July 10, 2022-HOT Ride Part 2 the Movie, and the HEAT goes on!!

 On Sunday we already knew it was going to be a continued day of HEAT, maybe even up to 100 F, which is quite rare for Colorado Springs!! We decided to just take a cruise on the PP Greenway, then head to Manitou Springs via the Midland and Creek Walk Trails as that path has quite a bit of shade!! We did take several shade stops and drank a lot of water with Nunn tablets for added electrolytes, which actually does help when riding in HOT weather. :) We also use "water bandanas", the have a soaking center cloth strip so you get them WET and warp them around your neck to keep you head cooler!! 

This ride is also fairly FLAT as it's one of the true "rail trails" we have here in Colorado Springs, as stated before most of our trails are "Urban" trails remade into bike/walking paths. Even with the HEAT it was still a nice day for a ride and we found a picnic table in a shady spot at the park in Manitou Springs to eat our brown bag lunch! Had a nice conversation with a elderly gentleman for a bit then headed back east on the trail into downtown Colorado Springs with a stop at The Good Neighbors Meeting Place for some unsweet iced tea to go with our homemade Stevia sweetened/Spice cookies (yes, I, BJ made these cookies for Jo since she's a Type 2 diabetic and can't eat most store/bakery cookies!!) for our afternoon snack. We use Whole Wheat Flour instead of "White Flour" and yes, they have some carbs but when you "exercise/cycle" in the HEAT you still NEED some carbs to keep the blood sugar levels from "dropping" too much!!! 

Heading back via Shooks Run we stopped at Safeway food store to pick up more grapes for the dinner meal fruit as we try to use fresh fruit instead of "canned" fruit that has a lot more sugar! Got the trike put away in the apartment and man, the air conditioning sure felt good!

July 6, 2022-A multi-trail and under passes ride in the heat, then the heaven's opened up and we got drowned like RATS!! :O

Jo hemmed her sister Katy's dress to fit better so we decided to deliver it back via the trikes. We headed out over to their house using the Rock Island, South Homestead, (Canal) and Sand Creek Trails. I decided to take photo's of the several "underpasses" these trails use for street crossings to show their "condition". The underpass at Circle Dr. was FULL of Water and the gate was closed. It has a very poorly designed drainage system!! Next, the underpasses at both Palmer Park Blvd. and Murry Blvd. are USELESS, full of small boulders, deep sand and debris!! They need to be shutdown and lighted street crossing built, JMHO. The underpass at Chelton Dr. on the Sand Creek Trail is good and the new lighted street crossing on Fountain Blvd., is excellent!

A REAL Problem is the Academy Blvd. underpass on the SC trail, it's been full of homeless and trash, we had to ride around 2 homeless folks ASLEEP on the trail itself and trash!!!!!! The city says it's a POLICE problem, the police say it's a CITY problem, nothing get's done, it's very sad, NOTE: didn't take a photo due to homeless giving us the evil eye as we passed!!! Good news, they are FINALLY getting to construction of the finishing of the Sand Creek Trail to Hancock Expressway and adding a marked street crossing to be able to continue to the Southern Extension, YEA!!!!! The two underpasses on the south SC Trail extension over to Las Vegas St. are clear and very useful. The rest of our ride was mostly on city streets, we went thru the playing fields just off the Pikes Peak Greenway to get over to the overpass at the Harrision Exchange in the pouring RAIN!! We discovered you HAVE to go thru the Harrison High School lot to get to the entry to the overpass so we just found a traffic crossing light at Lake Ave. and Cheyenne Rd. and headed to the Southgate Panera Bread for iced tea. It was raining so hard that the bike lane was totally under water!!! we had to Share the lane with the car splashing us, it sucked!! We were soaked but made it to Panera Bread had our Stevia Spice cookies I baked and iced tea and waited out the very heavy RAIN!! It finally cleared so we headed home via the Tejon St. bike lane and the lovely Weber St. bike lane and were totally dry with VERY dirty/gritty recumbent trikes to wipe down and do a re-oil of the chains, cables, etc. It was a wild day to RIDE!!! 20 miles total sunny, hot, then massive RAIN.

July 4, 2022- We ride in a local Independence Day Parade and then headed out for a Lunch Ride!

 Well, the rest of June we did a few local rides on mixed trails and loops. We live on the outskirts of a older area of Colorado Springs, CO. called: The Historic Old Northend. Lot's of very expensive old Victorian type homes dating back to the mid 1800's in the days of the Gold rush in Cripple Creek, CO. The millionaire's built their mansion's on Wood Ave in growing Colorado Springs. LOL, no we live in a older 1970's apartment complex at the very norther edge of the Old Northend no mansion for us! ;) We found out there local neighborhood association has a little July 4th. Parade and has done this for the last 50 years!!  We found out about it too late to be a part of it last year so we decorated our trikes and joined in on the festivities!!

 We stagged on Wood Ave. at Bonington Park, lot's of kids on bikes, scooters, etc. and parents with strollers, wagons, etc. The Ave. had flags up and down the park had tables with treats for the kids after the parade. It was a 1 mile loop around the area a really big crowd showed up and we headed out. It finished back at the Park, from there we headed out to do a lunch ride and just enjoy being out riding our trikes on a beautiful Independence Day! Here is a video, sorry but due to a "camera or operator ERROR", I only have footage of the "stagging for the parade and NONE of the actual parade, RATS!! The rest is of the lunch ride! 

After 20 miles we headed back home, put the trikes away and pulled out the little indoor George Forman Grill to cook up some Hebrew Nation Jumbo Hot Dogs, Potato Salad, Zesty lentil crips and sliced apple with unsweet iced tea, YUM!! Hope you Independence Day Holiday was grand, Sadly we aren't near any of the local area fireworks displays so we watched the Macy's Fireworks show from New York in a dark living room on the TV, just a excellent day to be alive and ride a Recumbent TRIKE!! :)