“I owe the city birthday cake, and thank you cards are due”(1)

It’s been nearly 18-months since I moved to Austin, and many things are making it seem like home, places, faces, events and more. Some events are more memorable than others, good and bad.

One of the surprise things I did last year, and will be repeating this year, is bike to work day. Last year I headed from South Austin up north to work. I do this often, but only in the quickest, shortest, most direct route, it’s an 25-mile round-trip and not particularly memorable if you discount racing the buses, and sometime breakdowns, getting caught in a true Texas downpour,and the occasional car drivers’ abusive hand signals. Mostly though, I’d say the car drivers here are better than most other cities I’ve cycled in!

Bike to work day last year was much more fun than the normal ride to work! I rode the shoulder on 360, up Great Hills Trail to Jollyville Rd and finally coming to rest at Bucks Bikes. Donuts and a quick chat with some other bike to workers including one of Austins tireless(no pun intended) Volunteers @anetmarie, and I was off to work.

This year there is an even longer list of places providing a “free” breakfast for cyclists and the weather is looking good. I’m going to venture a bit further, in fact all the way up to Music City Cycles on W Parmer, where this year @anetmarie is a co-host.

In fact, checking the current list of breakfast stops, if I plan my route carefully, I could end up in a calorie surplus, there goes the waist line!

Bike to work day is part of Bike Month, the Austin Cycling Association usually have a calendar online, but as of writing it’s gone AWOL. Hopefully it will be back in shape soon. In the meantime, the current list of breakfast stations includes the following and official hours are 7-9am:

•Whole Foods, Sixth & Lamar
•City Hall Plaza, 301 W. Second (sponsored by city of Austin employees)
•Texas One Center, 505 Barton Springs Rd. (also sponsored by city of Austin employees)
•Texas Bicycle Coalition, 1902 E. Sixth
•Mellow Johnny’s, Fourth & Nueces
•Wheatsville Co-op, 3101 Guadalupe
•Bicycle Sport Shop, 517 S. Lamar
•Shoal Creek Boulevard at the Far West Bridge
•Music City Cycles, 6301 W. Parmer #504
•Jo’s Coffee, 1300 S. Congress
•Freewheeling Bicycles, 24th & San Gabriel

If you see a big guy cycling on 360 on Friday with a bag over-flowing with donuts, that will be me, make a wide pass please!

(1) Lyrics (c) Steven O’Reilly, Tammany Hall NYC, Ceilings in the sky.

One thing I learned last year is that May is a big month for cycling in and around Austin, this year won’t be any different.

Events start out on Friday with the Civic Bicycle Cruise/Political Pedal. Meet up at Meet at City Hall Plaza, 4.45pm. for the 5pm to 6pm ride, this isn’t just for just dedicated road bikers, anyone with two or even three wheels, fat tire, mountain bike, or a commuter bike should come along. It’s a chance to join your elected officials and community leaders in this convergence of politics and the joy of cycling!

Plan on staying downtown after the ride for the Bicyclists’ Happy Hour - from 6:00pm – 7:30pm at The Rio Grande Restaurant, 301 San Jacinto Blvd. (on the Lance Armstrong Bikeway no less). Snacks, drinks and meeting of minds! I’m told there will be valet bike parking available, something I for one have never seen before and live Austin music by Jim Keaveny and Shand Walton. The Happy hour is put together by the Austin Cycling Association, the Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant and the Rio Grande cycling team along with sponsors Bicycle Sport Shop, the Austin Yellow Bike Project, the Texas Bicycle Coalition, the League of Bicycling Voters and REI.

For some of us, Friday is a warm-up for Saturdays Austin to Shiner GASP ride. The 2008 edition celebrates the Spoetzl Brewery’s 99th anniversary and for those volunteering or riding the 90-miles from Austin to Shiner, there will be a party with BQ dinner with brisket, sausage, vegetarian options, Live Texas Country Music as well as Miles From Nowhere, Eric Middleton, as well other bands. One of the big attractions is the FREE Shiner Beer. Makes cycling sound fun doesn’t it ;-)

I’ve no idea what effect Shiner beer is going to have on me after cycling 90-miles, but either way I guess I’ll end up “legless”. Fortunately @cruisergirl has agreed to give me and my trusty aluminum steed a ride back to Austin. If you are riding, do yourself a favor and do packet picket either Thursday or Friday at Jack and Adams on Barton Springs, then Saturday morning you’ll be ready to ride. If you want to ride and raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, registration is still open, you can even register on the morning of the ride. You’ll need to figure out how to get back though.

