Today's Bike Ride (and yikes, snakes)

(From 7/21/06 on my old blog)

After planning to do an after-work bike ride all week, I finally did one today. The late afternoon thunderstorms kept me inside earlier this week. I did the ride around the lake in Chatfield State Park. The ride was 17.5 miles so I now have 3049 miles on my bike.

One of the weird things that happens to me on this ride is that I almost always see a snake somewhere along the trail and today was no exception. So, when I got home I was able to say once again, "I saw a snake". It's gotten to be a bit of a joke to me.

But it is really weird. I have seen at least two different types of snakes on this trail - garter and bull. Today's was a bull snake. It was about 20 inches long with the first 16 inches about 1.5 inches thick with a quick taper off to a pointy tail. He was right in the middle of the trail and I almost ran over him stopping in the nick of time. I watched him for a minute to make sure he got off the trail. I didn't want him to get run over by another speedy bike. I try to keep a sharp eye out for snakes on the trail because I actually have run over two snakes on my bike thinking they were sticks until it was too late. The snakes I ran over did not seem to be hurt - or at least I could not find them when I went back to check them out.

The snakes I have run over were both garter snakes about 18 inches long and about as thick as a pencil. The largest snake I have seen was a bull snake, I think. It was about 6 feet long and 2 inches thick. This was along the trail along the South Platte River.