what is your favorite Austin ride?

[Griz]

dam loop? loop 360? the veloway? the Upper Crust Bakery loop? Shoal Creek? San Marcos and back?

and don't forget to mention why you like what you like.

[chongo]

Ok, I'll go first.. My fave is Lime Creek. We leave my place in N.Austin, hit Spicewoodsprings, up Scotland Well to Anderson Mill to Limecreek then hook up with Parmer back to my place @ 50 miles with nice scenery, little traffic and some good climbing! Second would be the dam loop. Only cause we do it every tues ,when the time changes , the company is good and the ride is fast!

[Hugh]

The "lake loop". A quick 25 miler along 2769 and Lime Creek. To up the mileage to 33, I detour UP Bullick Hollow then go past the Oasis. This area also features the hill that Lance says is the toughest in town. It's on the right just past the Alamo looking house. If you get to Hippy Hollow, you went too far.

Of course, you gotta love Heartbreak Hill also known as the three amigos, the three bitches, etc.

[whoa]

Originally posted by Hugh
Of course, you gotta love Heartbreak Hill also known as the three amigos, the three bitches, etc.
Tell me why you gotta love it?

That road is damn narrow. What's the traffic like during the summer? I hate the city drivers pulling boats.

[whoa]

I prefer the north and northwest areas around Georgetown and Liberty Hill. The hills are tolerable (I'm climbing challenged at the moment) and the traffic is pretty light. Higher percentage of bubba's out that way but not enough to bother fretting over.

Out around Elgin, Cele etc is OK too; roads are pretty good and traffic is moderate to light.

[Hugh]

I go early Sunday and see maybe one car and about 6 dogs. You gotta love the hill because it's challenging. For a slug like me, it's motivating to see Lance's name painted at the top. Having lost both of my parents to cancer, his name on the road gets me to the top.

[john_curtis]

This is cheezy, but I like pretty much every ride that I do. Bakery route has lots of variety. Dam loop is great for endurance/lactate recovery work, booting around 183/360 area with a bit of City Park road thrown in is fun. San Marcos is a mello endurance ride. The only thing that I do not like about riding around here is the traffic on 360.

Has anyone done any riding around dripping springs? What's it like?

[Eddie_M]

This is my current favorite loop. I really like the roads around dripping springs the most because there isn't that much traffic. (especially on FM150) For that reason, I think I'm going to try to find another loop that focuses more on the roads in the Dripping Springs area.
Here's the route-
SW pkwy to 71 to Hamilton Pool Road to FM12 (through dripping springs) to FM150 to 1826 (past the Salt Lick) to Mopac
all left turns
The loop shown on the map is 51 miles.

<img src="http://bikelab.net/images/pictures/hamiltonpoolloop.jpg" >

[Eddie_M]

oops, try again

http://bikelab.net/images/pictures/hamiltonpoolloop.jpg

[Eddie_M]

oops, try again

http://bikelab.net/images/pictures/hamiltonpoolloop.jpg

[Singlespeedster]

My Uncle and Aunt live right along the Guadalupr River,just off 281. Riding out there is nice. Leave austin, head out Bee caves, Ham Pool to Drippy Springs, duck down onto Creek Road, which parallels 290 west, just south of the highway. Take that to Blanco road, aka 160. Go all the way to Blanco, take a South on 281 to the Guadalupe River and arrive. Usually at that point Mrs Singlespeedster is there with the truck and Salt Lick BBQ.

88 Goooooooooood miles.

Who's in later this spring?

A

[Dawn]

Originally posted by Singlespeedster
88 Goooooooooood miles.

Who's in later this spring?

A

Count me in! That sounds like a great ride. Do you usually jump in the Guadalupe after the ride?

DS

[Lester]

That 88 miler sounds fun. Post up if you decide to do it this spring.

As for my favorite ride, it depends on what I'm in the mood for. I really like the Old San Antonio ride that goes from south Austin to San Marcos, going over Onion Creek and the Blanco river and passing through Buda, Kyle, and Mountain City. With the towns and the streams, it seems like there's always something interesting to look at as you pedal along. It's also a ride I can do with Mrs. Lester, who is getting into road riding, but hates hills.

I'm not all that big of a fan of the damn loop. It's decent for climbing and there's a good shoulder most of the way, but there is too much traffic and noise.It's not a bad early morning weekend ride, though.

I've gone on some really nice rides around Liberty Hill, Johnson City, and Dripping Springs, and I like pretty much all of the ACA routes.

[Oldschooler]

Ah yes, there's nothing quite like being a newby....

Here's my TOTAL ride/route history:
Bakery ride: several times
Loop near my house toward Buda, etc.(10 - 50m.): several times
The 70 mile loop around the city on New Years Day: Once

I am most anxious to do all the rides you guys are talking about cause I need to get some more road miles in

[debbie]

I do a 30 mile route from home out to 360 around and back. I pick the direction based on wind direction usually.

I like riding out north east, New Sweden, Cameron Rd, Cele area. I have a route from home that takes me nearly to Hutto and back, 45-50 miles.

