Rolling Through Fort Worth's Gateway Park For My First Mountain Bike Ride Of 2014

I finally successfully managed to have myself a mighty fine time on a mountain bike ride for the first time this year.

On Sunday I had intended to go on a mountain bike ride on the mountain bike trails at River Legacy Park, but I was running late, so I opted to go to the much closer Gateway Park.

But, when I got to Gateway Park and pulled my bike out of the motorized bike hauling device I was appalled to find the rear tire flat again.

Unlike the previous flat, which lingered un-inflated for months, I had the needed repair material ready for another tube fix.

Somehow in addition to the big rusty nail which caused the previous flat there was also a tiny little prick of a thorn stuck in the tire, causing the new tube to go flat.

So, today I went back to Gateway Park and managed to successfully pedal the mountain bike trails, including rolling past the location of the big rusty nail that began all this flat tire trauma.

The Gateway Park trails are in great shape. Best I have ever seen them.

I saw some new signage today which perplexed me. That is the perplexing sign below. Note the arrow pointing the mountain biker to pedal to the left? That trail to the left only goes a short distance before running into Randol Mill Road, or whatever it is that Randol Mill Road is called on the north side of Gateway Park.

This trail spur goes about 30 feet then makes a steep dip and then a steep climb up to the road. And then goes where? I have no idea. This seemed a bit dangerous to me. The picture below shows you why this seemed a bit dangerous to me.

You can see how steep the trail is. And you can also see what you might run into if you pedaled fast enough to make it up that steep climb.

Obviously I did not follow the direction of the pointing arrow, instead opting to continue on the trail I've pedaled many times previous, leading to the cliff overlook you see in the first photo above.

I am not the world's most observant person. An example of this is the fact that in the past two weeks I have twice been up close and personal with my bike's rear tire. However, I did not notice until I was lubricating the chain last night, after fixing the flat, that the tread on the rear tire is worn pretty much bald. No tread. No traction providing nubs. Bald.

Why is the rear tire bald whilst the front tire looks new?

Very perplexing.....

A Tandy Hills President's Day Hike With A Toppled Hoodoo

I was back on the Tandy Hills today for my annual President's Day hike.

Hours before my annual President's Day hike I had my annual President's Day hot tub hydrotherapy session with the added bonus of having my first successful swimming pool bout of the new year, with two pool dips of duration long enough that actual swimming took place before escaping back to the warmth of the hot tub.

On my last visit to the Tandy Hills, two days ago, I came upon what I thought was Tandy Hills Hoodoo IV.

Tandy Hills frequent hiker Stenotrophomonas then informed that there had been rises and falls of Hoodoos that I had not seen, with Stenotrophomonas estimating that the Saturday Tandy Hills Hoodoo was Hoodoo number VIII or IX.

Well, whatever number that Saturday Hoodoo was, by President's Day it was a toppled Hoodoo, the remains of which you see above.

A forensic exam of a couple of the previous fallen Hoodoos made me think the destruction was manmade, due to the fact that the boulders from which the Hoodoos had been constructed had been thrown around, helter skelter.

A forensic exam of this latest fallen Hoodoo seems to indicate it toppled by natural means, with the boulders appearing in order on the ground, toppled likely by the means by which Stenotrophomonas thought the Hoodoos have toppled, that being either from the wind or fracquakes. We have had a lot of wind blowing lately. And fracquakes, though I don't know if any have shaken the Tandy Hills zone.

Anyway, I had myself a mighty fine time on this mighty fine President's Day with about an hour of high speed hill hiking.

And now I am hungry.

My annual President's Day lunch is in the oven. Chile relleno casserole, corn bread with diced poblano, cole slaw and beans. Everyone knows this was George Washington's favorite lunch, hence it being on my President's Day menu....

Getting Drizzled While Learning About New Hoodoos & Contemplating My Non-Existent Rattlesnake Selling Business

I had had no weather predictor's prediction warning me, so it came as a surprise to step outside for my regularly scheduled hot tub hydrotherapy session to find myself in a dense fog being pummeled by incoming drizzle.

