Coming On Ride To Work Season
Monday, April 1st, 2013
It's going to be time to start riding to work soon.
Hot diggity, the days are getting warmer–and longer–and riding to work is once again going to be an option. Actually, where I work now, out west of Union on Alameda, there are a couple hard-core BMW guys who already are riding most days.
Of course, I haven’t met them yet, so who knows if maybe they just live 2 miles away. For me it is a 22-mile ride if I take the direct route, or about 26 miles if I take the route with less traffic. You can ignore a lot if you’re only going a few miles.
I don’t like taking the more direct route because that puts me in the thick of commuter traffic, with a lot of stop and go. That’s murder on your clutch wrist. Plus it’s dangerous. I went this same route several years ago when I was working out in the same general area and there was more than one occasion when I was on a bike and someone decided to pull into the next lane without looking to see if anyone–me–might be there who they could not see in their mirror.
The fact is, though, I’m going to be a bit torn in another month or so. The W line for the RTD’s light rail system is set to open April 26 and that will enable me to get on the train very close to home and ride all they way out to 2nd and Union. I’ll need to get on a bus from there but the bus stops right outside our office building. Why battle traffic at all when you don’t need to?
But I will want to ride at least some days. So I guess I won’t be getting a monthly pass. Those things cost enough that if you don’t use them every day you don’t save any money. I guess I’ll just get the book of passes that save you some money and ride the bike some days, ride the light rail some days, and maybe even drive my car some days–maybe not.
Of course that’s the other thing. Right now there is a bottleneck on I-25 where Santa Fe feeds into it, but that project looks like it should be finished in two or three months. Once they get all those north and south lanes open I’m hoping the jam-ups that are there pretty much every day will go away, and then even taking that route by car may be a lot better. Might even go that way on the bike, if it improves a lot.
Till then, though, I’m just looking for it to be nice enough that I won’t have to dress as if it was winter just because I’m leaving home at 7:45 a.m. Then maybe I’ll finally meet those beemer guys.
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