Bike Leans - Tom Watson Park/Coot Lake

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With all of the heat we’ve all been enduring, I thought you might enjoy a vicarious splash in a nice cool lake. Naturally, my bike is in your way. Today’s bike lean is my gravel bike, Agent Gravel, at Tom Watson Park/Coot Lake, in Boulder, Colorado. I took this photo about 3 years ago, during an end of year Project Hero ride in Longmont/Boulder, CO. Coot Lake was our rest stop during the 26.5-mile ride. I’ve ridden past it a few times since then, (once while lost off course during a race, but that’s another story,) but haven’t stopped since. Each time we ride past now, I wonder where the connection to golfer Tom Watson is, and why he’d have a park in Boulder named after him. I found no connections. He wasn’t born in Colorado, never lived here as far as I can tell, and he went to Stanford, so no college ties. So why did they name a park after him? Because they didn’t. I had to dig, but this Tom Watson, Thomas J. Watson, Sr., was the long-time president of IBM, and largely responsible for building the company into an international giant. The park, leased and managed by the City of Boulder, sits on land owned by IBM. (IBM once had a sizeable presence in Boulder.) The park is a haven for area runners, and offers tennis (they are apparently working on pickleball,) basketball, a playground, grilling, you know, public park stuff. And it’s not named after the legendary golfer. Link is to a video I made, all footage from that very ride: