I got a bike. Not the one I was thinking of getting, but this one. My goal, setting out was to incorporate bike travel in my day to day errands.Today's errand was to help Molly set up the company picnic. She's been working at Jeanine's office and was in charge of organizing the kid zone at the picnic, which was held at Elk Grove park, a mere 8 miles away. I thought I'd bike over and give her a hand.Below you can see the route I took. Notice Elk Grove Blvd? It's a friggin 50 mph death trap. WHAT WAS I THINKING? And this is the flaw in my plan to integrate bike riding. My little suburban enclave is surrounded by high speed connector roads and no one on the planning commission gave a rats tail (Hi Heather) about pedestrian or bike way use. There is no sane way to get through major intersections and the west bound over crossing over HWY99 is a few square feet of dodge'em car. Yeesh.So, I survived and I'm glad I did it, but I'm also glad I have health insurance. And boy is my family glad I have life insurance.
On a side note, the yellow dots on the map are where I had to take Google Maps off of its suggested routing. I'm impressed that I only had to get it to the park (the last yellow dot) and it was fine taking it from there. This stuff is just magic to me.
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