By now you all know that we give names to everything. Our Coach is “Arcturus,” the Honda Civic is “Little Blue,” and our recumbent tandem bicycle is ‘Path.” It is named after a fictional dragon in Ann McCaffry’s “Dragon Riders of Pern” series. In Ann McCaffry’s series “Path” is somewhat ‘proddy’ and causes her rider, Mirrim, to be ‘out of sorts.’
Path Has An Adventure
October 24, 2009
Riding the Scappoose Dike Land:
June 15, 2009
We have moved over to St. Helens for a few days this week. We are getting our annual dental checkups and visiting old friends. Today we jumped onto Path, our recumbent tandem bicycle and rode from St. Helens to Scappoose. Then we rode around the Scappoose dike lands. This is some farmlands that have been developed from the flood plain of the Willamette River many decades ago. The main highway of the region is US-30. It is four lanes and roaring along at 55 plus. Turning off onto the dike road puts us on narrow twisting roads with practically no traffic.
On The Brazos
February 2, 2009
In Texas the Brazos River starts somewhere near Lubbock and flows into the Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles West of Galveston Texas. We visited the Brazos in Brazos Bend State Park about fifty miles south of Houston. Now Houston is the largest city in Texas so we carefully tiptoed around the edges of the city to get there. Brazos Bend is very rural and that was part of the attraction for us. What we found was bird-watching programs, nature walks, miles of trails and the George Observatory.
It’s the People:
January 20, 2009
One of the things that we find fascinating about traveling around this great country is the fascinating people we meet. I am going to bring you a few vignettes of some people we have met this last week.
We stopped in a small town, Thibodaux, LA specifically to visit the Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center. We have run into this cultural group twice before in our travels. Once in Nova Scotia, where the Acadian people were expelled by the British at the end of the seven years’ war with France in 1763; (We call it the French and Indian War on this side of the pond.) and again in Maine when we toured Acadia National Park near Bar harbor.
Natchez Trace, Then and Now:
January 9, 2009
For four days now we have been traveling the Natchez Trace, a trail that served the “Old Southwest” from about 1775 to 1820 or so. It was declared a National Post Road in 1800 and many improvements were made to it by the US Army and civilian contractors. With the coming of the steam paddlewheel river boats on the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers the Natchez Trace fell into disuse and slowly melted back into the undergrowth.
Ballooning
August 24, 2008
This weekend we met with long time friends, Tim and Sheri Gale and their son Andrew for a weekend of ballooning at the Albany Air and Art Festival. We seem to have a need to do everything the hard way. The bicycle instead on a car, a sailboat instead of a speedboat. Now we joined a balloon team over an airplane. The balloon is named Checkmate. It has a red, white and black design that includes a knight chess piece. Photos are included at the end of this post.
Ride the Dragon:
March 29, 2008
Judy and I ride our homebuilt recumbent tandem bicycle just about where ever we go. On Monday we set out to ride from Gilroy to the outskirts of San Jose to have lunch with Glen and his family. We cut our time too short so with a few quick calls on the cell phone we arranged to meet everyone in Morgan Hill at the Morgan Hill Museum. The museum was closed but they had a nice garden with benches where we ate our lunch.
A Day in the Desert
January 16, 2008
We are back in the Sonoran Desert in the Southwest again. This is called the low desert as opposed to the high desert, the Mohave Desert, just north of here. Just to make this perfectly clear, Death Valley at minus 282 feet is part of the “high desert.” The low desert is also the hotter desert but once again Death Valley sets the records in this department. Now today we are in the boondockers mecca, Quartzite, and we are camped right out in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. They figure something like a million people take advantage of the free BLM camping around Quartzite. Read More
The ‘Bent Tour
August 29, 2007
‘Bent as in recumbent, meaning a laid back bicycle. We have been trying for a couple of years to get together with Bob Bryant and his platoon of recumbent cyclists in Port Townsend, Washington. Today we made the connection. The first thing we found out was that Port Townsend is built on a series of hills. Read More
Power to the Humans, II
May 28, 2007
This is Path again reporting from the Human Power Challenge for 2007.
This is certainly a fun place to visit because there are so many fantastic recumbent bicycles and the special “‘bent” people who ride them. Let me define “‘bent” people. These are folks who often commute by bicycle. It is not unusual for them to have three or four bicycles with each new bicycle being a little more extreme than the last one. Read More
