named Juan Pelota cafe in ironic tribute to Lance's battle with cancer. It was very cool to see bikes Lance rode in races on display in the shop.
Even when we have no company to impress we occasionally head down to South Congress for Home Slice Pizza. What a fabulous crust on those pies - and such perfect toppings. And it's right across the street from Tesoros Trading Company. Lily & I bought identical oval black clay bowls. Here's mine with some beautifully decorated, blown-out eggs that our daughter made as a gift and hand-carried on the plane.
After we went to Tesoros, I realized that exactly one year earlier during Austin Spring Fling, Garden Bloggers from all over the country ambled together down South Congress in search of souvenirs. Shout out to Kathy Purdy & her friend Cynthia!
When the Garden Bloggers met in Austin last year another place everyone wanted to go was the Natural Gardener. We love to take people there! Not only is it a wonderful nursery but it's a great place to stroll around and think and dream - with a butterfly garden, vegetable demonstration gardens and water features. Philo and I usually make a stop at the dig-it-yourself Soil Yard whenever we drive down. This time we had four people wielding shovels, so filling the back of the car with bags of John Dromgoole's Rose Magic and Revitalizer Compost was a very speedy process, giving us more time to wander the nursery lanes.
I couldn't resist snapping a stack of turtles in Lady Bird Lake. The name used to be Town Lake, but after Lady Bird Johnson died, the downtown section of the Colorado River was renamed in her honor. 
We walked the part of the very popular hike and bike trail that passes the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue, the Long Center for the Performing Arts (just a few days after we'd been there for the Leonard Cohen concert), and the off-leash dog park. 
When we strolled the paved hike and bike trail it wasn't much of a workout, but it was a little hotter and dustier when we climbed up the trails at Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve . This preserve is not manicured and you have to watch where you put your feet. Wildflowers grow along the trails, 
At some points there are views of Loop 360 to the West and a pond surprises you when it appears in this arid setting. 
It had been a few years since we'd been to Wild Basin with a different set of visitors. That hike turned out to be quite an ordeal because the temperatures were over 100°F...guess it took us awhile to get over the experience! It was funny to realize that because I can now identify more of the trees and plants in the woods, walking there was somehow more enjoyable than in the past.
Six of us went to the Flat Creek Estate Winery for a wine tasting - a fun new thing for some of us and a chance for the experienced to show off their sophistication. The drive out to the beautiful Tuscan-style buildings and grounds near Marble Falls was long enough to be interesting without being tedious.
We enjoyed the different wines, bringing home a few bottles. (If you go to the winery on the weekends the Bistro will be open. Because we were there mid-week, instead of snacking on Mediterranean fare after the tasting, we ended up at a roadside Sonic in the nearby town of Lago Vista.)
Our daughter admired the label on the Bucking Horse Red which featured an image of "Cage Johnson Spurs 'Em Up Aboard Cyclone" by famed Texas Artist Bob Wade.
The tasting had proved to us that the inside of the bottle was as fine as the outside - this red was perfect with delicious pies from Reale's Pizza. For our group there is no such thing as too much pizza.
Mayfield Park was once the private home of the Mayfield family with the gardens developed over a long time by Mary Mayfield Gutsch and her husband Milton Gutsch.
Some of the plants have been here since the 1920's with peacocks and peahens added in 1935. Philo & I first saw this park in September 1999, soon after we moved to Austin. Mayfield proved to me that beautiful flowers could grow in this climate. Maybe MSS of Zanthan Gardens can tell us whether these lovely red flowers are St Joseph Lilies or something else in the amaryllis family. 
Not too far from Mayfield is a favorite place to buy plants, Shoal Creek nursery - we stopped there to walk around and look at the pottery. I couldn't make a decision on the pots, but found another Loropetalum and some Purple Nicotiana. Lily & BJ and Philo & I are all gardeners so if we lived closer to each other, visiting nurseries together would be a normal thing to do on weekends. We cherish these chances to act normal and just hang out!
Hanging out in Austin also means enjoying Tex-Mex restaurants. Our son suggested Serranos, which is especially fun on 2-for-1 Enchilada night when the chips & queso are hot and the margaritas refreshing. Taco Cabana is more casual, which can be handy when you're out touring.
