Donut Ride 2013

A few of the Highrollers made a trip up to the Krispy Kreme in Bentonville this past weekend. This is the report.

The meeting time was set for 8 am at the shop. I had prepared my kit the night before and done all my morning chores so that I could be away from the house for a while. The group was undetermined the day before so I was curious who would show up. As I rode onto Dickson street I could see Sam heading down toward me. Upon pulling into the parking lot of the shop I saw Aaron, Art, Emily, and Chris enjoying the brisk morning. Clay pulled up just as I unclipped and our group was complete. We filled bottles and topped off tire pressure before heading north on the Frisco trail. We stayed on the trail until the Gregg street intersection. You can check out the entire ride route here, but I wont bore you with the specifics.

The ride North was great. Everyone was feeling fine. The weather was just cool enough for arm warmers and a vest. Friendly chatter was the only sound to be heard. Even the little rise up out of Johnson was so easy we didn’t even seem to slow down much. Once up on 48th Street I realized why.

That is a very large flag in a very horizontal position

I knew then that I had better get my turns in at the front before we headed back south. That would be the time for Art and Aaron to move to the front.

Art, looking really good on the bike.

Once we left Springdale we rode a fun little section of road that parallels Hwy 540 but with a few little whoop-de-doo rollers and 90 degree corners. With a tailwind they were super fun. The road is also looses elevation the whole way. Eventually, we ended up down in a lovely valley that is to the west of Wagon Wheel road. A very pastoral scene made us forget that we were no more than two miles away from the buzzing of the interstate.

I like how two people are more interested in taking pics than enjoying the beautiful valley view

Eventually, My experience with the route ran out. I knew the roads to get us to the destination, but I also knew the new Razorback Greenway was more complete than it had been the last time I was in that neck of the woods. I wanted to ride some of those new trails but was not sure how to access them. Clay and Emily work in Bentonville, and Clay said he knew where we could get onto the trail. I was a little skeptical. When we rode through a neighborhood and then randomly stopped at some field that looked suspiciously like someones back yard I was even more skeptical. Then we started trekking through the field and ended up portaging our bikes a la cyclocross. It turned out that the trail was just on the other side of the woods.

This time it wasn’t my idea

The Rogers trail materialized out of nowhere

A year or so ago I was driving up to visit my in-laws when the bridge was being installed. At the time it looked like it was poised to send the trail into the side of the hill. I started calling it the bridge to nowhere at the time. Now, after having ridden that section of the multi-use trails up there, I see that it actually does go somewhere.

The Bridge to nowhere is now t he bridge to the future

The trail snakes and shimmies along by the creek for a bit before eventually splitting. We rode a section that took us to the other side of the HWY and up to the location of Highroller 2.0. You can see in these pics the progress being made. The red dirt is the parking lot and the brown dirt (more or less) is where the building will be. The second pic is the view of the site from the bike trail. More on all this in a later post. It is going to be really great!

We stopped to see the progress on HR2.0

This is the view of what will be the store from the bike trail

By this time we were all getting a bit hungry and headed down the road to Krispy Kreme for some treats. The parking lot was full and the line was pretty long. We were greeted by a free hot doughnut right off the line. The donuts were good but I was disappointed that they no longer serve sausage rolls. I can hardly eat a doughnut without a sausage roll to accompany it.

The reward

We chatted and ate for a bit before someone pointed out that no one was outside watching over the $25K worth of bikes and wheels that we had parked against the shrubs out front. At last, it was time to brave the wind and turn our bars to the south for the ride home.

Thanks for reading
Branton