Like most folks in the Heartland, the week of harsh cold led to cabin fever. I couldn’t wait to get out and ride again. On Monday, I visited the construction site of the new railroad spur between two lines. It required building a bridge over Crooked Oak Creek adjacent to the Eagle Lake Park. While the construction site is not officially cleared, there’s not much left to do. A skeleton crew was there engaged in the final closure activities and waved at me, welcoming me back — cyclists had been locked out of the area during the construction.
What cyclists missed for just a bit longer than a year was the closure of the Eagle Lake Trail that runs from the lower dam on the Oklahoma River Recreation Area to the trail built by Del City within Eagle Lake Park. Trucks hauled in hundreds of tons of clay and rock to create the high artificial ridge necessary to keep the rails at grade. In the process they destroyed the original asphalt trail that ran along the banks of Crooked Oak Creek. Now that the tracks are laid, the temporary roadbed has been removed. The construction contract called for replacing the cheap asphalt surface with concrete. In this case, it was cheaper to splash a little more concrete onto the site than having to hire a separate crew to lay asphalt.
Yesterday was my first longish ride after the freeze. This shot is viewing the city skyline from the southwest side. To be more precise, I was standing in Woodson Park just west of Interstate 44. This is on the path of my Grand Boulevard Trail and River Trail loop, around 25 miles in total.
One of the more amusing parts of this adventure was that we went from shocking brutal cold to shorts weather in just a few days.