I think the dense fog and drizzle added a nice moisturizing touch to the hydrotherapy session.

The fog and drizzle had lifted a bit by the time I took the photo you see here from the vantage point of my elevated patio view.

I am hoping the fog lifts and blue sky returns by the time I drive to River Legacy Park to pedal the mountain bike trail.

Speaking of trails. Yesterday I mentioned yet one more Tandy Hills Hoodoo resurrection. I thought this to be Hoodoo IV. I was not too surprised to hear from Stenotrophomonas that I was erroneous in my Hoodoo count.

Stenotrophomonas frequents the Tandy Hills far frequenter than I frequent them.

This is what Stenotrophomonas had to say....

Stenotrophomonas has left a new comment on your post "Another Saturday Tandy Hills Hoodoo Resurrection Before Going To Town Talk With Connie D":

I think that's at least Hoodoo VIII or IX. There's been several short lived hoodoos and then some modified ones. There was a hoodoo Thursday afternoon that may or may not have been exactly the one there Saturday. It's probably the wind, or maybe very small fracquakes that have destroyed most of the previous hoodoo incarnations. Surely if the Hills were full of mad Mormon scoutmasters, one of us would have caught them by now. 

Changing the subject from Stenotrophomonas and Hoodoos to rattlesnakes.

The  super-controversial Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup is next month. I won't be going. One visit was enough to last a lifetime.

Due to this being the Rattlesnake Roundup time of the year I am getting requests for rattlesnake products and other rattlesnake related questions. Why my Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup webpage causes people to think I sell snake products, I don't know. More often than not the requests for my non-existent rattlesnake products come from the UK or Germany.

This morning's attempt to buy one of my rattlesnake products came from a surprising location. Below is the message from a customer...

I am a skull collector looking to add a rattlesnake to my collection.  I would prefer to get a whole snake. Is it possible that one of the hunters would be able to send me a whole skinned snake. I would pay for shipping and all. You can e mail me or call me at 425.530.XXXX.

Area Code 425? Is that Houston I thought to myself. I then Googled "Area Code 245" to learn...

Area code 425 is a telephone dialing code in Washington for the suburbs north and east of Seattle, particularly the Eastside, extending east to North Bend, north to Everett, and south to Maple Valley. 

Washington? My latest rattlesnake customer is from Washington? Why could he not simply get on I-90 and head east to Eastern Washington and go hunt himself a rattlesnake?

I remember once when I was a young lad, my brother and I were exploring cliffs at Sun Lakes State Park in the aforementioned Eastern Washington. A park ranger showed up and advised my brother and me that we would be well advised to high tail it out of there due to the fact that the ranger had spotted several rattlesnakes a short distance from our location.

Til that moment in time my brother and I did not know that rattlesnakes were anything we might encounter in Sun Lakes State Park.

I wonder why no locale in Eastern Washington has a Rattlesnake Roundup? I suppose an insufficient supply of rednecks and an over supply of well-educated sorts with a high level of common sense might have something to do with there being no Rattlesnake Roundup in Eastern Washington.....

Another Saturday Tandy Hills Hoodoo Resurrection Before Going To Town Talk With Connie D

I was back on the Tandy Hills on this 3rd Saturday of the 2nd month of 2014 and once again I found the Tandy Hills Hoodoo has once again risen from the grave, making this latest iteration Tandy Hills Hoodoo IV.

Tandy Hills Hoodoo IV looks to be a bit tipsy, what with its biggest component being its midsection, with the base nearly as narrow as the top.

By tipsy I did not mean the use of the word which indicates alcoholic inebriation, but rather the meaning of the tipsy word which indicates some object appears to be a bit precarious, as in, easily tipped over.

Today I saw a greater number of Tandy Hills hill hikers than any other previous day, other than a Manly Men Wild Women day or a Prairie Fest day, those being days when the hills are infested with hikers.