The Elisabet Ney museum is an old museum- so it's probably okay to use an old photo. I forgot to take a new picture when we visited this museum, the studio of early Austin's fascinating woman sculptor. Click to enlarge the photo so you can see another visitor we took to the Ney Museum...the paper person called Flat Stanley.
We all had one final outing the day before our guests flew home - a short ride out to Blanco for a tour of the Real Ale Brewery. This was too much fun - beer we like (and can buy locally) and an amazingly detailed tour and explanation of how beer is made. When we lived in Illinois, Philo and our older sons did some home brewing and the process is interesting to all of us. I'm fond of the Rio Blanco Pale Ale and Philo, who looks for high IBU numbers, prefers the Full Moon Pale Rye Ale. He also likes the Real Heavy, which is available seasonally but on draught, not in bottles. The Brewmaster AKA "Tyrant" was a wonderful tour guide, witty and ironic, languidly imparting quite specific information.
The vagaries of Texas law allows the brewery to give tours and samples of the various brews but unlike wineries, breweries can't sell any of the product to their visitors so we couldn't bring home a sampler 6-pack. This inequity has recently been a subject of much discussion in the beer-brewing and beer-loving community.
The backdoor clematis bloomed too late for our visitors and too late for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day - but it opened just in time to be the end photo of this PLEASE COME VISIT AUSTIN post. Hope to see you soon!
When guests come from out-of state, it gives us a chance to act like tourists in our own town - that's the part I want to share with you.
A favorite place to take visitors is a funky mini-golf course on Barton Springs Road, south of the river. Nearly 60-years old, Peter Pan golf was created by the Dismukes family. It's not a tournament-type course, but can present interesting challenges to the players, especially at night. You might not think of a bike store as a tourist attraction, but when the shop is called Mellow Johnny's and it belongs to Lance Armstrong, it's a must-go-there destination, especially for a guy who bikes in triathlons and a gal who will be part of the Livestrong Challenge this summer. Within the bike store we found a coffee shop named Juan Pelota cafe in ironic tribute to Lance's battle with cancer. It was very cool to see bikes Lance rode in races on display in the shop.Even when we have no company to impress we occasionally head down to South Congress for Home Slice Pizza. What a fabulous crust on those pies - and such perfect toppings. And it's right across the street from Tesoros Trading Company. Lily & I bought identical oval black clay bowls. Here's mine with some beautifully decorated, blown-out eggs that our daughter made as a gift and hand-carried on the plane.
After we went to Tesoros, I realized that exactly one year earlier during Austin Spring Fling, Garden Bloggers from all over the country ambled together down South Congress in search of souvenirs. Shout out to Kathy Purdy & her friend Cynthia!When the Garden Bloggers met in Austin last year another place everyone wanted to go was the Natural Gardener. We love to take people there! Not only is it a wonderful nursery but it's a great place to stroll around and think and dream - with a butterfly garden, vegetable demonstration gardens and water features. Philo and I usually make a stop at the dig-it-yourself Soil Yard whenever we drive down. This time we had four people wielding shovels, so filling the back of the car with bags of John Dromgoole's Rose Magic and Revitalizer Compost was a very speedy process, giving us more time to wander the nursery lanes. I couldn't resist snapping a stack of turtles in Lady Bird Lake. The name used to be Town Lake, but after Lady Bird Johnson died, the downtown section of the Colorado River was renamed in her honor. We walked the part of the very popular hike and bike trail that passes the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue, the Long Center for the Performing Arts (just a few days after we'd been there for the Leonard Cohen concert), and the off-leash dog park. When we strolled the paved hike and bike trail it wasn't much of a workout, but it was a little hotter and dustier when we climbed up the trails at Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve . This preserve is not manicured and you have to watch where you put your feet. Wildflowers grow along the trails, At some points there are views of Loop 360 to the West and a pond surprises you when it appears in this arid setting. It had been a few years since we'd been to Wild Basin with a different set of visitors. That hike turned out to be quite an ordeal because the temperatures were over 100°F...guess it took us awhile to get over the experience! It was funny to realize that because I can now identify more of the trees and plants in the woods, walking there was somehow more enjoyable than in the past.Six of us went to the Flat Creek Estate Winery for a wine tasting - a fun new thing for some of us and a chance for the experienced to show off their sophistication. The drive out to the beautiful Tuscan-style buildings and grounds near Marble Falls was long enough to be interesting without being tedious.We enjoyed the different wines, bringing home a few bottles. (If you go to the winery on the weekends the Bistro will be open. Because we were there mid-week, instead of snacking on Mediterranean fare after the tasting, we ended up at a roadside Sonic in the nearby town of Lago Vista.)Our daughter admired the label on the Bucking Horse Red which featured an image of "Cage Johnson Spurs 'Em Up Aboard Cyclone" by famed Texas Artist Bob Wade.
