New Kids on an Old Trail

Today I rode the roads between Dripping Springs and Johnson City, a pair of archetypical Hill Country Towns. This HCRA training ride is one of my favorites, even though it’s among the hardest rides of the spring. We started in Dripping Springs at the administration building just off US 290, but crossed over to Country Road 190, known to the locals as Creek Road because it follows Onion Creek. This stretch is a microcosm of ranch life in Texas, dotted with a sheep farm, stands of cattle and miles and miles of goats.

We rode out on a Sunday morning that would include wind as a major character, mostly blowing from the south. This county road is sheltered from the winds by the ridge that runs down to the creek, though, and the course flows mostly downhill for the first four miles. We crossed the creek twice before riding up alongside the goat ranch, where a mother goat — that’s a doe — had just finished delivering her two kids for the year. Most does give birth in the spring, and it’s an economical arrangement: Does have two teats, instead of the four we see on cows.

The tiny kids were striving toward those teats, then pausing to be licked clean by their mother. Ellen, one of our ride leader co-chairs, had taken her camera along and got this great photo:

The ride’s hard work, 54 miles of it, presented itself almost right after the happy delivery. Abby pulled off the road with a flat just past the Henly volunteer fire station, so I got more practice changing tires. Then we both powered down US 290 for a mile or so, cars whizzing past our shoulders on a highway that didn’t have much shoulder. We turned up FM 3232, starting the long roll down the hill that leads to more work climbing out of the beds of creeks : Flat, Miller, Rough Hollow (which left me feeling both, after I’d crossed both going out and coming back.)

I lost Abby to the SAG truck after 13 miles on the ride. She’d done a great 20-miler the day before at the Rosedale Ride. Riding back-to-back days is part of our training, practice that can wear you out your first time. She pitched in on SAG duty for the rest of the morning and afternoon, dispensing peanut butter Clif bars and her usual, ample complement of good cheer.

I pulled into the admin parking lot after 2, a full five hours-plus on our hilliest training terrain. I had done well in hard winds on the return, avoided sunburn, encouraged other riders in a stab at some leadership. This was the first time for Abby on this trail, a road which now feels like an old friend to me. But this was the first bike ride where I saw a newborn alongside the road. In the Hill Country, lots of things bloom in the spring.