Riding for Roses

We are in the return from quarantine. Spencer’s counts started up last week. White counts are still low, but his rosy red lips and high energy suggest no need for red blood cells this week, so we went adventuring. This time, we didn’t even get the car stuck. Jacob had a lot of trouble sleeping last night, so I wound up in his room, sleeping on the guest bed and comforting or feeding him when he needed it. As a result, we slept in until almost 9 AM. After we finally got Jacob to school and stopped at It’s a Grind picked up a blended 50/50 for Spencer and a triple latte for me, we headed off on the long way to Bastrop. It’s a Grind is a franchise and this is the only Austin location. It’s locally owned and the employees are wonderful. They know Spencer and always ask how his treatment is going and what adventure we are having today. It’s cheaper than Starbucks and the closest thing I can find to a “true” local coffee shop in the suburban wasteland of far northwest Austin/Cedar Park near our house. The “long way” to Bastrop is really any way other than the direct way and we find our way without using a map or GPS. On occasion, this results in completely missing the plan, as happened with our misadventure near Enchanted Rock, but that just means we didn’t know what the real plan was.

We headed up 620 to Parmer. I must digress here and explain the concept of going on an adventure. If you know the Austin area, that we started at Anderson Mill Road at 620, and our destination was Bastrop, you might wonder why we headed northeast when our destination was southeast. It’s simple: we were not going to Bastrop, we were going on an adventure intended to probably include Bastrop. Adventuring within a city is usually more fun on bicycle or foot, so the first thing we do in a car adventure is get less urban. We headed up to Parmer so we could wander east towards Pflugerville and then wander somewhat aimfully from there down towards Bastrop mostly avoiding the major, or at least the really major, roads.

Natrually, we quickly became distracted. Last week, our health club, Full Court Fitness, announced they will be closing at the end of August and all memberships can transfer to a new Lifetime Fitness Austin location being built and scheduled to open September 1. We arranged our transfer last week, so as we drove by the new location at 620 and Amberglen¹, we decided to stop by the preview center to say “hi”, look at progress, and have Spencer play with the virtual tour of the club.

We headed east on Parmer and naturally got distracted by Fry’s Electronics and spent a little time looking at DVDs (Spencer wants to buy the SpongeBob movie), software (I sort of want to find piano teaching with MIDI support, but wasn’t wowed by anything), and Macs (I’m trying to convince Rachel to replace our desktop PC with an iMac mini and a new display).

Perhaps, the concept of an adventure is becoming more clear. Perhaps not as, so far, this was not entirely typical as it usually doesn’t involve these city stops. Perhaps it will become more clear by the end of this article.

We decided it was time to get out of the urban/suburban zone and drove out to the intersection of FM 734 and US290 in Manor, TX². Since we were close to the location of the Ride for the Roses we decided to try to find the 25 mile route. The adventure becomes more typical here since we had no map and I’ve never ridden the 25 mile ride. So, we went down Old TX-20 rather than Kimbro Road, but wound up in the right place until we missed the turn at Parsons Rd. immediately after. Despite that, I managed to decide to turn around after driving for a bit and we went on Parsons Road, but got stumped at Parsons Road and Lockwood Road and, by pure lick, made the correct choice and turned southeast on Lockwood. We would have stayed on course if I’d remembered Taylor Road, but I didn’t recognize it coming from the wrong direction (the 40 mile ride approaches it from a different road), so we decided we were lost, even though to this point we had found the right course. Not bad for blind wandering on a route I’d never ridden. Spencer wanted to get to the parks, so we decided to wander towards Bastrop instead of trying to find the course.

We kept going on Blake-Manor Road to FM-969 and followed that to the intersection of FM-969 and TX-71 in Bastrop. From there, I knew the way to the park, so we headed through town on Loop 150 to the Bastrop State Park entrance and went in and had a hike at Bastrop State Park for a break from driving.

For walking in a park, we use map-based adventure style since getting lost on foot is more expensive (in energy) and risky (we could get lost enough to not safely return). We decided to follow the Lost Pines Trail (the “purple trail” on the park maps) for a bit and then take the connector (orange trail) to make the hike a reasonable length. Even with high energy and 8.7 mile hike over hilly terrain on the Lost Pines Trail is a bit much for a 5 year old, and carrying Spencer the whole way would have been a little tough for me. We ate lunch while walking, tofu pups and juice for Spencer and a tortilla wrap and water for me. That took us almost to the top of the hill in the park and we crossed the park road and came back down the red trail to the camping area below where we parked. A short walk up an unnamed trail connecting the camping area to our parking lot and we were ready to leave after perhaps 2.5 miles of hiking. Spencer had me carry him up 4 hills, but ran at the end of the hike. I think I was suckered. I’m pretty sure red blood cells will not be necessary at the oncologist on Wednesday.

Done with the hike and running out of time, we drove on Park Road 1C over to Buescher State Park and took a quick look around. Buescher has a lake where you can fish or canoe, cabins, and a 7.7 mile out-and-back hiking trail, which we may work on some other time. Park Road 1C connects Bastrop with Buescher with a winding hilly ride through the Lost Pines area. It’s a pretty drive and, if you go when car traffic isn’t bad (e.g. on a weekday – we saw hardly any cars today), it is a wonderful bicycle ride. Finally, we passed through the Buescher State Park entrance and headed home the more conventional way.

¹ I chose the satellite link for Google maps here because the satellite photo is more recent than the map and shows Amberglen Blvd. built through to 620, while the map shows nothing there. That’s the second time I’ve noticed the photo being more recent than the map in Google Maps.

² I begin to get the impression I will find many out of date maps with more up to date satellite photos on Google maps. The map does not even have the extension of Parmer, which has been complete for some time now.