Today’s ride as seen through the eyes of my bike… 7/27/2010 36 miles


Julie (my wife) and I drove to St Petersburg on Monday evening to spend a couple of days with my daughter and get some ride time with her. Tina (my daughter) has Tuesdays and Wednesdays off from her job so it makes for some good riding time for us.


Upon arrival in St Pete, Tina told me that she was having a problem with the back wheel of her bike dragging against the break pad, so I started to do a little investigating and discovered that the rim was starting to split at the holes where the spokes came through the rim. Two of them were bad enough that the spoke was about to pull out of the rim causing the wheel to wobble. We had to put our Tuesday morning ride on hold and make a trip to the LBS for a new rim. We purchased a generic wheel and put a cheep cassette that I had on the wheel to get her going short term. I plan to take her damaged wheel and cut the Campy hub and cassette out of the wheel and have a new one built for her when I get back to Orlando. Not wanting to ride in the hottest part of the day we decided to do an evening ride into downtown St. Petersburg.


With a new rim and everything in repair we rolled out about 6:00 pm and headed south towards the Sky Way Bridge and Pinellas Point. After a swing thru Maximo Park at the southern most point of the Pinellas County mainland, we started riding north towards downtown St Petersburg. Tina has been riding a well marked ride called Share The Road route over the last week or two. This 60 mile route is marked by the St Pete Bike Club and takes riders thru some very nice areas of Pinellas County and St. Petersburg, we road past The St Pete Country Club and the Boyd Hill nature Area then thru downtown then north towards the Gandy Bridge. Most of this route runs alongside Tampa Bay to the right and some very expensive homes/real estate on the left. The route takes you past Albert Whitted Air Field and Progress Energy Park (formerly known as Al Lang Stadium) in downtown St Pete. This baseball stadium was used as a spring training facility for some Major League Baseball team’s years ago before they started moving much of spring training to Arizona. A short distance north of the airport we road by the construction site of the new Salvador Dali Art Museum. Salvador was one of the world’s most famous and controversial artists. His extraordinary works popularized the art movement known as Surrealism. Next was St Pete Pier that has been a land mark tourist attraction in Pinellas County and St Pete for decades. Time has taken its toll on this location and there is a lot of discussion about tearing it down and just utilizing the park area around it. A little further north we passed the Morean Arts Center where the Chihuly Collection is on display through the end of next month. Dale Chihuly was blind in one eye and created all of his art by blowing glass. A short distance up the road is the world famous Renaissance Vinoy Resort and Golf Club. Just north of the Vinoy the route starts to turn residential again with beautiful homes on our left and boat docks and expensive boats on our right.


At about the 20 mile mark we decided that we had just about enough daylight to get us back home before dark. Both of us have plenty of lights some of which we have on even during the daylight hours, however I am not a big fan of riding on the roads with traffic after dark.


Our trip back was about the same route that we took going north with a side trip out to the end of the pier for a cold drink. While enjoying our Pepsi and the sunset we spotted two schools of dolphin swimming about fifty yards out in the bay. I tried to get a picture of them but all you can see is the dorsal fin as it breaks the surface of the water. One of the locals was fishing at the end of the pier and he had two pelicans sitting beside him waiting for him to catch something that he would share with them.


An amazing bird, the pelican it is said that his beak can hold more than his belly can. (A little attempt at humor here)


The remaining ride home was very relaxing with cool breezes and minimal traffic. We arrived home about 9:00 pm and my wife served us large bowls of strawberry ice cream to top off a great day.


I hope you enjoyed our ride…

Photos 1-3 Riding into and the view from Maximo Park
Photos 4-5 Arriving in the downtown area of St Pete. Progress Energy Field is just in front of my daughter
Photo 6 Yours truly standing in front of the art museum that was displaying the Chihuly Art Collection
Photo 7 The world famous St Pete Pier
Photo 8 Two fishermen trying to catch dinner
Photo 9 The Salvador Dali Museum under construction. When this is finished it will be a very beautiful tribute to Dali
Photo 10 The entrance to the Vinoy Resort and Golf Club