Cool Trip Down the Barely Light Trail

Sites along the Cedar River trail in Cedar Rapids in December.

A blog post I started last week but had not finished, but photo could have been taken today:

Thursday was a cool day, but not bad for biking. But, on the way to the office, I heard a familiar but dreaded “pop.”

A broken spoke.

I had planned to bike to an afternoon appointment and then to see Shirley at Promise House, but ended up driving the van instead. I mentally prepared myself to face my two-week Christmas break sans bike, not a happy time.

But, when I took the bike to Northtowne that afternoon, they asked me if I would use it the next day, should they fix it right away. Well, yes, yes I would.

And they did. Nice.

So today I biked to the office, then to lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings on Blair’s Ferry with some of the newspaper staff. It had warmed a bit in the afternoon, so I took the slightly longer trail route.

I do prefer the warm, green summer trail, but even with the sun hanging low in the south and casting long shadows midday, it’s a pleasant December for biking.

If I Have Not Used This One Before, I Should Have

Took a chance Tuesday and rode, and paid for it with a damp, dark commute home.

Still, one can’t complain when it’s 50 in December. Unless one is a biker and it’s raining all day. I had the “pleasure” of driving the van today.

Then again, given how we the week’s forecast was, I’ll stop whining. I did ride Tuesday and it looks like I will ride tomorrow-including to an off-campus internship conference that will give me an excuse to use the Cedar River Trail.

Happy days. Meanwhile, still, I wonder …

The Importance Of A South Commute

Compass image from chrisinplymouth's Flickr photostream.

It was 16 degrees this morning, according to the usually way too optimistic bank sign that I pass.

It’s nice to see that sign in winter. Saying “16” when it might really be 11 or so is nicer than, say, displaying “95” when it’s really 90 in July. For you Celsius pals, even 16 is way below zero. TGFF (thank God for Fahrenheit).

My wife, a better woman than I, had been to the gym, and her informal weather report was “It’s COLD out there.” So I set off on my morning commute prepped for a bit of freezing.

And it was a nice morning. Mostly because the wind, from the north and west, was very light, and I was mostly traveling south. The parts of the commute where I had to turn due west were notably colder—when air moves at 11 or 16 degrees, it can suck warmth from facial flesh fairly fast, but even so, the wind was light enough that it was not a particularly uncomfortable morning.

Partly, that’s a happy accident of direction. I live north of Mount Mercy University, so I peddle south in the morning, north in the evening. And in Iowa, wind is most commonly from the west, while the coldest winter breezes are often north winds.

I didn’t plan to live north of MMU, it’s just where we found an acceptable house 10 years ago. For a commuter, it’s probably not the most ideal direction. In the Northern Hemisphere, if you work “normal” office hours, it’s probably best to live east of where you work, so the morning and afternoon suns are both behind you. The direction you don’t want to live is west—which doesn’t do much to explain urban growth in Des Moines, Iowa, but there you have it.

Anyway, while a car commuter should live east due to the position of the sun, I think north or south makes more sense for a bike commuter, and probably north is better than south. The coldest winds would be at my back during the coldest parts of the day. I’m never directly riding into or out of the sun, except for brief segments of my ride (and the most nerve-wracking time for a ride is as the sun sets and you’re trying to cross C Avenue at Blair’s Ferry headed east—all those turning, blinded car pilots …).

So, I’m happy that I’m a southbound, and then a northbound, commuter.

Snow Slows But Doesn’t Stop CR Biker

My bike parked at Warde Hall, this morning, Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Day. Yes, those are my tire tracks. Most of the pavement on the ride today was bare, my driveway and the end of the ride were really the only snowy spots. And, no, that's not my cigarette butt.

I’m not sure it was a good idea to ride my bike Tuesday. In fact, given a similar day in the future I intend to not ride my bike.

I awoke Tuesday to find a nasty surprise—snow. Not that snow is a shock in Iowa in December, just that there hadn’t been much chance of it in the weather forecast—it was supposed to be cloudy and cold, but dry. It was not dry. Once again, I found myself biking in the snow.

And biking some more. I had a dentist appointment that afternoon, and biked to and from it, while it was snowing. The snow was light—it wasn’t the wet, stingy flakes from the previous alleged flurries, but the snow melted and then refroze on the pavement. The C Avenue and Blair’s Ferry crossing in the morning was the most treacherous part of my ride, because car traffic had compacted the snow into a white, slick glaze.

But the ride home, after bell practice, in the dark as it was increasingly freezing was a bit dicey.

