Author: Aly

Posted on

Ozark Highlands Trail, Section 2

Last weekend we hiked the second section of the Ozark Highlands Trail, from White Rock Mountain to Cherry Bend, with our good friends Britt and Debbie.

The timing was perfect to celebrate Britt’s retirement.   After a long career caring for elephants in several states, and one last sad and frustrating year at the Little Rock zoo, he said good-bye to the animals on Thursday.  We hiked a few miles together on Friday, and then set up camp near a pretty stream. We made cherry cheesecakes and hung a makeshift “Happy Retirement” banner near the campfire and drank wine together in the dark.

Congratulations, friend.  You chose a career in something you loved, something that allowed you to work hard and keep learning.   You chose family over money and you chose moving forward over standing still.  You made animals’ lives better and you made people smile.  We’re looking forward to your next adventures, and we hope you’ll share some of them with us.

Posted on

Bike Fair 2011

So somehow, somebody got the Mayor of Little Rock to agree to leave his car at home for a week and get around by bus and bike.  He said he’d do some media stuff and really encourage people to join him in a car-free week.  Great, said the Bike Friendly Community Committee.

Somehow, somebody (I really don’t think it was me) suggested that we hold a kind of educational event to teach practical skills so that people would feel more comfortable using their bikes for transportation.  Somehow, I made suggestions about this event.  And somehow I got put in charge of it.  A Car-Free Learning Day.  A Bike Fair.  With three weeks to plan.

I made a list of twelve problems people might have when planning to ride a bike to work.  I listed things like “Won’t People Think I’m Wierd?” and  “How do I carry my stuff?” and “How do I Plan a Safe Route?” Continue reading “Bike Fair 2011”

Posted on

Bikes Vs. Zombies!

Bike culture in central Arkansas isn’t all that interesting, so when something out of the box comes along, we try to help out.  Our friend Vinny (that’s him above, in the terrible suit and the zombie makeup) put on his second alleycat race tonight, and we volunteered to help organize the event.

An alleycat race is a little like a very fast scavenger hunt on bicycles.  Participants get a list of addresses and brief instructions just before the race.  They have to plan how to reach each destination, and at each place there’s something they have to do.  This race included picking up packages, making crayon rubbings at a cemetery, and chasing zombies on rollerskates.  The first person to do all the things on the list and get to Vino’s would win. Continue reading “Bikes Vs. Zombies!”

Posted on

USGS + MUC

Four riders from the Memphis Unicycle Club joined us for a playdate in Little Rock.  We rode the Clinton Park bridge and played near the Clinton Library before heading to the Rivermarket for lunch.  From there we went to the Junction Bridge and the Peabody Park for a little trials riding.  The good riders had fun jumping on rocks (and over Mandy) and the bad-rider group had fun watching.

We made a trip to the North Little Rock skateboard park, then ate supper at Vino’s before heading west again to ride across the Big Dam Bridge and the Two Rivers Bridge.  Woodrow and Pete didn’t head back to Memphis until after ten.  Thanks for coming to play, guys!  We had tons of fun, and we hope you’ll come back soon.

 

Posted on

Obedience Class for Dogs

Hayduke went through a puppy kindergarten this past spring (Blue Sky Dogs) with flying colors, though with perhaps a little bit too much enthusiasm.  We took the class from Colleen who runs a pet shop on Cantrell Road, and it was worth every penny and every minute we spent.

For his beginning obedience class, we switched to the Little Rock Dog Training Club.  They have a much more extensive lineup of courses for people who want to show their dogs, but we thought that many of the skills involved would translate well to just having a good, obedient, reliable family hiking dog.

Boy, were we wrong.  What a waste of time and money!  We spent nearly eight weeks relearning all the things we already knew from puppy kindergarten, except that we spent time to learn them in a snooty, dog-show way.

