A Matter of Balance: Life & Bikes
Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife
Texas state parks have beautiful trails for mountain biking.
I was in west Texas, I’d say, a year ago and rode there. The formations there are like some surrealist painting, and it’s almost too beautiful to ride because you always want to be looking up instead of watching the trail.
Dan Oko, author of Texas Parks and Wildlife’s guide, Bike Texas, tells us about his favorite trails.
Well I call Austin home, so the trail that I ride most of all is the Barton Creek Greenbelt. It’s very challenging. At the far end of the ride from Zilker Park, you reach something called the Hill of Life, which is, I think, a rite of passage for every mountain biker in Texas is to get up that hill without stopping. The most beautiful place I have ridden in Texas is Palo Duro Canyon outside of Amarillo in the Panhandle.
Oko says there’s more to mountain biking than scenery.
I always think of the idea of the balance on the bike as the balance in your life, which is, once you get that sense of balance and the security as a mode of transportation balanced on the bike, then you can feel like everything else in your life can sort of follow that fluidity.
The Bike Texas guide highlights more than forty trails throughout the state, including road bike rides in parks. It’s available online; find a link at passporttotexas.org.
That’s our show…with research and writing help from Kate Lipinski… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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