Joder Ranch Open Space

Finally made it out to Joder Ranch to check out the new open space.  There's only a 2 mile stretch of road/trail open at the moment but I can see trails heading off here and there and they look good from what I can see of them.  Which ones Boulder will open up to bikes, if any, remains to be seen.  The interim trail is open to bikes though and I've got a good loop planned, mix of road and trails, for when my neck and knee finally get better.  I'd say they're at about 80% healed at the moment but I've been doing hardly anything in order to let them rest and heal.  Kind of hard to sit still this past week with temps. in the 60's and 70's and trails finally drying up and opening again.  Hopefully the weather will hold out and we can get in another trip to Cortez/Dolores before we get slammed with the spring snow storms.

The trail is nice because it's only a 7 minute drive from my house but it's not much until they open up the other trails and who knows when that will be.  Boulder moves at a glacial pace when it comes to Open Space.  But I can't complain about more Open Space.  Anything to spread out the hordes of Too Many People.

And in that vein I saw an alarming article in the local paper about a proposed development about a mile or so from my house.  In short a couple bought 500 acres of land on the cheap because at present it can't be annexed to the city of Boulder and is restricted to very limited development.  Then hired a lawyer to pull some shenanigans to get the land annexed.  Even worse they're trying to pass off this development scam as providing 'affordable' housing that Boulder desperately needs.  Which is like those people who try to pass off their crazy lunging untrained dogs in Target as 'Service Dogs'.  If they manage to pull this scam off it'll create a huge bottleneck at the north entrance to town.  Don't think there's much we the public can do about it, once the sleezy lawyers get involved it's out of our hands.  I'm guessing it'll be years before they're able to break ground but it seems inevitable that with the huge amounts of money to be made on development that every last little square will get paved over, even if it's land that was never meant to be developed.  Where there's a will and some money there's a lawyer willing and able to help the rich get richer.