Today’s Ride ~ 8-14-09 ~ Bike Trails and Sand Burrs

2009 August 14

by Jackie

I really wanted to take a 10 mile ride on Saturday ~ but the weather is supposed to be pretty bad. I decided to just flip days, blow off work for the morning and go into town for a nice long ride, a picnic and some playground fun for Hanna.

We packed the bike and the trailer in and on the car and headed to Wichita. I’ve been wanting to ride the bike trails at Sedgwick County Park so that’s where we headed.

OMG Bike trails ROCK!!

I had no idea how much different the road and bike trails are! Very different. We were having tons of fun whizzing around on the smooth as ice bike trails. We hit a little over 5 miles and decided to stop for a snack and a little play time. I pulled into the grass to sit under a tree, without realizing the park is littered with Sand burrs.

Big mistake.

When we pulled out of the grass the bike and trailer tires were full of sand burrs. We went over to the playground and Hanna played for a while. When we got ready to leave I pulled the sand burrs out of the tires and realized we had a flat on the trailer. Now I REALLY didn’t think a few little sand burrs would create a flat tire, so we headed to the car and went and filled up the tire. Yep, flat again in an instant.

This left me irritable and frustrated, as I really wanted to do 10 miles today, but we DID have big fun riding the bike trails. I’ll just remember not to ride on the grass from now on.

Today’s Route at Sedgwick County Park Bike Path

We parked next to the park office and headed west on the path right there, we went over the covered bridge which took us to the outside loop on Ridge Road. We ended up coming back across 21 first street and then across 13 street. We went back into the park at the 13 st entrance and then just took whatever trail we came upon, criss crossing across the park, then back around to the west side of the park and up to 21st St to the new playground.

It was a really nice ride, even with winds steady at around 17 and gusting into the mid 20mph range. (but I guess that’s to be expected in Kansas).

Miles: 5.1
Time: had too much fun forgot to even look.
Wind: 15-25 mph