Another Saturday, another bike ride. This Saturday’s ride put last week’s to shame, distance-wise.
Once again, I started at our commuter garden in Kirkwood. From there, I headed east to pick up a bike-blog friend, Rebecca. We rode together to Clayton, and then rode in circles in a fancy subdivision trying to find a well-hidden (and rather poorly designed) pedestrian crossing over Forest Park Parkway. After more than a bit of wandering, we prevailed!
I rather imagine the residents of that neighborhood like keeping it a secret. Unfortunately, the design on the north end of the cut through was so poor as to make it rather useless when headed north.
We stopped to rest, sip smoothies, and chat at Kaldi’s. Afterward, we biked a bit further together, then parted ways. Rebecca tackled her hilly route home, and I headed out to do some ground-truthing for Saturday’s CyclingSavvy “Tour of St. Louis.”
On the way home, I stopped by Mesa Cycles to pick up some replacement helmet pads that Matthew ordered. I also bought a rear-mount kickstand for Baby Jake — it only took me five years to get a kickstand for this bike!
Due to the placement of the rear shifting cable, I can’t use what I would call a traditional, bottom-mounted plate kickstand on Baby Jake. I’d looked at Greenfield Rear Mount Kickstand before, but it didn’t play nicely with the trailer hitch. But no more trailer means this kickstand is now a go!
Finally, after 21.6 miles, I ended up back at home, a pooped pup!
‘Twas probably good practice for this coming Saturday, when I’ll be riding about the same distance teaching the on-bike portions of CyclingSavvy (that distance includes biking to/from the start point). Having that kickstand will be especially useful when teaching! (If you’re in the StL area, we still have a few open seats for both the Wednesday night classroom session and the Saturday on-bike sessions.)
Sunday didn’t bring much rest, as I first biked to church in the morning, and then to a fundraiser for G’s [soon-to-be] preschool in the evening, racking up 15 more miles.
The Sunday evening ride with Matthew was a great way to wrap up the weekend, and my first chance to trial both my new kickstand and the new front headlight that Matthew got me for Christmas (obviously haven’t done much night biking lately!).
Her Green Life 
Yay for the kickstand! That will be a game-changer. I have wanted a double kickstand for my Linus since I added the front basket, which requires the wheel to be fully angled to one side in order for the bike to remain upright.
That cut through is remarkably difficult to use. I also laughed to myself (as I was crashing at 1.5mph we were moseying along that tiny sidewalk in the secret Clayton neighborhood) that the tiny sidewalk wasn’t any bigger than the main sidewalk along Clayton Road (although it did lack the telephone poles that Clayton Road simply paved around). Infrastructure for peds/bikes is only as good as it is useful…or even useABLE.
I can’t believe the cross at Forest Park didn’t have a push button for folks crossing South>North. That one will cause me to shake my head for a while. And live fence? It took nearly all my willpower not to touch something to it to see if it zapped, but my curiosity level remains something on the (live) side of the Darwin Award recipients’, so I managed to resist.
Great read thankyoou