Hyper Local Travels
Joy and freedom close to home
April 29, 2023
Today’s ride was a little spin around the perimeter of my neighborhood. It’s a beautiful warm spring day and perfect for a short pedal. When there’s no time for a longer ride, our neighborhood path is my top choice for a quick spin. It’s a 3-mile loop that I can easily tackle on my one-speed cruiser bike.
The beauty of this ride is that, even though we live in a pretty typical suburban neighborhood in Boulder County, Colorado, this 3 mile loop offers a little bit of everything. It begins and ends adjacent to high-speed highways, but it’s also very pastoral, passing by many working farms. It also offers unobstructed Front Range mountain views. And it’s relatively flat, which is great on the cruiser.
The cruiser bike must now be introduced. She’s a beaut! I love, love, love this bike. I received it as a birthday present last year from my dad. About 10 years ago he won it in a liquor store raffle. It’s a New Belgium cruiser bike. As in, the New Belgium Brewery. The inventor of Fat Tire beer. Every year they make a limited number of unique custom cruisers that are only available to employees or through promotional events. Each year is a unique bike designed by a different artist or bike company. These highly coveted bikes fit the brewery’s ethos of bringing communities together and doing so with human-powered transportation.
The 2010 model that I have is a true “fat tire” bike with really thick and smooth-walled tires. Very old-timey looking. This “joy ride” edition has a comfy embossed leather seat and a front wooden rack that is designed to hold a case of beer. How convenient! It’s a glossy gun-metal gray color with playful red and yellow spots The phrase “The Amber Ale - a feat of balance” is written across the chain guard. It has a limited edition number on it. This one is #136. I am always excited to ride this bike and I treat it like a museum piece (but I still ride it). It’s basically fun on two wheels.
So the cruiser was today’s bike of choice for this easy 3 mile ride. The start of the trail is a gravel path that runs east-west and parallels a 2-lane highway. When we moved here 15 years ago, this path didn’t exist. For years I longed for it and always hoped the “powers that be” would put one in. Finally it happened about 5 years ago! The trail goes alongside my neighborhood, past a parcel of open space, and had originally terminated about a half mile later at what’s called the Colorado Tech Center, a vast tract of mostly concrete buildings that houses dozens of warehouse-type businesses. A quick ride through the tech center gets you to a network of trails called Coal Creek. From there you can ride north or south to different towns or briefly ride on the road and connect to the rest of my neighborhood trail. This half-mile of trail opened up worlds of possibilities.
But then! Something even more amazing happened about a month ago: the trail got extended to the south. It now links up with other trails and open spaces with minimal street crossings. This is a trail cyclist’s dream come true! One I hadn’t even dared to imagine. I now have access to the entire neighborhood loop without leaving the trail! It feels like I was given a huge gift. One that I didn’t even ask for! Those are always the best gifts. “It’s perfect!!! Thank you so much!”
On today’s ride, I stopped to admire this new trail. It’s so new it has straw along the side to coax the vegetation back.
This path leads to a little bridge to take you back toward my neighborhood. It’s such a great ride because the trail passes through and by many farms along both sides before returning to the familiar and predictable uniformity of the neighborhood.
You can see the cows in the pasture just beyond the bridge. Speaking of cows, I have recently become aware of how abundant the wildlife is on this short loop. During the course of my ride today, I saw the aforementioned cows, tons of birds including Colorado’s state bird the magpie, a duck, a (dead) goose, a goat, some sheep, alpacas, horses, donkeys, and a handful of dogs.
It’s pretty amazing to live in a neighborhood in such close proximity to all the normal urban things, but be able to take a pastoral ride like this. I ended up extended the ride by an extra mile today by pedaling through the actual neighborhood a little bit. I can’t miss an opportunity to show off the cruiser!
Penny did not accompany me on today’s ride because her basket doesn’t fit on this bike and she’s not shaped like a case of beer.
I felt the urge to sing, “And a partridge in a pear tree...” after reading the list of animals you saw! Fun!
Another blog entry making me want to get out and ride! Love that your area has such a great system of trails! Great pics!