The adventure began when I noticed that our lovely little Geo's air conditioning was a little peaked. I mean, it worked great when I didn't really need it, but summer has come to Central Florida and the A/C just wasn't keeping up the way it used to. This meant a trip to Blue Book was in order. Our favorite mechanic (and used car dealership) is over 12 miles away, but worth the trip. Usually we do what everyone else does: drive the car up and get a ride home. This time I decided to ride my bike home.
Our local bike trail gets me easily between home and Lake Mary Blvd.; the question was, how much sidewalk could I count on between there and Blue Book? (Technically, bicycles belong on the road, not the sidewalk. But if you've ever seen the roads around here you'll know why I say I prefer paying a fine to paying a hospital bill. Not that I've been fined yet, but it's a possiblity.) Yesterday I took a drive and learned the answer to my question: Trail and sidewalk are available for all but a very small portion, but that small gap might as well have been a chasm.
Central Florida is not ready for bicycle and pedestrian traffic. In places we're trying: we have a number of very nice trails along and connecting former rail beds, there are sidewalks in many places, and some new road construction includes a bike lane. The trouble is that key connections are missing. The above-mentioned chasm is also known as Interstate 4. Lake Mary Blvd. crosses I-4, but there is no provision for pedestrian traffic; the sidewalks just end. In theory I could have ridden across, as there is a wide shoulder in most places, but it's pretty scary, and you have to cross three entrance/exit ramps, including one with four lanes of heavy traffic—and of course no walk light.
Clearly, I needed a Plan B. I tried out several alternate routes, each of which started out promising but petered out into long stretches of no sidewalk and roads too busy for comfortable biking. This is not Japan, where drivers are accustomed to sharing the road with bicyclists—though at least we have no concrete irrigation ditches to worry about. Finally I decided to take a detour that added about three miles to the trip, but allowed me to cross I-4 on a pedestrian/bike bridge that is part of the trail.
Last night I put the bike rack on the back of the car, put the bike on the rack, and took a brief test drive to make sure I'd put it on securely. This morning I packed my provisions (making sure I had plenty of water), slathered on sunscreen (which I hate to do, but I wasn't sure how much of the trip would be without benefit of shade), and headed out.
Once at Blue Book, Jim helped me get the bike off the rack and the rack in the car; I handed him the keys, donned my helmet and biking gloves, and was off.
I don't regret all the preparations. Of course I spent more gas planning my route than I saved by biking, but that's a one-time expense. Having some emergency provisions (like water and money) and using sunscreen weren't bad ideas. You never know when something might happen to disrupt your plans. But really, the trip was wonderful! I had been thinking of it as a major journey, a big deal, because it was (for me) in uncharted territory and a long distance. The odometer on my bike is broken, but the trip was about 16 miles. That seemed long to me, but then I realized I was only traveling one way! Since our regular Saturday bike ride is eight miles out and back, 16 miles should not have been anything to think twice about.
There were two areas along the way where the sidewalk was closed due to construction, but both were easily circumvented. One thing I enjoyed seeing was a place where a section of the trail itself was closed because of nearby construction work, and they had paved a temporary detour for the pedestrians/bicyclists, just as they do on roads for cars.
Mentally, I had built two resting places into my ride: St. Peter's Church, where a friend works, and Panera Bread. But as I said, the ride was much easier than I had expected, and I didn't want to stop, so I came straight home. It took me exactly an hour and 45 minutes. Lately I have been setting aside about an hour and a half each day for exercising, and it would have taken me more than 15 minutes to drive home from Blue Book, so overall I saved time as well as gasoline! Well, maybe not—there's a certain amount of overhead involved with getting the bike and the carrier on and off the car—but at any rate it didn't really cost me the time out of my day that one would think, and it was terrific fun!
