Summertime

May and June got eaten alive by minor remodel projects.  Glad that's over and I can get out for a little bit of recreational riding. I visited some of the ongoing upgrades to our local non-motorized infrastructure.  

A new trail is under construction along the east and south sides of Austin Lake which is going to connect the Vicksburg trail to the Portage trail system.  That connection has been 10 years in the process between construction delays and property issues.  It looks like a great project through a small forested area which will be a boon for both communities.

Portage is also continuing with the diet and redesign of the business area on Portage Rd between Centre Ave and Bacon Ave, which will slow down the dragstrip and improve access to the retail business between Austin and West Lakes.  That has been kicked around for at least a decade and will be finished this fall, finally.

Also, work is ongoing on Westnedge south of Centre avenue in conjunction with some water main replacement which will upgrade the street configurations and extend the existing cycling infrastructure.  That is planned to be complete this summer.

Also, in Kalamazoo, we are finally scheduled to see the road diet on Portage St south from the Edison neighborhood to Cork St.  That piece of the puzzle was planned years ago but got snaffued by a bureaucratic glich. In my opnion it should be more, but I'm glad to see it happening.  

The KRVT is finally going to extend from Galesburg to Augusta and is intended to be complete before the snow flies again. 

A lot of good things are happening to develop our network of cycling infrastructure, it feels like we're constantly crawling uphill, but things are getting done.  The powers that be see the need and are developing a real network of cycling along with all the other road projects.

Google's view of our cycling network (the green lines) is way behind the times

compared to the reality on the ground today.

Our local MPO has an interactive map of the projects planned for the coming year, hopefully other areas have the same available across the country.

Worlds of Fun

March in Michigan is like a really moist roller coaster,

we went from single digit temps

to robust sunshine and fifty degrees

back to the freezer

back to summertime warmth and listening 

to the wetlands waking

onward to bask in the sunshine

with the daffodils rising in the background.

Maybe we've reached the end of the ride 

and won't have to worry 

about snow tires for a while.

It's time to enjoy some longer rides

and plan some adventures.

Disappointed at winter

   A couple of years ago, I was golfing with a guy who's a climate denier (golf draws people like them). When he brought it up I said, "When I was in college in the 70's I was seeing articles and papers published by scientists predicting the horrible things that would happen if we continued developing fossil fuel usage.  The odd thing is that things are occurring EXACTLY the way they predicted."  He said nothing.

                                         Winter started a little early

with a whopper of a storm that put a strain on us

but no problem, it just went away. 

Things became a day to day wonder of 

cold, warmer, colder, warm, snow, ice and on and on.

Being in Michigan I've grown used to snow on the ground 

mid-December to mid-March not this intermittent tease.

That leaves us no opportunity for skiing.

Then to finish January we were slammed with five days 

of continuous snowfall.

  Street crews couldn't couldn't keep up,

 2" studded snow tires wouldn't cut it.  

It took more than a week to carve paths out of the street.

Then, two feet of snow went away, 

  we started seeing grass peek through the snow.

I took the studded tires off the Brompton

and got out the springtime bikes early. I'm being optimistic, 

the weather might be screwed up, 

but it looks like an early spring.

Maybe it's not climate change, but I hear 

that armadillos have migrated north into Indiana.

Crazy clothes

Ok, we got here,

and after one of the worst weeks of snow I have seen, we're gonna be here for a while.  I don't care what the sacred groundhog says, I live in Michigan and we will have winter for 6 or more weeks.  Now we get to hear all the chatter about how hard it is to dress.

"My winter kit has more layers than a wedding cake." --Bike Push

"In the winter it takes 30 minutes to dress for a 60 minute ride."--some anonymous guy on Facebook.

It's hard to even imagine what they are going through.  I don't go on any fitness expeditions in the winter, but I do ride nearly every day for some reason   What would normally be a twenty minute ride in city side, can turn into 45 minutes if the streets are in bad shape.

The only extra layer I wear is 

long underwear beneath the slacks.

That's it.

When it's time to mount up, I wear a winter jacket and gloves or mittens. 

The biggest challenge I face is overheating.  It works a little like this; I walk to the garage thinking "I'm out of my f...ing mind!"  Three blocks from home, I'm zipping down to get cooled off a bit.  In the worst of weather I wear a neck gaiter to pull up over my ears and face a bit.  The other day I rode like that INTO  an -11 windchill without any discomfort.  All you need is enough to protect from the wind and lock the body heat in.

But the rest of the world, sees it like this.