Friday, October 07, 2005
Happy Cycling
My bike route is back to its full glory. Construction has been active on a stretch of Maxome south of Cummer, forcing me onto Willowdale, which I really don't like riding on. The construction workers have built a temporary gravel side path for the school kids and me to get passed. And none of the school kids have made fun of me yet. Either grade fours have changed or I've changed.
Willowdale is fine further south, but in this section it has two lanes in each direction, with the lanes being too narrow for a car to pass me. A lot of drivers like to do the fast pass in the right lane. I usually make it obvious that they can't get by safely by "taking the lane", a move that takes a bit of courage on these faster roads, and leads to a lot of shoulder checking.
This returns 2 km of bike-friendly residential streets to my route. I'm left with only about 2 km of major arterial roads on my 19 km commute. It is very good. I thought it would be difficult for me to avoid long-winded rants about drivers in this blog, but in the end I have few problems. Route selection makes all the difference.
Willowdale is fine further south, but in this section it has two lanes in each direction, with the lanes being too narrow for a car to pass me. A lot of drivers like to do the fast pass in the right lane. I usually make it obvious that they can't get by safely by "taking the lane", a move that takes a bit of courage on these faster roads, and leads to a lot of shoulder checking.
This returns 2 km of bike-friendly residential streets to my route. I'm left with only about 2 km of major arterial roads on my 19 km commute. It is very good. I thought it would be difficult for me to avoid long-winded rants about drivers in this blog, but in the end I have few problems. Route selection makes all the difference.
Darren J 10/07/2005 10:57:00 a.m.