For other Bike Month activities, the Austin Cycling Association has an excellent online calendar. If you spot someone walking around like John Wayne, that will be me, not that I becoming localized, but 6-hours on a bike saddle… as John Wayne famously said “It’s such an adrenaline rush. It’s America’s most extreme sport.”

The city remains concerned about people ignoring, moving, climbing over and in other ways avoiding the barriers put up on the South 1st bridge over Town Lake. This is especially true at the North End, where the work is being done on Caezar Chavez and a new ramp from the bridge down to the trail is being built. The April 4th project managers report spells this out, and it’s mentioned in others. The reports are here.

The city hopes that the problem will ease with the opening of the trail again between Shoal Creek and Congress on the north side. However, my bet is the problem will continue. The problem is many people like the shorts loops between South 1st and Lamar footbridge, it’s a social distance for a walk, and it’s a good fast-run distance for beginners and there’s no access to the trail from the north east side. Either way what that means is there is no way to do loops without crossing the street, unless you step-it-up and go Lamar to Mopac.

While the works continue, I’ve seen some folks doing incredibly stupid things. Thursday last week I saw a guy running in the traffic lane on the west side of the bridge around 6.45pm, that was mad enough, but he was wearing a headset - No idea if cars were coming right behind him, and angering drivers who had to pull out. Then there are the bemused ones, having found themselves on the road at the north west corner of the bridge, then can’t work out what to do next. Like a Dear caught in headlights they make a last minute decision and run for it.

I spoke to the city project major Rick Colbrunn, he says it will be another 4-6 weeks before the new ramp with access to the trail is ready. Be careful out there…

The weather is just about perfect for riding a bicycle right now. Yesterday we took advantage of one of the profligate cycling clubs and joined the Circle C Ranch Cycling Club for their Sunday morning ride. There was a time when I would not have had too hard a time keeping up with them on the route chosen - down William Cannon to Barton Creek Boulevard, then Bee Cave Road to 360 and into the hills of Westlake - but whew! now I remember just how many hills Austin has.

So perhaps you’ve been thinking that getting on a bike would be a good way to get some exercise, but you’re not sure where to start? Maybe you’ve ridden around the neighborhood or participated in a charity ride like the Armadillo Hill Country Classic in Liberty Hill (coming up again on May 10th)? Or you read in today’s daily that May is Bike Month and maybe, just maybe, you’ll try biking to work on Friday, May 16th? Well, be sure to check out:

• Austin Cycling Association - a cycling club for people of all levels and abilities. ACA organizes rides around Austin every weekend and sometimes during the week, as well as providing information and resources for cyclists. They have a full calendar of Bike Month events.
• Austin Flyers - another cycling club that has a bit more of a focus on helping beginner racers. It is unusual in that it is led by women - but men are welcome.
• City of Austin Bicycle Route Map - download a PDF of the bicycle routes or get info on ordering a copy.

See you on the road, hopefully on two wheels! Please be kind to cyclists when you’re out driving, too!

If you weren’t listening to the Wakeup Call this past week, here’s just some of what you missed: a long and in-depth forum featuring the candidates in the Democratic primary run-off election for district attorney, many first-hand accounts from those who attended the Travis County Democratic convention this past weekend as delegates or alternates, and a discussion this morning with a call-in by Chief Acevedo on how the Austin Police Department is preparing for the Texas Relays and all the visitors that this major event will bring to Austin this week. KAZI 88.7-fm broadcasts the Wakeup Call from 7 to 8 am five days a week.

Chief Acevedo said that there will be more information about APD and the Texas Relays weekend up at the City’s site later today, but it’s not there yet. He was encouraging visitors to see more of Austin than Sixth Street only. There’s way more than the official Relays site, with its schedule of all the track and field events. Here are some sources for the party side: Urban 512, SoulCiti, the Urban Music Fest, and TexasRelays.com. It’s the site for the Urban Music Fest that brings us a guide, complete with reviews, of some Austin restaurants owned by African-Americans, with information supplied by the Austin Blackpages.

The local daily has a Google map constantly updated by readers. It’s reachable on line from the home page (scroll down to “where are you watching the game?”). The map has been seen over two thousand times already. Word has it that home viewers with Grande or AT&T service can watch from their recliners in comfort, but they’re in the minority. Some people are installing alternate broadband service just to see this game. AT&T and Grande trucks have been sptted everywhere the last couple of days. How to see this game is a hot topic on local listservs so I thought that others might be interested as well.

