Interurben Trail

Saturday started with a visit from my niece. She comes over quite often and it always is a welcome change of pace here. We have been wanting to try out a local café in town called Zola's. So we went there for lunch. I am really so glad that we did. This is a restaurant that I will be frequenting. It's like an unscaled Starbucks with much better food and minus the smell of burnt coffee. I got a nice bowl of ham and bean soup and a pot of tea. It was delicious. The best thing is this place is about a half mile from home and on my way to the knitting store. While we were there a family came in who were vlogging their day out and about. I did not recognize them, so I'm pretty sure that I have never seen their vlog, but they were all dressed out in hip clothes and had a fantastic camera. I like watching family vlogs on YouTube, but still they seemed a bit silly to me, walking around with a large camera pointed at themselves. I wondered what they seemed like to others who may not have understood what they were doing. 

After our outing I decided that I'd needed to get some exercise so I took my bike out for what I thought was going to be a short ride. Then, since it was a good chance to see if the new rain poncho I bought myself was going to be an acceptable solution to riding in rain showers, I decided to try to find the bike trail I'd been looking for. The problem was that I'd been looking for it near the Transit station. But the trail is actually about a quarter of a mile from there beside a different set of railroad tracks. I decided to take the trail south a bit to see if I could find the Outlet Mall. It was a fairly easy ride, but I wonder about the wisdom of it's use. The trail, though well maintained, seems to be a corridor for homeless campsites. While I was on it, it was well travelled, but I'm leery of using it after dark. It's too bad really, because the trail offers bike access to several of the nearby towns. A Google search doesn't really show much crime reported on the trail, and one person on a forum put it intellectually, "Most homeless don't want to mess with others because they know that reported crime will cause them to have to move." I'm glad I found the trail, and I will continue to use it in day time hours until I feel more certain of it.

My ride on Saturday had me riding about 10 miles all totaled. And yesterday I was a bit lazy, though I did give the dog a walk. My sister wanted me to go shopping with her and it yielded a revelation to me. Since I've gotten here both my brother and sister have been offering advice: "Stay off of the alley ways." "Don't go on Auburn Way, Main Street, etc." "Avoid the underpasses" Then I noticed that while driving, she was going in circles around town. I do believe that she wanted to think that some of the stores in the area are much farther away than they really are. I was a bit put off by that, but I do know she means well. I can see the benefit of caution.

Today I decided that I did need to get out a bit. I rode over to Safeway, about a half mile away and picked up some bread and items to make soup this evening. While I was riding I noticed this tree. So much of this area is forested with evergreens that I don't see many signs of fall. This was the first that I have noticed turning for fall. There are other signs that Autumn will be on us soon, birds flocking and squirrels harvesting the seeds from the beautiful sunflowers that I have enjoyed watching all summer. But this is the first solid sign that I've seen that it is here. I thought about calling Beverly to send me pictures of the beautiful fiery foliage that Atlanta can have, but then remembered that they are still at least a month out, and are having temperatures in the 90's.

I have been warned that there are more warm days ahead, but it's kind of hard to believe when I'm looking at scenes like this.