Man Bike Wild - Premiere Blogisode

It's Thursday! The day when the weekend began in college and right now I am enjoying a Shiner
Blonde Ale. It's been a long yet exciting day. The other great thing about Thursday's is NBC's primetime lineup. Office, Community, etc [NBC- what happened to Parks n Rec?]. Always Sunny is also on tonight so in the spirit of all these new shows on tonight I bring to you the premiere blogisode (new word coined by yours truly) of Man Bike Wild. Now if you don't watch the great show Man Woman Wild on Discovery. You should. Its an ex-military guy, typical survivor show but the company of his wife makes the show different and quite entertaining. Anyways, that is where the name comes from and the inspiration for how I will present this content. I'll be using YouTube, along with pictures for this series, the videos are short :30-1:30 but there are eight of them so feel free to read/view when you have 15 minutes to kill ;) This is interactivity at its finest.

The survivor mission is to reach Zilker Park from where we live which is right off Southwest Parkway. A map is below, however, I didn't come here to get killed biking on highways where crazies are going faster than the 65mph speed limit, plus I'm here for nature so I decided to do some research.

I discovered there was a path through the Barton Creek Wilderness Park that cuts through to the path that appears to run alongside the stream/river/creek. So I borrowed a "mountain bike" from the front desk and set for the journey at 10:15am. My thought was to leave early to avoid getting too hot. My plan was to find this "off-the-grid" path and then get on the greenway (green line above on map) and happily arrive at Zilker Park. Did I reach my destination? Read on.

Now from watching Man Woman Wild, Survivor-man and some of the fake Man vs Wild show, I knew I need to be prepared. Who knows what could happen in the crazy wilderness. To my horror, the bike didn't have a water-bottle holder. (Come on Preserve, spend the 10bucks and "Upgrade"). Luckily I have a juice-box size coconut water (gotta have those electrolytes). I also brought with me 2 granola bars, an iphone, a camera, $6 dollars in cash (in case someone was selling hotdogs in the park or something, 2 smarties candies, 3 tissues, 1 apple, and last but far from least in survival a pocket knife and book of matches. I've seen too many episodes where fire was needed but could not be made and with an iphone, who knows how long it will take to get a call through without dropping for rescue.

The Journey then proceeded. I found the path and took it. The terrain was no Lance Armstrong Bike Through the Park. Smartly, I wore a helmet, but even more smart, I walked the bike through the rock parts.

 This path was no commuter express to downtown, knocked over trees blocked my path and later the path would go directly into the stream, however, many spare paths were all over and it was easy to avoid the stream.

The other side of the tree was no dirt path either...

At this stage, the path below was a blessing...

But when your faced with a fork in the road, what do you do. First one I went left, because I checked out the right and it didn't look like a good choice. Second time I went right because that was the general direction I wanted to be heading (smart thinking indeed).

However, the path got worse.

It was at this point or a half hour earlier my daydream bubble of Summer and I biking to Zilker to play in the Springs Pool via this "route" I discovered popped. But I proceeded. Somewhere around here I took my first iphone video because a still shot could not capture the quiet, wooded solitaire I was experiencing. It was quite nice. I could have did without the spider webs all over though. Pardon the bad quality, bad lighting and non-edited videos but that's how this blogisode will roll.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkBAkS2rKZw

Next I came upon the river! I made it to the river/stream whatever. Thing is according to the map, the real "nice" path was on the other side. New goal, find a way to cross the river. I hear the serene sound of water washing upon rocks. I check it out, perhaps I can walk across some rocks, maybe there is a bridge...Nope, but it was picturesque. But as you can see the cameras I had didn't really catch the beauty, so I decided to do video from there on.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQuevJn71SM
 
However it was here that I saw my first glimpse of another human. A dog came running into the water along with a women of the woods. She told me, nope, there ain't a bridge across. Might be able to find a low spot or some rocks. I said thanks, did some more videoing (of which she came back so that's why this upcomming video is cut short and said if I went to the right I may find a rock bridge ahead of a waterfall....)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZQNhDrXcPI

I walked ahead a ways and here's the video...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kz24EPtAU8

Here I biked a bit further and stopped to take a break.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfY1fmpSdJ0

So before this next video, the "path" went into the stream, luckily there was a separate path that led to a dried up river bed which I walked/jumped across. The cliffs were pretty cool looking so I stopped to take a video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9BFwizwe4o

After this video, I interrupted some couple who was sitting on the path. I was friendly, told them I was lost, they gave me bad info and said "i dont think your supposed to bike after it rains in these parks" I said umm, I'm not from here, how would I know, and biked past them. Well not too fast because there I came upon a thin path. The cliff was on my right, the river on my left. Should have took a video or photo but one hand was on my bike the other holding onto a chain in the rock. I didn't fall it and I biked on. It was now around 12:15, Summer had some sandwiches and was all ready to meet me. Mean people had told me I was one hour and a half from zilker and would have to swim across the river twice. I didn't want to believe them but also didn't know if they were truthful. A kind man playing with his dog in the river, gave me some instructions. Here was the result:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQp_3qWRgMU

Here are the details of my excursion.
I biked/walked the bike - 4 miles. The time I was it took me was about 2 hours.

My path was the orange. Now you may say, hey you made it half way - why not keep going, well in the mexico episode, the woman of man women wild has signs of heat stroke and man decides to call in the Calvary aka the medic at the base camp 1 mile away. In a sense, that's total different from my situation, sure, but I had little water, my shirt was soaked in sweat, I was told I would have to cross water either by taking my shoes off or by some other means and was drained of energy. Plus if I kept going Summer would have to eat two sandwiches. Next time I will try a different route and get my own water bottle holder. Should I document it? Or did this linger on too long? Let me know. I will now leave you with the final video....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPEg16M4Rgc

Bon Voyage.