Three O'Clock w/Klaus

There was lots of stuff I should have been doing. Unpacking crates in the basement, my taxes, putting in the early spring garden.

But I went on the Three O'Clock Ride instead, and it was not a mistake. We wandered all over town, out Cliff Drive and down Benton to Flush Creek, then followed the trail there to the Plaza.

A gent named Klaus was along this time, and he had the coolest folding bike I've ever seen. If I did more traveling by air, I would so want one of these bikes. No tools required, it condenses down to the size of a bowling ball bag in seconds.

Klaus folded it up to show us, and then when it was time to roll, he was ready before me and I didn't even have a kickstand to put up.

On the way up Benton we passed a church that is being demolished. It's sad, because you can tell it was a grand structure, but it's beautiful in a way because you can see the architecture in cut-out.

Interesting, too, because I took it initially to be a stone structure, but you can tell it's actually stone veneer on brick, with a steel beam frame supporting it all. It's made to appear much older than it is, I doubt it's more then fifty or sixty years old.

Coming down Benton to Van Brunt (or is it Cleaver II at that point?), what a fantastic descent. I hit 37 mph just coasting. You should be aware, as I wasn't, that there is a light at the bottom of it with a wicked short yellow. Bombs away, but be prepared to stop even if it's a green light when it comes into view.

And we had fun climbing on the fountains that aren't wet yet.

It's a beautiful trail along the creek, but in this section it seems little used. I'm not sure why that is, when you get over near the Plaza it's lousy with people, but we had the whole scene to ourselves on a fantastic spring afternoon with a cloudless sky and temperatures in the 70s.

Looking for water refills, we stumbled on a neat little garden adjacent to the Discovery Center.

As we were leaving, we realized our bikes weren't supposed to come in with us. Oops.

On the way home we spotted some cool tags we hadn't seen near the Switzer community garden.

It's in a little area just sheltered enough from street view to make a tagger, in this case Cosmo, feel comfortable.