Well, made it with no slips, but I don’t want to try that again. When things go wrong on ice on a bike, they go instantly and very and possibly bone-breakingly wrong. Audrey was babysitting and had to leave campus long before I did, although in retrospect, maybe I would just hang out at work until she could come get me. It certainly would have been safer.

Wednesday, at least, it was dry. It was also much colder, but I’ll take dry and cold over melting, freezing snow falling any day. I had to fully bundle up, including long underwear, two pairs of socks, a turtleneck under a warm sweater, a scarf over my light biking jacket, yet I wasn’t really uncomfortable.

All in all, it was better biking weather today.

Wet snow stings when it hits

The weather forecast this morning called for possible flurries this afternoon, but mostly the snow was to hit north of us.

So, of course, I rode. It was warmer today than yesterday, so even with a bit of wind, I had no problem.

This afternoon, I was to go to the President's House east of Mount Mercy University for a little faculty gathering and chat--a sort of open conversational gathering that our president hosts now and then.

Imagine my pleasure when it was lightly raining as I left MMU. Yeah, just what a biker wants.

The meeting was fine, I think. But when it was over, it was snowing, big, fat, wet flakes. It was pretty darn heavy for a flurry.

As I rode west and then north to go home, the melted snow on the pavement was sprayed into the air by my back wheel, and then onto my backside. Wet, heavy flakes of snow were pelting down.

I like snow. I don't mind living in the Midwest, and snow is a fact of winter life. But I don't try to bike through it, and this was no friendly, cute flurry. A flurry is usually gentle, light snowflakes floating down.

This was not that. It was big heavy globs of half-melted ice and water. It wasn't floating down in a gentle flurry. It was pelting down as if the heavens were angry at crazy winter bikers. The "snow" stung when it hit my face, especially my lips.

Oh well. I don't mind snow, it's just a fact of Midwest living. But, I don't usually ride my bike in it. While colder, it's also supposed to by drier tomorrow. Think I should lube my chain before starting out, though.

When All Roads Lead To Nowhere

Tree being felled in Marion, blocking my way. Had to ride on a narrow two-lane street where the speed limit was 35 mph. Sorry, drivers, was not my first choice. Second image is my bike on a weedy railroad right of way. You might have trouble spotting it, but beyond the back wheel is a narrow trail through a small stand of trees, which I traversed on foot to get to the right of way.

OK, a slightly whiney post. After giving thanks, maybe I feel a little entitled.

There are bikers who insist they have the same “rights” as cars, and who bike mostly or totally in the street. I see Rockwell-Collins employees, highly educated engineers probably, who bike along C Avenue, a busy four-lane road where the speed limit is 40 mph.

Not me. Those bikers may be de jure correct, but the several ton difference in mass between a biker and the smallest car makes that de facto beside the point.

When I’m along C Avenue, I’m on a sidewalk. Maybe being a scofflaw, but I think the laws of physics beat such traffic regulations, at least when my butt is on the line. As a biker on the sidewalk, I think it’s my obligation to always yield to and be wary of pedestrians—I create a hazard for them more than they create risk for me. It’s the same relationship I hope I have with most rational drivers—recognizing that the minor dent and blood stains on their fenders won’t be as much of an inconvenience for them as my mangled corpse intertwined with bent spokes would be for me, I hope that they (the car drivers) attempt to be wary of me. And I try to bike in a way that nothing I do will put me in their path—such as avoiding the street completely on C Avenue and riding as far right as I can on the quiet residential streets where I am in the street.

Anyway, the day after Thanksgiving, Theresa, her son, Ben and I went over to Katy’s where we were to meet Theresa’s husband and enjoy a traditional turkey day feast with Katy’s family.

I left first, and on my bike. I thought of going to the trail on Boyson Road, but they’ve been doing a “project” to put in a sidewalk at the north end of the trail, and as far as I knew, it was still blocked. So instead, I went up to Blair’s Ferry, intending to ride along it (on a sidewalk) to Lindale, where I would turn left and enter Marion via a fairly busy, but sidewalk-passable, street.

Except there was a sidewalk project going on that blocked me heading east on Blair’s Ferry.

There really is only one other way to get where I was going—to go down an overgrown old railroad right of way until it becomes, in Marion, a limestone trail. To get there, I walked my bike through some woods behind Northland Gym.

And when I got to my usual street route in Marion, well, Houston, we had a familiar problem. They, whoever they are, were cutting down a tree. And they had blocked the sidewalk. Of course.

So, of three possible routes to go east from my house to my daughter’s house just a few miles away, three were blocked by closed sidewalks. I rode, against my will, on the busy Marion street, feeling the ire of passing motorist slowed by that #%@!# biker—but really, I had no choice.

