Tag Archives: Biking

Shadow Shot Sunday – Riverside Ride

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This Friday was my 9/80 day. I work 80 hours over nine days and get every other Friday off. I love it!! Been doing it for years despite criticism at work sometimes for taking off all my 9/80s. Yeah well duh. Anyway Heather and I wanted to go on a bike ride today. For a while it seemed like the very air was conspiring against us but it all worked out and we loaded up the bikes and headed off to the River Parks. Then, my bike had a little problem. A problem with the brakes. Believe me, if you are having a problem with your bicycle you do not want it to be your brakes. So I spent about fifteen minutes trying to fix them and suceeded. Yeah!!

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And here is my very patient wife. All ready to go, waiting on her husband.

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And off we went! First down a very nice rails to trails path that cuts through a very nice area of midtown Tulsa.

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And then because of some park construction we got out on a street. It was a beautiful, sunny, cool day, with hardly any wind (8 mph is hardly any wind in Oklahoma, just so you know). As you can see we had some nice shadows all day long.

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And then we got to the RiverParks trails. We love them. They have separate paths for cyclists and pedestrians

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Heather led the way back to the car.

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We got back to the end and had a reward. There is a brewery taphouse on the trail so we enjoyed a craft beer before the ride home.

I am linking with Shadow Shot Sunday

Trail Pics

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A trio I encountered at a park in Sand Springs taking a walk.

I have a Go Pro Clone action camera that I can mount on the handlebars of my bicycle. It has various modes. It has a video loop mode where it takes three minutes of video, stores it does three more minutes until it runs out of battery. Or I can still pics at any interval you set. I have been experimenting with both modes. Video is a pain in the butt because of the huge files you end up with long upload and download times and a definite problem of separating the wheat from the chaff. Stills are a lot easier. You end up with a huge amount of them but you can just delete the ones you don’t like which for me is literally about 95% of them on the first pass and then about 80% of the remainder get deleted on a second pass review.  I now use about a 20 second delay between pics now. In an hour ride that is about 180 photos. Typically I keep about five to ten. The rest get deleted. Thank goodness for digital photos!!

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I love the sense of distance in this. I love feeling a long ways from where I need to be. Except when things go wrong. Two years ago on this trail one of my tires blew out and I had to go pick up the kid in an hour. I hid the bike. Called a cab (cuz there was no Uber out in the boonies), took the cab to where my car was, drove the car back to the trail and retrieved the bike and then went to pick up the kid. Thank goodness for cell phones is what I say!!

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I like the photos of people out on the trail, like this couple. You can tell by their body language that they like each other.

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This poor lady was all over the trail and I don’t think she heard my “on your left” so I went very slowly around her way to the right. My heart really went out to her. She looks like she might be housing insecure. I think she has a long ways to go but I don’t think she is enjoying it. I am no so called “bleeding heart liberal” but our decreasing compassion for people who are down on their luck is a real problem. I hope she found a safe place to stay that night.

Bike Ride to Sand Springs and a Blowout

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I was on my own Saturday afternoon. Heather is in Dallas with other fitness instructors learning all sorts of stuff and son Logan at rehearsal as has a small part in musical based on Romeo Juliet (more to come later on that) so I thought what the heck I will ride my bike over the recently reopened bridge linking the Tulsa bike trails with those of Sand Springs. Also, I wanted to use my GoPro camera clone. An SJ4000 that I’ve had over a year and half and hadn’t used much. See it mounted on the handlebars of my bike.

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Here I am adjusting it.

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Us guys know that looking at something sideways always helps with whatever you are doing.

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I finally got it going. It can take video continuously or it can take photos when you hit the button or it can take pics at set intervals. I had it set to take pics every 20 seconds. Once you get it started it just keeps on going.

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So I got to the north end of the of the Riverparks trails and went under the freeway via the new underpass headed to the reopened pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks. The bridge has been closed for several years it seems.

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And here is the bridge, just as narrow as I remembered it. The approach from the south is a lot better with more room but the exit at the far end is still a blind turn and very sharp. Oh well. As a bonus a train was going under just as I passed over. Have I ever told you that I love trains. I do.

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And then across the bridge and then along Charles Page Boulevard to Sand Springs.

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Past the Tulsa Police Department garage. Lots of wrecked police cars there. Makes me think of the guys who keep us safe. I am totally behind Black Lives Matter but am also totally behind Police Lives Matter also. Shoot, everybody’s life matters. You may notice the photo is tilted. The bicycle mounts that come with the the SJ4000 are not very robust. I might have to invest in something better. They lose position with the jostling and vibration of the ride. People can have a peek at these guys if they need the best limo services.

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Oops, I used to ride this route a lot years ago when the bridge was last open. I forgot about the steep climb from the Arkansas River Bottom up the hill. I didn’t have to walk the bike.

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At the top though there were two other bikes and this walker all hit the intersection at the same time so we all turned into walkers. They guy walking said, “What a ***** traffic jam you guys have going on, in a good natured manner. I turned to the left. Going to the right heads you back to Tulsa and you go past back side of the jail and then by the Day Center for the Homeless. Years ago, I took that route and a couple drunk guys outside the Homeless Center were cheering me on: “Go Lance Go!!!” they yelled and pumping their arms.  That was kind of the highlight of my athletic career. I went by there a couple of other times and they weren’t there. You know, fans are fickle. Just ask Lance.

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Hanging a left, the trail is an old railroad bed. So it is flat and shaded in a few places.

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You have a few roads to be concerned about.

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Oops, the camera shifted again.

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I met a few bikers coming back at me.

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I had a three hour window and so my plan was to turn around after an hour. Give me an hour leeway in case something went wrong. With Heather out of town and having to pick Logan up at a set time after rehearsal I was a little nervous. So here is the one hour point where I stopped the bike and took a little water break. Oh, and don’t worry I wore a helmet. I just took it off during my break.

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So then I headed back and pretty soon the bike was like bonk, bonk, bonk, It is like what? Well the front tire had a little hernia. So I said well, I’ll just ride it until it quits. And then I thought that last time I had a blowout it was on the back tire and I almost lost control. Not good on the front tire. So I got off the bike and walked it and sure enough, POW!!! and it was all over. So, now what?? Hmm, my plan was to stash the bike and get an Uber or a taxi back to my car.

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I didn’t see a good place to stash the bike on the trail so I went under a freeway overpass.

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So see that white fence leading to a concrete wall? I walked the bike and put it up against the wall. Hidden from traffic and no sidewalks or anything. Best I could do.

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Yep, that is the spot. I didn’t lay it down, I leaned it up so it was all shadowed. I was a little nervous. Then I went across the street  to the Taco Bueno, found out that there were no Ubers available so I called Yellow Taxi. About 15 minutes later, Enrico showed up in the Taxi  and took me back to my car. I drove my car rented from MiramarSpeedCircuit back out to the Taco Bueno and my bike was still there. So I loaded it up and went to pick up the kid with 15 minutes to spare.

Pretty amazing I think. Just think how different things are now compared to when we didn’t have cell phones and apps and all that.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun. My camera, with its 20 second timer, took 240 photos and I cut them down to about 30. Digital is a lot more convenient and cheaper than film. Maybe next time I’ll cu cut the interval down to five seconds. The camera is pretty noticeable and I had a couple of pretty female bicyclists smile and wave at it as they went by (surely they weren’t smiling and waving at me!). I passed a couple geocachers looking for a cache. And lots of other people. None of them showed up on the camera.

So, all in all, not a bad day it turned out. I got to visit an area of town I hadn’t seen in a long time, check out my camera, and was able to bail myself out of a situation.