Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Accidental Exploring

Right after fessing up to wimping out of riding lately, Patrick and I hopped on our bikes for a what-started-out-to-be quick little ride around the neighborhood. As other cyclists know, some days your legs just feel great and don't wanna stop moving you. That was exactly yesterday for me. We ended up getting in a 15 mile ride, where I got a lot of "overall" trophies on Strava - whoohoo!
(If you don't know what I'm talking about, Strava is an interactive app that tracks how far you go, how fast you go, and the elevation gain on your ride. It then ranks you on certain segments against every other rider who has ridden that segment. You can set Personal Records and get Overall Records, which means you were one of the top 10 fastest of that particular segment)

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Right outside of our neighborhood, we rode past this amaaaaazing house. Their whole yard was covered in bird houses, statues, and lots of other wonderful trinkets. My favorite part was definitely this vibrant pink wall that was covered in pieces of reflective glass.
At first, we just rode past, but a block later, I was filled with such regret of not stopping to take a picture of this wonderful find.

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It was also a nice place to stop to take off some of our layers. We got dressed for cold that just wasn't there (shoutout to that 53 degree high yesterday!)

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Patrick really likes to do this "follow me" game, where he pretends like he knows where he's going for a really long time and I just have to follow him. This is how our ride ended up going from a quick little spin into the journey that it did. Turns out, he did know where he was going after all. We ended up at this awesome abandoned bowling alley right off a decently busy road.

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We weren't able to go in. All of the doors were super locked up, with signs everywhere alerting passerbys to report anyone they see trespassing. Who knows how strongly enforced those signs are, but better safe than arrested!

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Besides, I'm so new to this urban exploring thing, that I'm plenty happy with just a solid outdoor scene.

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After our ride, we popped across the street to the Pullman Train Yard right at Magic Hour. Patrick just built up a brand new Specialized AWOL (which he has written a more extensive post about), and he wanted some high def pictures of all the details. They turned out amazing! I'll let him take it from here on gushing about his bike.

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Today, I'm going riding with Babe Lane. Hopefully the rain holds off for us!
Either way, I'm off to roam around town with some friends, who have been asking me to take pictures of their bikes now that the ones I took for Patrick turned out so well.

Hit me up for all your bike glamour shot needs.

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