Yesterday was the Pedal Power Wildflower Ride out in Stonewall. Actually, it starts from the park at the LBJ ranch, but I guess that is considered Stonewall. The ride name is a bit of a mouthful to say so I just way “Pedal Power ride”. I love the 60 miler route they do on this ride because it includes the Willow City Loop.

Kem’s off the bike for awhile so Jim and I did this ride. It’s a bit of a hike out to Stonewall so we were up before sunrise packing things up and heading out. Leaving from Jim’s up north we routed through Marble Falls on the way out. We had plenty of time so pulled into the Bluebonnet Cafe – home style cookin since 1929 – for some breakfast on the way. I don’t usually go for a big ranch hand style breakfast, but I figured I’d be burning more than a few calories on the ride so opt’ed for a really big breakfast. Scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon, biscuits – with gravy of course! – and coffee. Holy cow! Lots o’ food.

Gravy for breakfast is over the top but then there was the rest stop food along the ride. There was the usual bananas and cookies and things like that, but a couple of the stops had full sized sausage wraps, slices of what appeared to be summer sausage and two kinds of cheese cubes! Not your typical ride food. Had I not had the monster breakfast I might have given some of that a try but instead stuck with the bananas.

Ordinarily the route through the Willow City Loop is loaded with flowers at this time of year. Might have just caught it at the wrong time but this year, very few flowers. You really had to look for any at all. Last year Kem and I rode the same route and the area was blanketed with them.

Rosedale Ride

Although I have no pictures of it, I thought I’d also quickly mention last week’s Rosedale ride. It was cold and damp last week but I decided to go anyway. That ride is always really well attended. The routes are pretty flat ones northeast of Austin. Thankfully it never rained though it did sprinkle for a bit. For some reason people have a tendency on that ride to take off fast. The group seems to have this collective pent up need to race. Winds were out of the north and yet we were still humming along at a 20’ish mph pace as a group.

I was humming along quite nicely at the 24 mile point when bam! I snagged a nail in my rear tire. That’s actually a first for me. I’ve never picked up a full sized nail before. I hadn’t even seen it. Stuck in there it made quite a racket. Thankfully the tire wasn’t destroyed when it blew so I was able to just put in a new tube. I had trouble getting air in the tire though but some really kind soul named Tom happend by, stopped and filled it with one of those air canisters.