My First Date with Bluestreak

by Russell Taylor

Riding a bicycle for transportation is, as much as it hurts my cycling advocate heart to say it, still an unusual choice here in Austin, Texas. More unusual still is to pick a steed based on something other than speed or riding comfort. My house is small, though, and after being passed up by a bus with a full bike rack late one night, I determined that a folding bike would address both issues.

I ultimately chose a very funny-looking bike called the Strida Evo3. Not only did it check all my boxes, but it also had a cool belt drive to spare my pant legs, and somehow was available on Amazon for several hundred dollars less than the popular Brompton model. I named her Bluestreak.

It was Autumn, and the weather was reasonable, so I determined that the best way to get the hang of what I intended to be my new daily driver was to embark on a daylong adventure combining some bike time with some beer time to really bond with Bluestreak. Equipped with all the necessities, I pedaled out from my home in north Austin headed northwest toward Cedar Park.

I’d headed this way before, on a more conventional bike, so I knew the challenges of Parmer Ln: maniac drivers, debris-strewn shoulders, and bike lanes designed for maximum terror. Between waves of late-for-work SUVs treating the speed limit as a lower bound rather than an upper, the morning was gorgeous as I crawled along steadily in one of the three gears available in the unique Sturmey-Archer kick shift bottom bracket transmission. Vultures circled lazily on the thermals above new subdivisions, an implied threat I tried not to take too personally. 

Another rider stopped beside me at a signal, and we briefly chatted about our bikes, as one does. His carbon fiber rig and lycra kit could scarcely be more different from my goofy farthing-farthing and casual cotton autumnal look, and yet we managed a whole red light cycle’s banter over the drainage grates, roadkill, and other amusements to be had on that long leg. Soon enough, though, he was off, and on I cranked toward Red Horn and the promise of caffeination, hydration, and some light inebriation.

An all-day cafe that begins the day with fresh brewed coffee and ends with fresh brewed beer is the gold standard of third places in my book, comparable only to a library. After successfully transitioning from AM to PM, I set out on the next leg of my adventure, back down Parmer Ln for a stretch, and then east along the Brushy Creek Trail.

After a few miles of happily crunching along decomposed granite, towering over joggers, walkers, and more aerodynamically posed cyclists, the nice lady who lives in my phone and tells me where to go directed me off the trail and onto a neighborhood street that led onto a larger street that led onto RM 620 - a six-lane highway not unlike Parmer Ln.

Having tired of such riding, I retreated to instinct that suggested a smaller road would be friendlier and more pleasant - that little ol’ outlaw Sam Bass Rd would get me there, too, and with traffic a great deal slower. I rerouted back about half a mile and popped out onto a road not unlike the farm-to-market routes I grew up on, and promptly remembered why I did not take up cycling as a teen. White dualies with FARM TRUCK plates still frequented that road, and although the speed limit was lower, the shoulder was narrower - where there was a shoulder at all! A few blocks west of IH35, I let the rising tide of traffic pass while I paused in a church parking lot before forging on under the highway to the relative comfort of the old street grid of Round Rock. Lesson learned - a generous shoulder is better than a lower speed limit.

Emerging from old Round Rock to new - the Dell campus - I was nearing my afternoon destination, a brewery named Idle Vine. It would be gone within a year, but was then nestled in what I can only describe as a hipster-chic light industrial warehouse development of a dozen or so brand new matte black steel future barndominiums. The last stretch was mostly along overbuilt suburban roads that had lost out to TX-45, née Louis Henna Blvd, in the battle to be the defining northern edge of Austin or Pflugerville, or possibly the southern edge of Round Rock, over the years. 

The journey’s end brews were possibly better for having struggled what ended up being 32 miles to reach them; to this day, this remains my longest ride on Bluestreak. The fact that sticks in my head most about my destination is their collection of brewing vessels named for members of A Tribe Called Quest, which amused me while I waited for my partner to come sweep me up for dinner rather than navigate the last stretch back home.

Russell Taylor is an urbanist cyclist, critical geographer, information scientist, comics lover, and sustainable sartorialist currently serving on the City of Austin’s Bicycle Advisory Council. Follow his adventures at ret3.net and support your local library!