This part of Iowa is very rolling. There are some short but steep climbs on this route but it makes for some very pretty country. Bluffs border the road at some points. Then you descend into valleys where creeks run alongside the road. Lots of fields, farms and livestock. Redwing Blackbirds dogged me pretty much all the way over and all the way back. I’d forgotten how aggressive they can be. Perhaps I should say protective. As they swooped in, I was glad I was wearing a helmet. The blackbirds were joined by the much more pleasant sounding Meadow Larks and Cardinals. Familiar sounds to go along with the familiar sights.

The photo below was just one I snapped with the iphone camera on the way back to Andrew from Springbrook.

If I get a chance I’ll look for some Indian Paintbrush and some others and get a photo or two of them too. I snagged this shot on a school yard in Williamson Cty. The place was loaded with ‘em.

The Rosedale Ride was this morning. Great weather for it, though it was a little more challenging than anticipated. Met up with Jim and his buddy Ken Herman for the ride. While I think we’d all thought maybe we’d be doing the 42 miler when we started, the ridin’ was easy for the first 25 or so and at the fork in the road we veered onto the 62 miler. Never mind we’d been enjoying a tail wind for that first 25′ish miles.

While most folks were enjoying a nice breezy spring day, temps in the 70′s on their way to 80′s, out there east of Austin on the barren plains (barren at this time of year anyway) we were thinking it felt a lot more like “wind”. What had been effortless became real work. None of us had ridden much more than 40 miles in recent memory so the extra 20+ against the wind felt a little tough. Thank God for the rest stops. I piled in the food to stoke the fire.

Ride participation seemed a little lower this year than other Rosedale Rides I’ve been to. Could have been due to other events. As we rode out north of town we went by the Champion’s Triathalon event at Lake Pflugerville. Lots of bikes/people out there. And today was the LBJ 100 too. So many rides and choices at this time of year.

Finished up the ride pretty much spent, cramping and dreaming of what I’d have for dinner. But no doubt, I’ll be back for more another year.

Couldn’t presuade anyone to go out to Liberty Hill but that’s where I headed. Got a late start because of the time change but still on the ride by about noon. For a change of pace I did a bit different route over otherwise pretty familiar roads. Here’s the route map. About 37 miles.

The route included one of my favorite stretches of road out in that neck of the woods, and that’s cty road 336 between Oatmeal and Liberty Hill. It’s not a long stretch, but it rarely has traffic and runs along a creek that’s just pleasant to look at. The picture below was taken along this route. You can see the creek in the background. I couldn’t honestly tell you what the pink flowered bush is. There seemed to be one of these around every bend today. I don’t remember these in other years. Maybe we’re in for a good display of wildflowers this year. All the creeks are flowing so we’ve definitely had enough moisture this winter. No doubt I’ll post a picture here when they arrive.

And again for perspective, the left most tall building in the picture is the University of Texas Tower.

So I took this photo looking back onto downtown from the pedestrian and bicycle bridge over Town Lake. This is about a block or so from the office. There’s otherwise no good way to walk or bike over Town Lake in this section of town so the pedestrian bridge is a real blessing. Walking the regular Lamar street bridge where the cars/trucks are is practically a suicide mission. I’ve walked it and you realize once you get out there on the narrow bridge sidewalk that you’ve got cars whizzing by 1 foot to your left and a long drop to the river 1 foot on your right. Yikes.

Anyway, in the picture you’ll see the old art deco Seaholm power plant right smack in the middle (retired). Behind it is the 44 story 360 tower. Far off to the right is the incomplete Austonian. I’m not sure what the other one with the crane is. These are only a couple of many high rise condos that have sprung up in recent years. You’d never know there was a recession going on judging by the number of cranes and buildings still going up. Then again, many of these got started before things began to tank.

Anyway, the choices are many and varied as I wander among the downtown hipsters so my personal ‘blog project in the near term is to occasionally try to take note of it.

I took this from the top of the parking garage next to the office. Five floors up, you can get a pretty good view of the city up there. The lens I used is slightly telephoto, but not much. And I cropped the picture to the interesting part. The tree’s been a sight to stop a moment and gaze at in recent weeks before hopping in the car for the drive home.

I think we had better color a couple years ago, but it was nice to see these.