Some of My Favorite Roads

If a picture is worth a thousand words, video must be worth billions and billions. Here's some video from the ride that I lead Saturday for the Harpeth Bike Club.

This first is not actually the ride, but me going to the ride. Well, to be honest, I'm actually going directly opposite of the direction that I would have to go to get to the ride -- I'm biking to Panera before the ride to get a scone and a cup of coffee.

Ah, the things I won't do to get in an extra 20 miles.

Anyway, this is one of my favorite little roads for heading this way, because it's closed to cars. Hence, the only vehicles that I encounter on this stretch of road are the people that live there, and they tend to be nice to people on bicycles.

Notice the stop sign and bars. If there's a downside to this road, it is that sometimes the traffic is so light that it gets a lot of debris after a storm. I can live with that.

I shut off the camera partway up the climb. Here's the descent. I actually saw another rider going up this hill Saturday, even though it was just barely 6 am.

From here, I got on Edmundson Pike. There's video of that, and you can sort of tell how pretty the sky was, but it's kind of long. Instead, I'll give you video of the next road on my Path to Panera -- Old Smyrna.

The speed bumps kind of make it roller-coaster-y, don't you think? I tried to pan the camera to one side so that you could see some of the estates along this road, but the lighting wasn't right. Don't ask me about the weird way that the lady was running -- must be some kind of upper-body workout thing.

After this, I was getting close to Brentwood. There was a 5K at Maryland Farms, which is part of Brentwood, and there were a lot of cars driving past me along this stretch. Normally, it's pretty empty at this time of day. The good thing was that, since these were athletes on their way to a run, they passed me with lots of room. Athletes tend to understand that you should not crowd other athletes on the road.

With scone in belly and coffee cup full, I turned back southward towards Page High School and the ride start. A mild wind out of the south had come up, so I had to kind of time trial my way south for those 15 miles. It worked out in that I was on time, and I think Max Watzz appreciated the workout.

One last favorite road I'm going to show you here is Cross Keys Road, which we turned on just after going over Pulltight Hill. It's smooth and shady -- excellent attributes for any road with the way temperatures have been lately. At the end of the video, we're turning on to Choctaw Road, which may be even better.

Unfortunately, it's big so I had to upload it to YouTube.

You can just hear my nattering little voice in the background. Too many words.