Hayduke had already learned that when I say “sit”, he should put his butt on the ground.  He’s very good at it.  Sit.  Butt. Ground.  Good sit.  NOT a good sit, according to the snooty dog show people.  He should sit THIS way, doing THIS, and not do THAT.  Hayduke wasn’t interested, and I wasn’t either.  He’d sit sideways, or stick his leg out, or lean on me.  He and I were both so grumpy about the ‘new rules’ that I really believe he started sitting wrong on purpose.  In fact, when he’d occasionally get it exactly right, he’d realize it and get up and sit again, pointing backward.

When we practiced ‘recall’, I’d call him from across the room.  “Hayduke, COME!” I’d say in a happy, excited voice, and he’d run as fast as he could straight to me.  But was this correct?  No, it was NOT.  I was supposed to say it sternly, in a voice of authority.  “Hayduke, COME”, in a frowny loud tone.  I pointed out that the students who said it this way had dogs who walked slowly to them, or ignored them completely, or wandered off to someone else.  Mine was the only dog in the class who actually appeared to want to mind his human.

Most of the class was completely impractical pickiness and time spent fiddling with skills already learned.  We were both disinterested and frustrated.  I had to invent games for Hayduke to play or he’d get bored waiting on other dogs to do things perfectly.

Ugh.  We finished our class, and we got our certificate (that’s it, up top), and phooey on them.  We’re not going back.

 

Posted on

Arky 100 2011

We try to support the Arkansas Bicycle Club’s annual fundraising ride, the Joe Weber Arky 100, either by riding or volunteering to help.  It starts and ends in Sheridan, which is about a half hour from our house.  As we’ve done in the past, we drove down the night before, ate with cycling friends, and spent the night in tents behind the small-town community center.

Up early, we helped around the registration a bit and got Mandy started – she’d decided to ride the metric century with our friend Kathy.  Her husband left in his ‘sag wagon’ with their dog and ours.  And Bryan and I loaded up the supplies for Rest Stop 2 and headed for Poyen.

We arrived at our spot just after eight, set up to feed and provide drinks for nearly two hundred riders – fruit, cereal bars, hot and cold drinks, oatmeal, and – the crowd favorite – tiny pbj sandwiches.  By eleven we’d fed everyone, cheered up the stragglers, reloaded the Subaru, and arrived at Rest Stop 5 to visit with friends before heading to the finish line to wait for Mandy.

She bailed at the 50 mile mark and caught the sag wagon in with Jim Britt.  It was disappointing, but not too bad considering that she hadn’t ridden much at all since our summer vacation.  After a couple of finish-line hot dogs, she felt better enough to get her unicycle out of the car to entertain the people still left in the picnic shelter.

Kathy finished the 62 mile course feeling good and decided, after a bite to eat, that she’d just ride home.  The extra afternoon mileage meant that she met one of her big goals today – her first “century”, or 100-mile ride. Congratulations my friend and thanks for sending “photographic proof” as shown below!

Posted on

Lake Catherine

Sometimes the best places are the ones close by.  We wanted a quick, low-mileage weekend camp-out and hike, so we drove to Lake Catherine, near Hot Springs.  Why haven’t we been there before?  Probably because it’s only thirty minutes away.

It was a pleasant campground with some walk-in sites, so that we didn’t have to cope with neighbors close by.  We enjoyed walking around the camping area early the next morning and and exploring the short dayhiking trails later in the day.

Funny that such a pleasant state park’s practically in our backyard, but we’d never been there before.  There’s no doubt we’ll be back soon, though, for another visit.

Posted on

Traffic Safety 101

Now that I’m on the city’s Bicycle Friendly Community Committee, I’m really trying to practice what the League of American Bicyclists preaches in terms of exercising the right to ride a bike on the road, while understanding the responsibilities cyclists have to keep ourselves and others safe.  I hadn’t taken the League’s traffic safety course in quite awhile, and Mandy’s never taken it, so we decided to enroll in the September group.

