Thursday, May 22, 2014

Rolling Past Fun Town On Arlington's River Legacy Park Mountain Bike Trail

Water had almost been fully re-installed in my swimming pool by this morning's regularly scheduled pool dip.

To be totally topped off the pool still had about a foot to go at that point in time, but the deep end was sufficiently deep to facilitate the acquisition of some much needed endorphins from stimulating aerobic activity.

It has been awhile since I have rolled my mechanized wheels to Arlington to roll my non-mechanized wheels on the River Legacy Park mountain bike trail, so I decided to do so today.

Several weeks ago I whined about the lack of directional signage pointing the way on Fort Worth's Gateway Park's mountain bike trails. A couple days after I whined some directional signage showed up, but not nearly as copious as the directional signage that points the way on River Legacy  Park's much more convoluted maze of  trail loops.

Above you are looking at my handlebars looking at the signage for Fun Town, plus some directional signage.

To the left, not caught on camera, is another directional sign, with that sign having two arrows, both pointing left and down, with the down part indicating a drop-off. One of  those arrows is red, indicating experts only should think about taking that option. The blue arrow points to a slightly less scary drop-off that reaches the same spot as the scarier drop-off.

That is the scary, experts only, drop-off  you see above. The picture does not do this drop-off justice. That and you aren't seeing the steep uphill that comes after the drop-off

I opted to avoid rolling over anything scary and continued on past Fun Town without indulging in that particular fun.

The subject of Fun Town came up weeks ago in Gateway Park. I'd had a going the wrong way incident with a couple of bikers. I got them turned around and led them back to where they needed to be. This was the incident which prompted me to whine about the lack of directional signage on Gateway Park's mountain bike trails, with me having no way of knowing such signage was in the works and about to be installed a few days later.

The couple of bikers I got turned around and I stopped to chat when we reached the location where I could point them in the right direction. The lady of the pair asked me if there were any difficult areas on the trail. I asked what she considered difficult. She asked if I had pedaled the River Legacy Park trails. I indicated  I had. She then said something like, "You know that steep drop-off you come to shortly after leaving the parking lot, and then the next drop-off that follows that, followed by more ups and downs? That I consider difficult."

To which I pointed to a spot on the trail and said she would not want to go past that point, because it gets a bit challenging, more so than that first challenging section in River Legacy Park.

And then, for some reason, I brought up the scary sections of the River Legacy Park trails, that being the EKG and Fun Town loops.

Well.

She then told me they rode Fun Town all the time. And that it is a lot of fun! I incredulously then asked if they actually went down that first steep drop-off with the experts only warning, to be told, no, they avoid that part.

So, I guess I am going to have to give Fun Town a try. And get there by pedaling the paved trail to its end, because if I get to Fun Talk by the mountain bike trail by the time I get there I would have already pedaled several miles.

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