American River Trail Heaven - Sac to Folsom!!

Rode an amazing 30 miles along the Jeddidiah Smith River Trail that follows the American River from Sacramento to Folsom today. After Ed Cox escorted me to the trail head, I was blessing Peter Wagner, the Mr Bicycle of Davis, the whole way. Peter took the idea that Jacques Graber had of getting the weight of my load off of the steer tube to a whole another level. As I rode, I thought about how he had melded the discarded items of the modern day world into that which lived at the cutting edge of 19th century technology, the Eagle, in a way that added a whole new level of killer performance to this machine. Outfitted now with the hack sawed off back end of a dead mountain bike, this farthing penny (not a penny farthing where the wheel configuration takes its name from the English denomination of coins where the penny was the much bigger of the two) rides now almost as good as it ever did!!

And this trail that the people up here get to enjoy is so amazing, that it does a great job of emulating the highest art form of the SF to Boston greenway I have long foreseen. Aware of the fact that most cities cannot achieve what has taken place with this corridor, I still maintain that we can use this as a model to start to move in this direction with an inter-connected network of bikeable roads and paths that connect the coasts .

To give you an idea why the Jedidiah is 21st Century bike path perfection, I will try to run you through some of what I saw. To begin, there are signs stenciled into the the beautifully paved, smooth asphalt that tell people on foot that they are to move against trail traffic on the dirt that lines its edges. This did not seem to be a problem for the peds as they all appeared to be content to move along at their slower speeds.

Every mile or so there are tastefully designed signs that read, "Adopt the Parkway" . A box at the top tells you who has volunteered to keep each section orderly while another box below it tells you who the paying sponsors are. The trail also looks out on the river on one side and fields and rolling hills on the other. It passes through a few beautiful parks with sprawling lawns and as I've written in year's past, it does not let you know there are busy cities and freeways over the ridges beyond. All signs of humanity are hidden from view.

Wow!!

This is what I enjoyed as I "sped" along until almost the end where John Holmes slowed down to ask me a few questions. It wasn't long before he took me to Karen's Bakery and he bought me an ice tea and a fruit cup. We talked for a while and he rode back to his afternoon work as a family therapist.

This as I stayed around and enjoyed their a/c power to recharge my iPhone and this computer while I also created this blog post. Soon, I will be joining my host Lynn LePage, the recreation manager for the city of Folsom, to enjoy a covered bridges exhibit near City Hall where he works.

More later.

But right now WoW WoW!!

As a postscript, as I was heading to City Hall to meet Lynn, one of my very good friends from 30 years called out to me from his car. It was Greg Roseblum! Whoaaa, we played a lot of whiffle ball, table tennis and basketball together. And we both studied accounting at Cal State Hayward. He still works as an accountant and lives now in Folsom. Too wild!!

New! Photo gallery from today