Training on Irving's Bicycling Trails

While in India I had often heard "there are separate lanes for bicycles in Europe and US". Since I started training for the MS-150 bicycle ride, I am beginning to discover that this is in fact true. However those people had missed a slight detail: the bicycle trails are not part of the road network, but are located inside entertainment and leisure areas such as parks, national forests, river sides etc. While these trails are a boon for the leisure cyclist it is no comfort to a person who prefers to commute by bicycle.


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Anyway coming back to my adventures on two wheels of a different, slower, human-powered variety. Yesterday I clocked about 20 miles of bicycling on two trails: Campion trail in Irving, Tx and the Blue Bonnet Trail in Plano, Tx. I carried my camera for the Campion Trail ride... which actually slowed down my progress.

The Campion trail is about 5 miles in length and passes through three parks and along the elm fork of Trinity River. Like every other park in the US there are walking places, restrooms (mobile variety), picnic areas, benches, trash cans, river view look out points, river side fishing and canoe launch sites, etc. For the first time I saw two Desi's (persons of Indian origin) fishing in the river. Here are some pictures of the trail experience.