I took my first longish ride for this season last Thursday. I now regret not taking my bigger camera. In the future, I’ll need to make sure I don’t fail again. I missed a chance to catch a roadrunner in a field just off the road. So the first image is an old pump house, something that was common and necessary back in the days when this was rural property before city services ran this way. There are fireplugs, but I’m not sure if full municipal water service is ubiquitous in this area just yet. The home that once required this particular pump house is long gone, and the next nearest house was abandoned a couple years ago. You can see the wild regrowth taking over the place.
This ride took me north up Midwest Boulevard to Wilshire and west over the hills to Kelly Avenue. That was the southern edge of the antenna farm. Kelly is currently under widening construction, so I was able to ride in the dirt roadbed all the way to my next turn. Cutting through Plum Hill, I headed south on Prospect, then Grand Boulevard, and picked up the Katy Trail bike path. From there it took me back to NE 4th and an easy glide back home. This mansion stands up on Kelly where I took that dirt roadbed detour. I’ve watched this thing, and it seems to me they took about four or five years building it. They definitely took their time and did it right. It’s nothing at all like the common McMansions everywhere else along the route I rode. This one has fully matching architecture and they left the old brick silo standing, but made the cow pond much nicer.
But because I’m so disappointed with the images that didn’t turn out well, I’m going to change my habits. I’ll leave the saddlebags on my bike and start slogging around my better camera gear. I think it’s worth the trouble to start doing it right.
Disregarding the probably needless extravagance of the mansion, that’s one solid piece of architecture from what I can see in the photo. Should last a good number of years.
A pump house, mystery solved! There’s a similar structure that we’ve seen on our drives near here and we’ve always wondered why anyone would build something so sturdy yet so small. Thanks for clearing that up for us!
Heh; that’s something we take for granted around here. I think it comes from growing up living in mobile homes. One of the first things you do when siting a mobile home on empty land somewhere is drill a well and protect the pump from freezing. The second thing is digging a septic tank and lateral lines. Folks with money would build much nicer structures for both.
Right – this is a rural too, so we’re familiar with that! I guess the old pump houses here were mostly log structures and they’re starting to disappear.