I've done lots of other rides, Dam Loop, San Marcos and back, near Blanco and Dripping Springs.
As someone said above it depends on mood and what your looking for that day.

Lately I have done several ACA rides where I thought the designated route was stoopidly dangerous. I guess a lot of the routes are old stand bys or something because they use what are now some very dangerous roads. Maybe 5-10 years ago some of these roads were safe but not now. The stoopid part is that quiter safer roads/routes are near. I don't get why they don't alter their routes slightly to take advantage of the lower traffic roads.

[whoa]

Originally posted by debbie
Lately I have done several ACA rides ....I don't get why they don't alter their routes slightly to take advantage of the lower traffic roads.

I found an email address of someone at ACA and gave some input on this issue. They said they would look at it and agreed some of the routes were old and need to be evaluated again.

I never followed up but I'm certain those maps would be changed if the map stewards were aware there were safer routes.

This has been a good topic. I've been doing too many of the same rides and need to get around more. Keep the motivation going.

Thanks
David

[Anita Handle]

I can't believe I didn't see this jewel of a thread until today.

Eddie_M, that looks like an awesome loop and I live right on it. I'll try it soon. I might route it differently between points 9 and 11, where it links mopac to sw pkwy using william cannon. I don't like william cannon, seems trafficky and there's very little room to ride with the cars. I like taking mopac all the way to the 290/sw pkwy intersection and heading out on sw pkwy from there. Mopac has a nice and wide outter lane and even though traffic is flying by, they can see you from a good ways back.

Other austin rides... I actually enjoy 360, at least where I ride it, between mopac south and 2222. Seems very smooooothly paved and the shoulders are wide. It's rolling but you can go pretty fast down the back side of a hill and cruise up the ascent at a pretty good clip.

When I lived north I would go west from parmer and mopac till parmer ended and go north on 1431 (I think). nice gently rolling ride with a fat shoulder.

I like the loop that starts along old SA road to buda, then flips out west along 967 out to 1826. I try to not be hungry at this point because ya gotta pass by the salt lick. down to 150, back east to kyle and north back to old SA road. 53 miles.

I need to get some easier gears so I can handle some of the steeper climbs around here.

Anthonys ride sounds like a rollicking good time. Ought to get some SA mojos to do a ride that meets us in blanco.

[Eddie_M]

here's a loop I rode yesterday that I liked-

south on Mopac
left on 1826 (kinda scary, no shoulder moderate traffic)
right on Nutty Brown (nifty little road with almost no traffic)
right on 290 (for only 1.5 miles, but it still sucked)
left on Circle drive, left on thomas springs (both very cool roads)
cross 71 and the road becomes old bee caves
left on travis cook and cross SW pkwy
road becomes barton creek blvd
right on bee caves and back into town

the loop was 39 miles from my house near Zilker

http://bikelab.net/images/pictures/nuttybrownloop.jpg

[Anita Handle]

and it covers that ascent up to beecaves on barton creek blvd. never ridden up that. looks like a good longish climb.

[Anita Handle]

eddie_m, I tried your hamilton pool/dripping springs/1863 loop last week. lots of nice back roads. I had a tough time on hamilton pool though, lot's of traffic heading out in the afternoon. I need one of those little mirrors so that I can tell when it's safe to ride *in* the road versus that little 5 inch piece of mottled tarmac at the edge. I will be doing this again. several places where you could add 10-20 miles.

[TechniKal]

I had a nice ride yesterday on a pretty good route. Is started from my house near 620/Anderson Mill road and did:

620 -> 71
71 -> Beecaves
Beecaves -> Barton Creek Blvd
Barton Creek Blvd -> SW Parkway
SW Parkway -> 71
71 -> 620
620 -> Home

I don't run a computer, but guesstimate it's around 55-60 miles. Decent amount of climbing, not much traffic (except 620, but there's a nice shoulder)... The stretch of 71 from SW Parkway to Beecaves is a little dicey with no shoulder, but it's not too bad - especially early in the morning.

I started the ride with my wife, a few other Mojos (Dirtface, Rockcrawler) and some others that are in training for the MS 150. I tried to give some pace line advice, but they were too busy having fun, so I just took off on my loop.

620 near the dam was completely shrouded in fog on the way out - so much so that my eyewear became unusable. As the ride went on, though, the sun began to burn off the fog and it turned into a wonderful ride. I'm -really- digging my road bike...

[Griz]

Originally posted by TechniKal
I'm -really- digging my road bike...

Damn roadie!

[Hugh]

620/Anderson Mill? I live about a 15 minute bike ride from there.
I just had a crazy idea. If I'm in town Sunday, ride to City Park, do a loop, ride to St. Ed's, go up the hill and back down, then ride home. That will probably be about 35 miles or so.

[Singlespeedster]

Sounds sort of like the old Sunday Epic.
Back in the day we would start in central Austin, and ride Ken's trail, Forest Ridge, City Park, 360 south to Lost Creek to hook up with the Greenbelt, hook up side trails until we got to Barton Springs, limp home.

A