Fall Ride

Spruce Pine Cone

The temperature has been in the low 80's this last week, a strange fluctuation of Autumn and Indian Summer.  I surely wasn't going to let such an auspicious day get away from me though.  I fed the Jays and prepared for a ride down the Pikes Peak Greenway alongside Fountain Creek.  I am currently in a pre-base phase of training, trying to shed a few pounds and keep my legs loose.  The Greenway is a great trail for training, it runs from Fountain to Palmer Lake with a spur that goes into Manitou and eventually to Woodland Park.  It's a very nontechnical trail with a great blend of hills, dirt sections, corners and both pavement and cement.  The trail follows Fountain Creek which gives life to huge, ancient cottonwoods, birch, oak, and a myriad of shrubs. My ride starts by descending a very steep and long hill from my house which is perched in a ponderosa-oak forest into the heart of town.  Crossing highway 24 and turning onto the midland trail in summer allows for the sounds of the little creek to reach a riders ear.  There is a section of what might be considered rapids and the noise from the cascading water drowns out the cars.  However today there is no sound, a sandbar is visible from the bridge as well as some bright green foliage that is still bent over from the earlier seasons flood water.  The Midland is a fantastic section of the greenway.  It borders Old Colorado City which is a colourful and history rich part of town.  On the left sit old building, some a hundred years old some only fifty and sixty years old. Many of them still have their original signs painted onto them, a brief glimpse of Americana.  There are a few car graveyards on the right but none of the cars in them looks to be newer than the sixties.  The entire trail is overgrown by a dark canopy of oak which line both sides of the trail.  The temperature drops a few degrees because of the shade.  Today they are still green with greenish acorns hanging in clumps over the path, though the smaller shrubs are finally showing yellow and red.  From the midland there is a junction that will take a rider into downtown or onto the greenway proper.  I turn onto the greenway.  This section is in between downtown and I-25, there aren't many trees but from the guard rail to the creek, which is quite wide and sluggish, there is a dense cover of berry laden shrubs.  There are vermillion currants, orange service berry and black alder berry.  The creek is low here too, the water barely flowing and two large sandbars are the resting places of a few mallard ducks sleeping after a long flight south.  The further north the further away from the creek that I'm taken.  And the more fall hues become present in the trees.  The cottonwoods near CC are showing the most, there deep green leaves blazing into a pastel yellow at the edges.  A few shrubby maples are glowing fiery red and orange from every branch.

Maple Leaves

None of the herbaceous flowers are left, the ground is littered with crunchy brown pieces.  The trail does occasionally run right back to the creek and the change from yellow and red back to green is dramatic.  There are several bridges on the trail, some are ridden under and some ridden over.  In the summer each bridge is home to a colony of swallows, bank swallows, rough wing swallows, barn swallows, and green swallows, they form thick clouds in the summer air, their chippy calls ringing out to any passersby.  Today there are no swallows, they have left for the warmer climes of South America, only their mudbox nests remain, plastered to the sides of the bridges.  Sinton Pond is just ahead, the city has apparently mowed the dying field of thistle and grasses.  There are no American goldfinch checking the thistles for seed and yelling their metallic chirps to the fisherman.  The water is clear blue though and two cormorants sun themselves on the deck in the middle of the pond while newly arrived grebe fish.  I had no optics and they were too far away to identify as either pied-billed or eared.  I continued up beyond Woodman road, where the last of the garter snakes sunned themselves in the middle of the path underneath a whirling cascade of golden leaves.  My turn around point was the Ice Cave Creek parking lot on the Air Force Academy, which saw another transition from yellow to green in the close still oak and cottonwood riparian system.  Indian Summer won't last forever, its grip is giving way slowly, enjoy it while it lasts.