This morning I started out biking to Park Lake for a canoe lake cleanup. Park Lake is along East Colonial Dr and Highland Ave.

I left my driveway from Baldwin Park at 8:30 AM sharp. It took my usual work route along Lake Baldwin Trail and connected to Cady Way Trail out to the trail head, then made my way to Maguire and onto Colonial.

At 8:30 on a Saturday morning Colonial was pretty much dead. I had my blinking tail light on as an added level of protection, but it was light enough outside that I didn't really need it. After Bumby, Colonial merges from 3 to 2 lanes (see map link below). There are also parking spaces that were all empty because most businesses weren't open yet. I felt safe enough to ride along the spaces, not feeling like I would be trapped behind a parked car. I did well except for Ferncreek Ave, where the side walk came out into the street and I got trapped in front of the Chevron station and ended up rolling onto the sidewalk. I had to wait for traffic to pass to merge back in.

I got to Park Lake in about 20 minutes...quicker than I thought. I had originally wanted to leave home at 8:15 and was concerned I'd get there late for the 9 AM cleanup.

At Park Lake, I met up with Eco-Action, who was participating in a Keep Orlando Beautiful and City of Orlando's Stormwater Division special event to cleanup Orlando area water ways. We were split up into 2 groups. One was eco-action's, which I was in with about 5 others and we got into canoes to clean the lake. The Keep Orlando Beautiful group was on foot, walking around the lake, picking up trash.

The lake didn't have large amounts of trash, except for bits of plastic. From past cleanups we've done there, I've learned that when the lawn gets mowed, they mow over the trash and chop it up into little pieces and it gets sprayed into the water. That's basically what we had to deal with and made picking out trash that much more challenging. At the end, we didn't collect much because of this, but had a worthwhile day.

There's some pictures below of the group and trash.

After the cleanup, I biked over to the Winter Park Art Festival.

This is a Google Map of my entire route