I had three unleashed dog encounters today, from three different human contingents. All the dogs were friendly, but I really do not like getting dog swarmed when I am basking in the glow of endorphin bliss.

Saturday started off with an extremely salubrious hot tub hydrotherapy session that I think was of a vigorous enough nature that it went aerobic and thus induced some endorphins. Today's high speed hill hiking definitely induced more endorphins.

By the time I got to Town Talk, post-Tandy Hills, I was at an extremely high level of blissful endorphin sedation.

I expected to see Fort Worth's Connie D today at Town Talk due to an email I got last night from Facebook in which I was informed that Connie D  had mentioned me on Facebook, as follows...

Connie wrote: "Fun! I am running by Town Talk tomorrow if it kills me. I haven't been in a year and Durango Jones posts about what he gets have been driving me crazy."

Connie D's Facebook comment mentioning me and Town Talk was in reply to a Facebook post by Mr. Old where Mr. Old mentioned that for Valentine's Day Mr. and Mrs. Old had lunched at the new Waters seafood restaurant before going treasure hunting at Town Talk. The Olds are a very young couple for having such an old name.

As for Town Talk, I did not find Connie D among the treasures today.

I did not have much luck with the Town Talk treasure hunting today. I only got a couple blocks of sharp cheese, a bag of sirloin burgers, a bag of granola, a pack of chorizo and maybe a thing or two I am forgetting right now.

I may be back to check on the newly resurrected Tandy Hills Hoodoo tomorrow. Then again I feel drawn to the River Legacy Park mountain bike trails....

Dallas & Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision Boondoggles

I know Fort Worth propaganda-izing history revisionists claim that the Fort Worth Trinity River Vision was coming into view before the Dallas version of the Trinity River Vision.

However, it was soon upon my arrival in Texas, in late 1998, that I became aware of the fact that Dallas voters had approved a Trinity River Vision Plan.

I think it may have been as late as early in the next century I was surprised to see a big headline on the front page of the Sunday edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram trumpeting something like "Trinity Uptown To Make Fort Worth the Vancouver of the South."

Huh? I remember saying to myself. It was not long before the "Vancouver of the South" propaganda was dropped.

Til this morning I did not realize the extent to which Dallas and Fort Worth are still sharing mutual Trinity River Visions, both of which, in various ways, are in boondoggle mode.

This morning, in the Dallas Observer print edition, in a blog article titled Dallas' Incredible Shrinking Lakes I learned that the Dallas' Vision's lakes, which I previously thought were big, have shrunk to pond size, just like Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision's little pond.

Below is part of what you will read in the Dallas Observer's Dallas' Incredible Shrinking Lakes article...

White Rock Lake, just for grins, is 1,015 acres. Based on what I heard yesterday, the Trinity River lakes we voted for in downtown in 1998, when finally built, will be one lake, 20 acres, 10 feet deep.

Oh, and the money for it is mostly gone. Even to dig the 20-acre thing -- pretty much what people in West Texas call a cattle tank -- the money will have to be filched from other accounts.

But the money for that toll road on top of the river, the one that will cut off downtown from all the parks they're supposed to build? Goin' strong. Don't worry about that money, man. It's in the bank.

Those are the main take-aways from a City Council committee meeting yesterday on the status of the Trinity River project. Yeah, 20 acres, a lake small enough that it could be closed by one family with diarrhea, not to be gross about it, but you get what I mean. Not a lake. A pond. In July a body of water that small and that shallow in downtown Dallas Texas is basically a saucepan.

May I share with you the part that I found sort of hilarious? Originally we were supposed to have more like 300 acres of water in three small conjoined lakes along the Trinity, but you have to remember that those lakes were designed in two phases.

First they were designed on a napkin by a political ad agency in 1998 trying to think of some shit they could put in the TV ads to get people to vote for a toll road that nobody needed or wanted. In the second, later design phase, the lakes were redesigned by former Dallas Observer columnist and Mayor Laura Miller for something she called "The Balanced Vision Plan," evoking a quality for which she was not known here.