Here is the rant part. If the city does a street project, it always does it in a way that, if possible, there is still passage for cars. Lanes are repainted, traffic redirected—maybe it takes longer, but your SUV can still get to Wal-Mart somehow. However, sidewalks apparently are “extra” optional things, to be blocked at whim, unannounced, for however long it takes to do whatever is going on. No need for any walkway or bikeway alternative.

On the way home, I used the Boyson trail. It was indeed closed at the north end, but I just hopped off and walked around the barrier. What else could I do?

Well, bah, humbug. Yeah, in a practical sense, I can concede that car traffic is far more important to commerce and life as we know it. But life as we know it is spewing greenhouse gasses into the air, making us obese and divorcing us from the rhythms of nature. Those of use on bikes are, besides creating minor traffic hazards that enrage a few ignorant SUV drivers, keeping the air clean, making healthcare more affordable by avoiding more excess weight and rewarding all those gardeners who care by admiring their work.

So please, try to keep the sidewalks open. We should maintain the important fiction, which may become reality in our lifetime, that it ought to be possible to walk or bike to get there from here.

A Biker’s Thanksgiving

Photos: The end of pavement and my turn-around point. Christmas lights in Robins the day before Thanksgiving .Early in the trail, fresh asphalt and painting makes me wonder if the paving project has taken place, but it has not yet. Ah well, next year, I bet.

Had to drive the Beetle Tuesday due to misty rain that made it too wet for me to bicycle on the final day of classes this week. Today, I took the Beetle in for repairs and learned I’ll be more than $1,000 poorer as a result.

If ever there was a reminder how nice it is to get around by bike instead of car …

Anyway, enough of any gloom. This afternoon, prior to a visit to my mother-in-law that I wrote about in my other blog, I rode my bike just to get some fresh air and take a break from school work and Beetle woes.

I was going to ride around 3, but was late leaving due to finishing up some school work. It was around 3:40 when I left home, getting to be 4 and getting close to a dusky feeling in the sky when I reached the Cedar Valley Nature Trail.

I headed north. I wanted to see if they had started to pave the trail north of Robins, a project that has been announced all summer long. As it turned out, the answer was “no,” but when I got to the end of the pavement it was time to turn on my lights and turn around, anyway, so it was all good.

Along the way, I thought of what a biker in Cedar Rapids ought to be thankful for. On the day before Thanksgiving, thankfully, it was easy to count some blessings. I’m thankful for:

• The Cedar Valley Trail and others. The Cedar Rapids area has a network of trails that is still more aspiration than reality, but the real trails are nice. I like the differing character of the trails—the paved Cedar Valley and Cedar River trails that wind along I 380 but through woods, then downtown (cutting through a factory on the way), then along the Cedar River, and finally exiting town to join the Hoover Trail. I don’t get there as often as I like, but this year I discovered the “south route” to the Sac and Fox, a much wilder, but great for a tree lover, trail. The Marion trail through Legion Park is a quick, pleasant ride. Cenmar doesn’t amount to much yet, but has future promise.

• Cedar Rapids drivers. There are a few who festively rev their engines in an unfriendly manner when they see a biker, and some bumpkin GOP politicians make stupid anti-biker statements because they slow SUV traffic on county roads (moving at the same speed as the tractors on those same roads that the GOP bumpkins never complain about)—but, for the most part, Iowa and Cedar Rapids drivers are what you expect of Iowans. We are a reasonable, level-headed, polite people. You (on the bike) follow the expected rules, and, in general, you’ll be briefly acknowledged and ignored like the rest of humanity.

• The fall weather. We are for sure in the brown time of year now, but it’s been a gorgeous fall, full of excellent biking days. It was breezy, cloudy and in the 30s today. Perfect biking weather—a large middle-aged body generates excess heat, and I like the cool. Yes, biking in the summer, despite the heat, is nicer due to all the plants and birds and people and stuff—but brown day biking has charms, too.

• The quiet beauty of Iowa. True, a few mountains and an ocean or two would spice up the joint, but the rolling countryside of Iowa, even on a bike, even in the state’s second largest city, is refreshing to the soul. I like the gentle curves of the hills seen through the trees now that the leaves are gone. I like the reddish fruit of sumac in clusters on tall stalks along the trail. I like that water has returned to Dry Creek due to some fall rains, and I get to see it every day I ride somewhere as I cross the C Avenue bridge. A church song sums it up: “For the beauty of the Earth … Lord of all to you we raise, this our grateful hymn of praise.”

Indeed—for a biker in Iowa on the eve of Thanksgiving, it’s easy to say thanks.