Brandy and a Bike Ride

Well I got some bad news yesterday. Just as I was leaving for my bike ride, my dad called me and let me know that our family dog, Brandy, had to be put to sleep. She'd been limping around with bad hip problems for several years and recently she began to have liver failure. Unfortunately on Monday evening it was apparent that she could no longer move around and was just suffering too much. The news really didn't come as much of a surprise and it was made easier by the fact that for the past seven or eight years she'd been living with my parents out of state and I saw her only rarely.

Brandy as a young pup

There is nothing like a good bike ride to take my mind of some bad news, so I went ahead and left on my ride. I took the Black Creek Greenway from my house to Umstead Park. You can get some idea of what the ride is like by viewing Scott Chilcote's excellent photo essay here. The total ride ended up being 24 miles long. The portion within Umstead worked out to about 19 miles. It was a nice ride I ended up seeing many deer and some parts of the park which I hadn't explored before. The ride finished after sunset and I hadn't brought my bike lights so I was treated to the sight of the bike and bridle trail illuminated only by the stars, the moon, and hundreds of fire flies.

A map of the Umstead portion of my ride can be seen here.