Since then, according to yesterday's briefing before the council's Transportation and Trinity River Project Committee, some actual engineers have been looking into it, and they found out four things:

1. The old bridges across the river have piers that sit on mud instead of going down to bedrock, so if you dig out a lake around them the bridges will fall down (not good).
2. If the lakes get any closer to the river than 200 feet, the federal government will require the city to build actual dams between the lakes and the river at huge expense (not possible).
3. If you dig deeper than 10 feet anywhere in the river bed, you punch through the clay cap and get into sand, and all the water will leak out as fast as you put it in (shit).
4. There's no water anyway. The river doesn't have enough water in the summer; the lakes will evaporate; you have to fill them from water wells; the wells cost $1 million apiece.

Happy Dysfunctional Valentine's Day From Texas

I saw that which you see on the left on Facebook a couple minutes ago, courtesy of Tootsie Tonasket, aka Aunt Alice.

It amused me.

I thought the "U SOUND LIKE UR MOTHER" and the "OK 4 YOUR AGE" hearts were the most amusing.

I was listening to the radio this morning, The Bert Show on 102.9 FM. One of the male members of The Bert Show has been whining about Valentine's Day all week, opining it is not a real holiday, but instead a Hallmark manufactured holiday in which he chooses not to participate.

So, the other members of The Bert Show's cast sort of ganged up on the anti-Valentine's Day guy, including bringing Bert's kid into the ongoing psy-oping of the anti-Valentine's Day guy.

The anti-Valentine's Day guy's argument against Valentine's Day was that he showed his love muffin how much he loved her all year long, that making a special fuss on a manufactured holiday was just unseemly and unnecessary.

I am paraphrasing. It's not like I was taking notes.

Anyway, the only part of the anti-Valentine's Day guy's argument which seemed a bit bogus to me was the claim that it was a holiday manufactured by Hallmark.

Maybe the anti-Valentine's Day guy was just using Hallmark as a catchall for the entire give a gift on a special occasion industry.

I remember, decades ago, in grade school, on Valentine's Day, everyone would make a big envelope by stapling two pieces of construction paper together. Classmates would then stick Valentines into the big envelopes.

If my memory is serving me correctly it seems like we made the Valentine cards ourselves from more of that aforementioned construction paper. I don't remember buying any sort of Valentine card of the Hallmark sort. I don't think I would have willingly spent any of my very meager allowance on such a thing.

And now, decades later, I still do not willingly spend any of my very meager allowance on Valentine's Day cards....

Rolling My Wheels Past Arlington's Interlochen Canals Wondering About Fort Worth's Phantom Trinity River Vision Boondoggle Canals

My handlebars and the rest of my bike took me on a tour of Arlington's Interlochen neighborhood today.

Those would be the aforementioned handlebars you are looking at in the photo, pointing towards one of the Interlochen canals.

Seeing the scenic Interlochen canals always brings the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle to mind.

Are canals still part of the plan for the TRV Boondoggle? I have no idea.

If canals are part of the Vision, does anyone have any idea when one might be seeing the Vision's canals?

How come I don't ever hear of anyone but me wondering why there is no timeline completion schedule type information regarding the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle of the sort that existed for previous public works projects I have witnessed in parts of America that operate like a full functioning democracy where the people get to vote on the public works projects they pay for?

Changing the subject from boondoggles to something else.

Today was my first successful bike ride of the new year. An extremely windy bike ride. It  felt good to be back rolling the wheels of a non-motorized device.

The current forecast is for day after day after day of temperatures in the 70s and 80s. I suspect there will be some more bike rides in my immediate future. That and maybe some actual pool time.

This Morning I Learned I Do Not Belong In Texas

This morning I learned from Nurse Martha, via Facebook, that, apparently, I belong in Massachusetts, a state which I have never visited.

