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December 13, 2018
Texas AIDS Ride 1
After just one day of riding, we were hit by a severe thunderstorm in the middle of the night. We grabbed our stuff (excluding tents and bikes) and they transported us to a nearby high school where we hung out for hours in the gym until they bused us from there to what would have been our destination on that second day. No bike ride that day. The photo below is of me in the night as we were evacuating.
A Confederate memorial on the grounds of the state capitol building in Austin.
Tom & John who hosted Michael and me in Houston. John had lived in Boston for a little while around 1980-'81 and I knew him from then.
The Ellis County courthouse in Waxahachie which Michael and I rode through on our way from Dallas to Austin before the ride started. We were rather surprised to suddenly see what seemed an obvious H.H. Richardson in a small Texas county seat. Turns out it was designed by a student of Richardson, James Riely Gordon.
Michael riding right behind me in a pace line. This was shot by a professional photographer who had stationed himself along the route.
Michael and I had flown into Dallas with the plan to stay at the home of my friends Steve & Jeff (formerly of Kansas City) and then bicycle on our own to Austin. TAR would take us from Austin to Houston and then to Dallas. As we headed from Dallas to Austin we tried to follow small tw-lane highways, of course, but in Texas (or at least in this part of Texas) those roads all go either north-south or east-west and a direct route from Dallas to Austin would be something of a diagonal. I-35 would be the direct route, and the inefficiency of our route became annoyingly obvious as we continually crossed and recrossed I-35 on roads that weren't going in the direction we wanted to go. BUT, in Texas the interstates are parallelled on each side with smaller two-lane, two-way roads that I believe are intended mostly for slow farm vehicles. Turns out they are also excellent for bicycling...if you don't mind parallelling an interstate highway. Even at complex highway interchanges, these small roads were designed to carry us through the interchange without risking our lives. It'd be great if every state had the money and space to build roads like these. You can see an example of one of these roads on the right side of the photo below.
Re-assembling my bike at Steve & Jeff's place in Dallas.
Closing ceremonies in Dallas.
At College Station. In 1998 there had been only one President Bush, so there was no need to insert any middle initials to eliminate ambiguity.
My first time seeing cotton growing.
The Dealey Plaza memorial in Dallas.
In Dallas, the banner made for us by Steve & Jeff.
That's Geoff in the shade.
Steve, Michael, myself and Jeff in Dallas.
Geoff who was also from Boston.
Myself with Dan Pallotta, who created the AIDS Rides.
The complete set of photos is here.
Filed under AIDS Rides,Cycling,Photography | permalink | December 13, 2018 at 07:52 AM
