This past Saturday was the weekend for the annual Rosedale Ride in Austin. The Rosedale Ride’s been going on for years and is a benefit for the Rosedale school. You can read all about it at the link above.

It’s always been a well supported ride and well attended. The route is over the mostly flat terrain east of Austin. The difference between riding east of Austin and riding to the west where I live can be dramatically different. To the east, plains. To the west, craggy hills. As this article on the Balcones Escarpment describes, to the east: farmers, to the west: ranchers.

Saturday turned out to be a nice day for riding and the route is a pleasant ride through farmland and pastures. It always reminds me of many rides in Iowa. It looked doubtful earlier in the week whether I’d even go because it’s been pretty rainy here. But on cue, the clouds parted and a blue sky emerged just as we were about to take off on the ride. Too bad the wind was blowing at 15+mph out of the southeast though. We slogged through most of the 2nd half of the ride against it. The tailwind at the start was awesome though!

Kem and I had other things to get to on Saturday and opted for the 45 miler. The other people in the picture to the right were doing the 62 miler (100k).

This is probably the best time of year to do a ride out on the east side of Austin. Things are really green and despite the flat nature of the farmland, you get some pretty nice vistas. And as the picture below of Kem rounding  one of the country roads will attest, some nice looking fields of colorful flowers.