Update: The link for “where are you watching the game?” has been changed since the above entry was initially posted; a kind person with the local daily reported the changed link and the correction has been made above. The link is to the reader entries reporting locations where the game may be viewed. At shortly after 1 pm, the number of map-views was over 3,200.

Update 2: So I’ve been asked. Yes; the game’s on the radio. As always, tune the radio to KVET 1300-AM. The inconspicuous button to click for streaming audio is to the right on the gray bar near the top of the page, just above the black menu bar. The map has been viewed over 6,800 times as of shortly after 7 pm.

Unless you’ve lived through years of Central Texas droughts, you probably consider us perverse for praying for rain. This weekend, however, was weird for us because, for once, we we’re praying it didn’t rain. The reason: AJ was participating in the CapTexTri (Capital of Texas Triathlon). Swimming in Town Lake is never pleasant; swimming in Town Lake after run-off swollen Shoal Creek has been pumping oil, dog poop, and trash into it is just nasty.

So, ever since Friday, we’ve been shaking our fists at the gloomy skies. After all this is the week for memorable weather, the week when old-timers swaggle their fingers at the young and recall the Memorial Day flood (1981) and the Jarrell tornado (1997).

About 3 this morning we were awakened by thunder and rain. It rained moderately until 6 when it began pouring down. AJ’s Blackberry was buzzing with text messages. “Swimming cancelled. Stay tuned.” Half an hour later, “Event cancelled.”

A triathlon requires a lot of training on the part of the participants and effort on the part of the sponsors; I never realized how much. Everyone is disappointed…and now at 7:30 am, as people would be gathering to begin, the rain has stopped.

Today, Me and a fellow amateur (i.e. really lame) disc golfer went to play a few rounds at Zilker Park only to find they were in the middle of relocating the holes. From what I understand, they have two different nine hold courses that they rotate every now and then. One helpful player we ran into said that the configuration they moved to today is the better of the two in that it’s a bit of a longer course and less of a practice course and it also has better tee boxes that are easier to distinguish. Since they were in the middle of reconfiguring the course, we went and had our usual flogging courtesy of Pease Park. Man, that course completely makes us feel like the new pretty boys in a Federal prison of the kind mentioned in Mike Judge’s “Office Space”. They’ve recently moved a few of the baskets at Pease too (just some minor moves), so if you haven’t played it recently, check it out too. We’ll probably check out the new Zilker configuration on Friday. Now if we just take about 72% of the suck out of our game, that would be something!

AJ was up before dawn this morning cajoling me out of bed so I could drive him up to the Gateway Shopping Center to the start of the 3M Half Marathon. The weather was clear and just above freezing, miserable for huddling around the one gas heater like moths to a flame before the start but pleasant enough once the race was on. (Pleasant, that is, compared with last year’s Freescale Marathon which he ran on the coldest day of 2006 after a night of freezing rain and sleet.)

As usual, the bathrooms were crowded sending some of the runners into the bushes and behind walls. AJ quotes physiologist Frances Ashcroft to explain, “Exposure to cold increases urine production.” An explanation of why that is so can be found in her book Life at the Extremes: the Science of Survival. The result is that during these long races in cold weather there are rarely enough facilities to handle the output.

The 3M Half Marathon is considered a fairly fast race–most of it’s 13.1 miles are downhill. The field of 3431 timed runners were split almost equally among men (1734) and women (1697). AJ says that this year’s course, which finished in Waterloo park, avoided the steep, uncomfortable downhill finish of the 2005 course.

This is AJ’s second half-marathon. He was happy to beat his goal of 1 hour 40 minutes by 37 seconds.

Just a few days ago, I bragged about why Lance Armstrong is Austin’s gift to the world. Today he brought some gifts of his own to multitudes of bicycle aficionados and needy kids in Austin. The Bicycle Sports Shop and Mix 94.7 hosted Lance, Johan Bruyneel, Ivan Basso, and Levi Leipheimer of the Discovery Pro Cycling Team for an autograph session that had fans lining up along South Lamar well in advance of the 8:15 start time.

In addition to enabling the perfect gift for the cycle-ista in your life, the signing event also promoted the slightly higher goal of funding the 10th annual Bikes for Kids charity drive. Mix 94.7 and its sponsors, including Bicycle Sport Shop and Trek Bicycles, intend to bring bikes, helmets and locks to 750 under-privledged children for the holidays. So even if you missed out on having the entire Discovery Channel team autograph your soiled biking shorts, you can still ring in some holiday cheer by donating cash or nominating a needy child through the Mix 94.7 website.

Bicycles will be distributed on December 15th at the BSS on South Lamar from 6-10 am.

photo courtesy of bog_marsh