The First ACA Hosted Ride.

Today I attended the first ACA Hosted Ride Program, hosted by Sarah F. Most of the group seemed to be folks who had participated in a triathlon last year, and they were just getting together again. It was a friendly group, even to me as a newcomer and outsider. (One participant ran in a 5K this morning, with a PR, before joining us.)

The 30 mile ride started at the Regions Bank/Whataburger Parking Lot at the corner of MoPac and William Cannon and went north to the Upper Crust Bakery on Burnet Road, and back again. However, I rode from my house, about 5 miles north of Upper Crust Bakery, down to the start, and then back north with the group, so I did only half the ride with the group.

It was a great ride. We picked our way along the back streets of south Austin and on up to the bakery in North central Austin. The weather was perfect, in the low sixties at the start of the ride, it started misting just as we left, but it soon stopped. Along the way, we added Eileen S. to the group, as we went across the foot bridge which goes over the Colorado River and under the Mopac Expressway.

Eileen is an instructor for the bike safety classes and she was very knowledgeable about riding bikes in auto traffic. I am sure I could learn a lot riding with her; I hope she attends many more of these rides. Also, I think she is one of the instigators of the new ACA hosted ride series -- and in a couple of weeks she is going to be working at the new Lance Armstrong store!

It was an interesting trip to see how people traverse from south Austin to north Austin. It was the farthest south I have been on my bike; I have been to St Edward's University by bicycle, but this was considerably further. It was almost down to the Veloway and Southwest Park Way - near where I work. I have been considering riding my bicycle to work, so I was real excited to see this ride -- although it didn't cover the dangerous last half-mile or so to my job.

My only regret is that I did not ride back to South Austin with the group. It would have been very interesting to see the path that they took. During rush hour, I'm not sure that I would want to take the path to the start that I took today.

Here are two motionbased reports. The first is the ride down to the start, and the second is the ride back home. Interesting, for a first-time journey.

It was great to have a nice long ride near home, so that I didn't need to drive the pickup miles out into the country. At $60.00 for a tank of gas, plus the carbon emissions from the internal combustion engine, taking a vehicle to a bike ride is getting less "green" every day, so I salute the ACA efforts to start a new sort of biking activity.