A New Road and a New Park and Many Bikes

I took a vacation day today to take a ride and do some volunteer work.

In the AM, Joe and I took a ride out towards Cheney. Our intention was to hit the Columbia Plateau Trail but we decided to loop around earlier and ended up exploring some new areas. I love it when we find a new road.

I forgot my map, which is a good thing, or it would've been a ride on familiar and same old routes. Joe is a perfect riding partner too -- he's always down for whatever whim seems to catch me. Want to go longer? He's cool with it. Want to cut it short? No complaints. We rambled around out east of Marshal on known roads, then ended up on Keeney Road, a new and unknown-to-us-road. A nice dirt roller. I was pretty satisfied just finding a new road when we stumbled across a county park.

The park is a small area that was likely a farm at some point. It's got a small lake on it and lots of wetlands. Lots of birds. This would make a nice picnic destination. The entrance is on the corner of Keeney and Washington Roads, very close to 195.

We got home at around 11AM and then at about 4PM, I picked up Joe and we went to a local car dealer where we are fixing up a huge pile of bikes for an annual kid bike drive that is being directed by a local TV station. Pedals 2 People is running the wrenching part of the drive, which I now know, is the most significant effort in the drive.

There are about 70 bikes out there. All of them are absolutely the cheapest of the cheap. These are donated bikes that are just in awful shape. We've got just under two weeks to get these bikes in ridable shape. It's a huge task and more than a bit daunting. If you can help, even by just cleaning up bikes, if not actually wrenching, we could really use your help. Look for the "KHQ" entries on this calendar to see when we're out there. Feel free to contact me if you have questions: johnspeare@gmail.com.