Second in a series of my adventure of trying to bike from the hills of southwest Austin to the just south area of downtown, known as Zilker Park. Today you'll find mostly words with just a dash of video. If you didn't catch the you-tubes of the first adventure, I recommend them =)
To eliminate thoughts that I am this out-of-shape, tricycle-needing, kind of guy, I'll use this post as a background to this adventure series, because I won't lie, attempt 3 did not get me to Zilker. Below is a clip from the website I found and have been using as a tool to get me from the hills to the park. If it is blurry to you, the info is found towards the bottom of this page:
http://bicycleaustin.info/getaround/routes.html
So as you may read this is not easy bike in the park. My first attempt was #4. Their description for the Mountain Bike Route paints a far easier trail then actual. #2 will not be attempted because I don't want to play chicken with crazy drivers. #3 will be the next and "final" attempt. But most recently was a pseudo #1. #1 here has you going up long hills and such. I wanted to sneak through some woods and find the bridge that gets me to the other side which is located on Lost Creek. The bridge/road across the creek was just above the circle 2 on the map below. As you can see I did a lot of run-abounds and came across a bunch of private roads or no trespassing posted sign paths. Being in Texas, I obeyed all posts. Travis cook road to Barton Creek Blvd to Bee Cave would have been some serious lance armstrong hill biking and I'm not there yet, so finding a way to get across the creek and check to see if there is a better path on the other side was my goal.
The first part of the journey had me biking on side streets looking for a hidden path. No success, just huge houses. First, I found a long barbed wire fence, then I found another path but it was just to a place behind pine trees and thick forest, the third was a path part of a school which has a nice little nature-science themed path but it led to a farm like area where little kids were gathered so I decided not to go sneaking around during a class in session. Back to the main road, I then decided to go up Southwest Parkway a bit and see what those roads were like on my iphone map apps. I wasn't ready to give up as this time I was prepared. 20 bucks, a wal-mart camelbak full of delicious water, granola bars, left over pizza, an apple, wet naps, and my phone. My money clip had a knife, I went daredevil this time because I couldn't find the matches and since bringing them was mainly a joke, I went on without them.
After biking on the side of traffic, I found an off-shoot. To my dismay it was a private drive way and the gate looked like very important lottery winners lived there. However, there was a small dirt path to the side so I followed it. It followed the highway for a bit and then crossed right. Hopes were high. The path went downhill and then into deep woods, I hit another snag and the path ended, dead trees were all that I could see and once I realized this brush was too thick and wouldn't end, I sadly turned around. The sound of a howling coyote scared the granola bar out of me and I peddled swiftly back up to the origianl path along the freeway. After a quick snack of some left over tasty pizza from my snack pack and re-hydration time, I cruised down the hill back home. Below is a pic of the path on the left and on the right is a way bigger than necessary house on a hill.
So there you have it. This journey is seen to me as more of an exploratory bike ride. Therefore failure doesn't come to mind. For those of you not at work or class and would like to see how retarded I look in a helmet, I did do one short 1.5 min video of me stopping wondering if I should continue down the original path or check out this off-shoot. Minutes later I will discover the off-shoot path was just a half-moon shape and led right back to the original path. 5 mintues later I will deem to go no further.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fonHEGj-x9I
That's all for now folks. Perhaps next week I will do the road adventure which will be successful but long.
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