My son practically dragged me out of the house this morning for a bike ride, despite my best attempts to remain a hermit in the basement and watch the latest episode of Star Trek Continues, which came out this morning. I tried to explain to him that we should ride UPHILL from our house, so we would have a fast and easy return once exhausted, but he's into instant gratification and would have none of it. I try to choose my battles wisely and let him lead the way.
We rode down to a spot we've been before, but this time we stopped and we...okay,
I...read the historical markers. The signs you see below describe this low-lying area - well, of course, that's relative, as we're still a few hundred feet above the city of Denver - which has a stream running through and a couple of ponds made by little dams. The structure my bike is leaning against is a windmill, which I think is more decorative than functional.
According to the signs, this area was established by a family as a homestead in 1877, and the signs show old-time photos of how this field used to look with houses and barns all around. Apparently they had dairy cattle here and produced cheese, among other things, therefore making this a "cheese ranch", which is a term I never heard while living back east - even while living in rural Vermont close enough to farms to hear cows moo and to find cow skulls as a boy about my son's age while walking in the woods.
Nowadays this is just open space between densely packed, sprawling suburban neighborhoods. There's also a public vegetable garden down here where anyone can plant and tend whatever they like. It's a neat place I seldom ride to, because there's really nothing here except what you see, and joggers, dog-walkers, and so forth.
There is a lot of cool stuff down in this area, especially if you like cottonwood trees, which are about the only trees native to the this area. There are a bunch of single track trails and paved sidewalks around, but when alone I prefer to get out in the open at higher altitudes as shown in the final picture below.
On the way home, we stopped at a store and my son got busy locking up our bikes with the flimsy Word Lock he and his sister use at school. I think this is probably the worst locking job in the history of bike locking, as the bikes are locked to each other but not at all to the rack, but I figured I had corrected him enough with "stay close" and "hurry now" and "stop at the sign up ahead" and "ride on the right, where cars drive" as we rode though plenty of multi-lane suburbia, which he needs to learn. I knew we wouldn't be long and hoped a bike thief wouldn't toss them both, still connected, into the back of a pickup truck while we were inside. Obviously that didn't happen or I'd be telling a different tale right now.
He's a great guy, if not quite street-smart enough, just yet:
Finally, this is where I rode last Friday morning when I had a day off. Lovely, and better than hanging around where there's no view, as we did today.