The tasting had proved to us that the inside of the bottle was as fine as the outside - this red was perfect with delicious pies from Reale's Pizza. For our group there is no such thing as too much pizza.
Mayfield Park was once the private home of the Mayfield family with the gardens developed over a long time by Mary Mayfield Gutsch and her husband Milton Gutsch.
Some of the plants have been here since the 1920's with peacocks and peahens added in 1935. Philo & I first saw this park in September 1999, soon after we moved to Austin. Mayfield proved to me that beautiful flowers could grow in this climate. Maybe MSS of Zanthan Gardens can tell us whether these lovely red flowers are St Joseph Lilies or something else in the amaryllis family. Not too far from Mayfield is a favorite place to buy plants, Shoal Creek nursery - we stopped there to walk around and look at the pottery. I couldn't make a decision on the pots, but found another Loropetalum and some Purple Nicotiana. Lily & BJ and Philo & I are all gardeners so if we lived closer to each other, visiting nurseries together would be a normal thing to do on weekends. We cherish these chances to act normal and just hang out!Hanging out in Austin also means enjoying Tex-Mex restaurants. Our son suggested Serranos, which is especially fun on 2-for-1 Enchilada night when the chips & queso are hot and the margaritas refreshing. Taco Cabana is more casual, which can be handy when you're out touring.
The Elisabet Ney museum is an old museum- so it's probably okay to use an old photo. I forgot to take a new picture when we visited this museum, the studio of early Austin's fascinating woman sculptor. Click to enlarge the photo so you can see another visitor we took to the Ney Museum...the paper person called Flat Stanley.We all had one final outing the day before our guests flew home - a short ride out to Blanco for a tour of the Real Ale Brewery. This was too much fun - beer we like (and can buy locally) and an amazingly detailed tour and explanation of how beer is made. When we lived in Illinois, Philo and our older sons did some home brewing and the process is interesting to all of us. I'm fond of the Rio Blanco Pale Ale and Philo, who looks for high IBU numbers, prefers the Full Moon Pale Rye Ale. He also likes the Real Heavy, which is available seasonally but on draught, not in bottles. The Brewmaster AKA "Tyrant" was a wonderful tour guide, witty and ironic, languidly imparting quite specific information.The vagaries of Texas law allows the brewery to give tours and samples of the various brews but unlike wineries, breweries can't sell any of the product to their visitors so we couldn't bring home a sampler 6-pack. This inequity has recently been a subject of much discussion in the beer-brewing and beer-loving community.
The backdoor clematis bloomed too late for our visitors and too late for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day - but it opened just in time to be the end photo of this PLEASE COME VISIT AUSTIN post. Hope to see you soon!
Monday, May 24, 2010
Embracing the NOW
"Most of us spend so much time thinking about where we have been or where we are supposed to be going that we have a hard time recognizing where we actually are. When someone asks us where we want to be in our lives, the last thing that occurs to us is to look down at our feet and say, "Here, I guess, since this is where I am." Taken from An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Inconceivable!
I told people that I'd spent most of last week sticking my head out the window, yelling, "Inconceivable!" Storm after storm passed by, edging just to the north or just to the south.
How this line missed us, I have no idea. Storms here generally march from left to right, or rather, west to east. We are in the area outlined by the white box, yet once again, we didn't get a drop of rain. Inconceivable!
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
My love is like a red red...cactus?
Alongside the usual red roses, heart-shaped leaves make a novel Valentine's Day gift.
My Valentine's Day gift today? A very muddy walk in the Borders countryside south of Edinburgh, with showers of hail and rain to clear away the city cobwebs.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
My New Boots
I just ordered these boots from ShoeMall. That was on my list, 5 before 55, that I posted a few weeks ago. Click on the link below to see the list. http://artfulaspirations.blogspot.com/../08/5-by-55.html I also made the Victoria Sponge Cake but am going to try one more time. I have Samuel Pepys Diary on my stack and ready to read.
I think I'll be able to finish all five. I still have a month and a half.
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