I learned this on a website called buzzfeed.com by making some choices on a page titled What State Do You Actually Belong In?

The choices were a list of items in picture form, like which baby do you prefer. Which actor? Which scenery? Which TV show? Which movie quote? Stuff like that.

How my answers led me to Massachusetts is a mystery to me.

However, the final summing up, the screencap of which you see above, was spookishly accurate, describing me as tough as nails and not afraid to tell people what I really think. And that this particular trait can work for or against me at times, but that really does not matter because, apparently, I am a unique person who does not care what others think. I am also as humble as I am rambunctious and could maybe beat Connecticut in a fist fight.

I don't recollect ever being in a fist fight before. A bitch slap, or two, or three, yes. But no fist fights....

Enjoying A Warm Fort Worth Fosdick Lake Fosduck Tortilla Feeding Frenzy

Fosduck Flax Seed Blue Corn Tortilla Feeding Frenzy

I was not the only one having a mighty fine time today walking around Fosdick Lake in Oakland Lake Park.

In addition to humans enjoying the relatively balmy weather the Fosducks were seeming particularly quack happy today.

I brought flax seed blue corn tortillas with me today to feed the Fosducks. I did not much care for these tortillas and worried the Fosducks might also have an aversion.

Instead of an aversion the flax seed blue corn tortillas pretty much caused a feeding frenzy, quickly drawing in ducks from all corners of Fosdick Lake.

Previously, when I fed the Fosducks pieces of whole wheat bread, they seemed almost to treat that treat with disdain. Certainly not a feeding frenzy.

The fact that the Fosducks went ravenous over the flax seed blue corn tortillas had me pondering if maybe the Fosducks were illegal alien ducks, flying from Mexico across the border, without proper paperwork, with tortillas seeming more like the native food they were used to, than gringo whole wheat bread.

Anyway, I was quite pleased to be back in the outer world attired in shorts and t-shirt without getting cold.

The next few days are supposed to get borderline hot. As in the 70s, maybe low 80s. Methinks I shall be doing some high speed Tandy Hills hill hiking for the next several days.

A Hot Tub Hydrotherapy Session With Beef & Biscuit

In the photo you are standing with me on my patio viewing platform on the outer world from whence I am zooming in on the location of my hot tub hydrotherapy on this Thursday the 13th, day before Valentine's Day, on another blue sky morning in North Texas.

Due to freeze related issues I had not had a hot tub hydrotherapy session for several days. Without hydrotherapy the outer world frigidity causes my aged joints to ache.

The hot tub hydrotherapy quickly abated my aching joint woe this morning.

Due to the return of normal weather I was feeling sort of gungho to have myself some high speed Tandy Hills hill hiking today. Then I thought that it might take a day or two of not freezing for the Tandy Hills to dry up. And so I think I will do  some faux hill hiking at Oakland Lake Park today and hope to remember to bring the Fosducks some duck food.

Changing the subject to something else.

Decades ago whilst I was preparing to leave home to go to college my mom insisted I learn a few skills. Like  ironing. I never actually used that ironing skill, so that lesson from mom was not needed.

The skill I did end up having a use for was learning the basics of cooking.

Mom thought it a good idea for me to learn how to make four basic recipes. Of those four I only remember three of them. Beef Stroganoff, Sweet and Sour Chicken.

And Beef & Biscuit.

I have not made Beef & Biscuit for decades.

A couples weeks ago I was talking to my Arizona sister when she made mention of the fact that Beef & Biscuit was on her Super Bowl Party menu.

Being reminded of Beef & Biscuit and totally not remembering how to make it had me asking my sister for directions. The directions were fairly simple. One of the absolutely necessary ingredients is a green pepper. I acquired three green peppers on my last visit to Town Talk.

And so, this morning I've done the prep work for making Beef & Biscuit. Only my version is Turkey & Biscuit.

Lunch should be tasty today. If you've been invited, don't be late...