Your suburb...

I'm going to start a new line of jokes. Forget "your momma" insults. Let's try "your suburb" instead! I'll start. Your suburb has so much sprawl, the UN just recognized it as its own country. Your suburb is so environmentally unfriendly that they give tickets to anyone not driving an SUV! Your suburb is so vehicle dependent they recently took out the bike lanes on a major thoroughfare! Your suburb is so apathetic, there's only one pollng place in town! Your suburb is so ostentatious it has more golf course acreage than strip malls (and that's saying a lot!) Your suburb is so SUBURBAN that the children think "downtown" means the place with all the strip malls.

Now it's your turn! If you can't come up with any good ones, no problem. Guess which one is true about my suburb! Go ahead, guess. I'll wait.

Well, ok, several of those are true, but if you guessed "removed bike lanes" you are closest! Recently, on a major thoroughfare, they wanted to widen the street. It's the main access from our latest zone of sprawling suburbia to the interstate freeway. Two lanes was just not going to cut it anymore, so they widened it in both directions to three lanes. Unfortunately, in doing so, they took away the bike lanes. Now, in one direction, there is a sidewalk labeled "bike route" which invites bicyclists and pedestrians to share a 6 foot wide strip of pavement. In the other direction, there's nothing. Did I mention this is the steepest hill in town? A bicyclist may choose, on the way down - coast down the bike route and risk hitting a pedestrian? or coast down with 3 lanes of heavy traffic and risk being hit by a vehicle?

This matters to me because last week I started riding my bike to and from work. My plan is to ride Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It takes less time than walking, and it's better excersize, too. Already I've seen some changes: I can now see my thigh muscles, and today it was easier than ever to ride at higher speeds. I still walk up the steep hill on my way to work, though I'm confident that eventually, if I stick to it, I'll be in good enough shape to ride up. I'd love to tell you how great the scenery is (I know it is, I walked it enough) but when I'm riding, I have to concentrate too much. Our lovely suburban town has an awful lot of gravel and rocks in the bike lanes.

The thing is, for a suburban town, the roads really aren't safe for a cyclist, and not just because they took out the bike lanes in one stretch of road or that the bike lanes have gravel where they exist. The same day as my first ride to work, a 10 yo boy on his way home from school was hit by the short school bus and killed at a blind intersection. The following Monday, a 13 yo girl was hit by a drunk driver in a mini van who was dropping his own children off at school. I'm not surprised that they were hit; I've had my own experiences with really scary drivers, on the same two days!

Friday, on my way down the hill (the one where they took out a bike lane) there was a stupid driver who stopped abruptly with her tail end stuck out into the next lane over while she was stopped at a red light. To avoid running smack into her, I had to swerve out into traffic, luckily with nothing coming. Her action would have been stupid even without a cyclist right behind her; traffic in the next lane hadn't stopped, and they go 40 miles an hour down that hill. When I finally made it around the corner, and into the bike lane, she was driving just behind me, half into the bike lane, and drifting even further over. I was sure I was about to die. Luckily someone honked at her and she started paying attention. When she finally did pass me, I peered in at her. She was unwrapping an ice cream bar. Now, I'm overweight too. I understand the need to be eating an ice cream bar on the way home to dinner. But lady, get fat on your own time! Get away from my back tire!

Monday I had a similar instance, this time with a man who sped up when I signaled left. What kind of idiot tries to cut off a bicyclist? I'll tell you what kind... a man in a beemer with something to prove!

After much discussion, my husband and I decided that it's just too dangerous to use that route in the evenings. He came up with an alternate route for me. I complained bitterly that it was a mile longer and had 2 extra hills, but he was right, it was much safer. It has a bicycle lane the entire length and I don't have to turn left until I'm at a special intersection designed for bicyclists. Despite my original complaints, I am very pleased with the new route. Instead the old way, with a mile of uphill and half a mile of (dangerous) downhill, the new route has half a mile of moderate uphill and about 2 miles of downhill. The two extra hills turned out to be little blips I barely noticed. Indeed, I didn't notice the extra mile at all. I wouldn't want to use it the other way (two miles of uphill? EEK!) but I like all the coasting I did on the way home!

Yes, I said coasting. Those bicyclist enthusiasts out there would, if they ever read this blog, indubitably shake their heads over me. But it's not my fault, I swear! I DO know that it's better not to coast on a downhill like that. It's my bike that is the problem. It's not in the worst shape it could be, thanks to my husband, but it's not in great shape either. For example, I cannot shift out of the middle chainring gear. Instead of the 21 gears I should have access too, I only have 7. My top coasting speed of 20mph is not nearly high enough to compete with traffic going 40-50. What I really need is a nice road bike instead of my heavy mountain bike that has to be dragged up the hills. Given our bike lanes here, I'm almost glad I can't afford a road bike. How would I deal with gravel on a road bike?