Following My Handlebars To Check Out Cowtown Wakeboarding & A Bridge To Nowhere

That Is Not Me Wakeboarding At Cowtown Wakepark

Today I decided to emulate one of my favorite blogs, that blog being Hometown by Handlebar and go check some locations in my current hometown via my own handlebars.

We'll be following the handlebars from Cowtown Wakepark to the Phyllis Tilley Bridge to Nowhere.

The parking lot for the Cowtown Wakepark is also a Trinity Trail parking lot. Which is one of the reasons  it was the starting point.

I would think a nice warm day, with that day being the first Saturday of summer, that Fort Worth's premiere urban wakeboarding lake would be really really busy.

Well, I thought wrong. There were two people in the water being pulled around the pond. The mechanism that does the pulling is ultra-quiet. I could not figure out how it worked. Not that I spent all that much time pondering. I'd not noticed the little pond on the right, in the picture, til today. It appeared to be some sort of training pond. There was one person in that pond who looked as if he or she was trying to stay on a waterboard, without much success.

In the main pond it looked like there are only two tow bars. Which would seem to mean only two people can be wakeboarding at a time. The wakeboarders zipped rather quickly around the pond, so I would think more than two at a time could get dicey. No idea how this works. You wakeboard for 10 minutes then give it up for the next person in line? Not that there appeared to be a line.

I think I've mentioned before that the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle has a real penchant for signage. The penchant has grown since my last exposure.

Now you have TRVB signage, plus signage from the TRVB's partner in delusion, the TRWD, as in Tarrant Regional Water District. Currently, you can stop what you are doing on the Trinity Trail and aim your smart phone at one of the ubiquitous "CHECK OUT our NEW Trinity iPhone App!" signs and get yourself some sort of Trinity Trail App.

At trail junctions there are now signs, courtesy of the TRWD, pointing you in the right direction to get to various Trinity Trail destinations. On the south side  of the sign in the picture we are directed to Stockyards, Marine Creek, Buck Sansom Park, Cowtown Wakepark, Gateway Park and Sycamore Creek. The north side of this sign points the way to Downtown, Panther Island Pavilion, Trinity Park, Cowtown Wakepark, Gateway Park and Sycamore Creek.

The redundancy in mentioning Cowtown Wakepark and Gateway Park and others on both sides of the sign is because they are all accessed by crossing that dam bridge across the Trinity River you see in the picture.

I find the fact that Panther Island Pavilion and Cowtown Wakepark are on these signs to be interesting. I remember when the Santa Fe Rail Market was on directional signage in Downtown Fort Worth with me remarking that that will soon need to be altered. I thought the same thing when I saw Cowtown Wakepark on the signs, particularly after seeing how meager its patronage was today.

Rockin' The River Panther Island Pavilion

As for Panther Island Pavilion. That is a Rockin' the River Inner Tube Happy Hour thing that is part of the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle. I was surprised to see that a sort of permanent pavilion has now been installed at the Rockin' the River Inner Tube Happy Hour location.

The permanent stage was not the only thing that surprised me in the Rockin' the River zone.

Surprises like there are now two sets of Fort Worth style modern restrooms for the comfort of Rockin' the River Happy Hour Inner Tube Floaters.

One of the restrooms was real upscale. With showers.

I don't know if you are required to take a shower before getting in the river, so as to not add to the pollution, or you have the option of taking a shower when you get out of the river so as to wash off the pollution.

The goofiest thing I saw in the Rockin' the River zone was 3 big, Thanksgiving Day Macy's Parade Float type things floating in the river.

The giant inner tube says it was MADE IN FORT WORTH. Is the creature floating in the inner tube some sort of caricature of Fort Worth's former mayor Moncrief?

Continuing on, let's jump ahead to the most surprising thing I saw today, that being the current condition of the Phyllis Tilley Memorial Bridge to Nowhere.

For some reason I thought the Phyllis Tilley Memorial Bridge to Nowhere was finished, opened, ready to transport bikers and pedestrians from one side of the Trinity River to the other. I was wrong. Instead I saw one of the messiest construction sites I have ever seen. What an eyesore. It did not look as if much work is going on. Wind was blowing construction flotsam up against the cyclone fence. I saw one big chunk fly over the fence.

I think I will end this blogging with the bridge debacle. I may do a part two of today's look at my current hometown by handlebars.

I almost forgot one more thing. One of my goals today was to check out the current state of the supposedly soon to open first new drive-in movie theater in America in a large American city in decades. I could find nothing that looked like a drive-in under construction.

Did Fort Worth get hoodwinked and hornswoggled again?