09:39 am: Ride Report
I copied this report from my diaryzine. It's too chatty, too long, and too disorganized for an LJ entry, but I don't have the time and energy to re-write it.
13 August 2007
As an all-day exercise, today's ride was something of a bust -- I got back in plenty of time for lunch, and I'm starting this report while my bread thaws.
I didn't think to write down the time at Chinworth Bridge, but it took two hours and three minutes to get to the Dollar Store, where I spent sixteen minutes, and nineteen minutes after that, I was in our driveway. Two hours and thirty-eight minutes for the round trip, if I can do clock arithmetic in my head.
I collected a spot of sin on my soul: I went to Roy Street by way of the Blackway, looked both ways, and turned the corner without tapping my foot on the pavement. Then I looked back and saw that a small child on a sidewalk bike
was approaching the intersection, and must have seen the whole turn -- but there's no way he could have seen the looking both ways bit. If he runs a stop sign and gets hit, it will be my fault. By the time I figured out that I should go back and apologize, it was too late to do so. I seriously considered writing a letter to the newspaper!
Backtracking to the beginning of this story:
I washed one of my shirts on Wednesday, and threw ineverything I could find. I washed two of Dave's shirts on Saturday, and threw in everything I could find. It
seemed rather silly to hold a major washday on Monday just for one king-sized sheet.
So I wanted to go riding today, but I'm a bit bored with Pierceton, and Sydney is a tad too far; eventually I remembered that I've been wanting to look at the new "bike trail" on the other side of town.
So I headed down Boy's City Drive, and much map-reading and blundering about later, I found myself on CR200S, under the impression that it was 300S -- despite having deliberately selected 200S -- which caused me some puzzlement when I got to Ferguson Road. I followed Ferguson to Crystal Lake Road, which I remembered from a previous trip as being well suited to cycling and not too far from Old Thirty. Crystal Lake seemed to go a long, long way without a chance to turn right, but the map says that I had gone less than two miles before I started wondering whether I'd have to go all the way to Atwood to get over to Old 30. Which isn't all that far, but I don't want to do any riding at all on Old 30 -- it's rough and narrow and heavily traveled.
So when I saw Parks-Schram Road, I swerved onto it with glee. Which quickly changed into panic as I discovered that a deep hole at the turn had been filled with pea gravel that perfectly matched the pavement. I somehow got out of that without falling off the bike, looked up, and saw that the road appeared to dead-end at somebody's driveway. At that moment, I could have used a more-colorful array of invective than lies at my disposal.
But on checking the map to see where the next crossing was, I discovered that the road not only goes, it comes out right at the Chinworth Bridge. And it's a twisty road running along a creek, a delightful place to ride. As I reached Chinworth, I saw two people on bikes headed toward Parks-Schram.
Since I'd come to see the recreationway, I left Chinworth by way of the walkway even though it would have been easier, safer, and more polite to use the county road. It would have meant a right turn onto the recreationway instead of crossing the road, for example. There was no traffic, but I couldn't help remembering that a man was recently killed at just such an intersection --
all responsibility lies with the person on the recreationway, since the drivers on the road don't expect an intersection. Crossing a road on a recreationway is equivalent to popping out from between parked cars.
Little of interest along the recreationway, of course. It ran alongside Old Thirty most of the way. Once it crossed a bridge that appeared to have been salvaged for its historical interest, but there was no sign to say what the historical interest was.
Then it turned south -- along Zimmer Road if I recall correctly -- and after a bit it intersected with a driveway and failed to come out the other side. There was a milepost near -- 1.9, I think -- but no "end Greenway" sign. I looked about in bewilderment for a while, went down a driveway along the railroad until I saw that it went nowhere but into parking lots, made a U turn in one of the lots, and went on down Zimmer to Crystal Lake Road, which is already Winona Avenue at this point. I crossed under the viaduct on Hand street in order to come back by way of Market street; seeing the full length, it isn't quite as bad a choice as it appeared when I'd inspected only the stretch where they will have to cut down all the shade trees on the south side of the road. And some of that can be avoided if people will sacrifice most of their dinky little lawns and are willing to step out their doors onto a right-of-way. Blackway designers consider swerving back and forth a definite plus, and put curves in at random intervals, so the path around the trees not being straight won't be any problem.
I forgot to stop at Owen's West, and Owen's East was out of my way, but non-fish cat food was the only urgent thing on my list, so I got two cans of Fancy Feast at Dollar General. Also had a little oops: I turned down Harrison from force of habit, and had to circle back on Cleveland to continue my inspection of Market Street. Then down McKinley, through the Interurban viaduct, and home.
For supper, I had Nancy's zucchini, cut up with ham and some other vegetables, steam-fried in a small skillet. Which wasn't enough, so I had a small sandwich of sour cream and five slices of pepperoni, which came close to killing the kettle-baked bread I'd thawed for lunch.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}