Only one other student participated.  Our teachers were Tom and Brad.  Mandy learned a lot, and my memory was refreshed.  I think putting time and effort into this sort of thing is well worth it for everybody involved.

After the riding part of class concluded on Saturday, our class met up with Mitch and his kids for a bike-and-unicycle lunch at the Rivermarket, and we rode around downtown for awhile.  The area around the Rivermarket is such fun for unicycling, with lots of paths and bridges and people to look impressed by dads and their kids riding along on one wheel as if it’s the easiest thing in the world.

Posted on

Bike Commuting

I’ve been wanting to try bike commuting.  From our house to my office is about seventeen miles, none of it particularly friendly to cyclists.  I don’t have the option of using a nice separated bike lane or path – it’s either the interstate service road or a busy 2-lane highway with fairly narrow shoulders.  Could I ride the whole way?  Could I drive partway and ride the rest?  Could I combine riding a bike and riding the bus?  I’ve spent the last month or so experimenting with multi-modal commuting.  First I tried just using a bike to do errands around our non-bike-friendly town.

Then I tried part-bike commuting: I drove the car partway to work, pulled a bike off the rack, and rode the rest of the way.  It was fun and not all that much more time consuming.  But it didn’t accomplish a lot – I was still putting a lot of miles on the car.

Then I tried driving to the closest bus stop – about eleven miles from the house – and taking the bus the rest of the way to work.  I thought the bus was fun, but it wasn’t saving any money, and it was using up a lot of time.

Then I tried riding the eleven miles to the bus stop, riding the bus to work, and then reversing that to come home.  This was the cheapest, and the most fun, but also the most time consuming – I was leaving at six to be ready for work at eight.  In the evening, I’d leave work before five but wouldn’t get home until after seven.  I was having a great time, but I was never home, and the housework was behind, and Bryan and I missed each other.

So now I’m back to driving all the way to work again.  In just a few weeks of fiddling with my commute, I learned a lot – I’m stronger now, and much better at coping with traffic.  I understand how to read the city bus schedules and route maps, and how to use the bike racks on the front of each bus.  And maybe most importantly, I know I CAN commute without a car – I can get myself from home in the suburbs to work in town, every day, for several days in a row, and have fun doing it.

Posted on

2 Rivers Bridge Dedication

The bike infrastructure and culture here is very strange.  Lopsided.  Great, and also terrible.

Cycling for recreation has become an accepted thing in the Little Rock area, I think.  Mountain bikers have lots of great trails in Little Rock and the surrounding counties.  Lycra-clad pavement cyclists whiz up and down the much-celebrated River Trail,but even it isn’t really finished – the signage is unclear, and parts of the trail have cyclists traveling on busy streets, or on narrow shoulders.  Years-long calls to “close the loop” are still being met with opposition from taxpayers and businesses in the city.

Cycling for transportation and utility is viewed as the province of the drunken and/or homeless.  Not many people care about interconnected trail networks or even safe bike lanes for people who actually want to GO SOMEWHERE on bicycles. Little Rock has yet to adopt a real ‘complete streets’ policy.In a city like this, would you expect to see THREE DIFFERENT dedicated bike/pedestrian bridges?  No, you would not.  But the county government supports cycling, even if the city government is halfhearted.  And so we have the Big Dam Bridge, the longest purpose-built bike/ped bridge in the US.  After much foot-dragging, the Rock Island bridge (AKA the stupidly named “Clinton Park Bridge”) is now being repaired and adapted for dedicated bike/ped use by the Clinton Foundation, as part of the park surrounding the museum.

And this week, we attended the dedication of the Two Rivers Park Bridge, spanning the Little Maumelle River to connect the west LR River Trail to Two Rivers Park.  It’s full of deer and other wildlife, and for years has been a community garden spot as well.  From the park, cyclists can ride low-traffic, paved county roads out past Maumelle Park, Pinnacle Mountain, and the quiet highways around the lake and up into the Ouachitas.