Category: work

After work today I intended to head out to Novi’s Lakeshore Park and ride the Tree Farm. This didn’t happen.

First, I forgot my CamelBak at home this morning, so at lunch I ran home to both get it let Afie out to use the bathroom. However, when at home I got called into some work stuff which required my immediate attention and necessitated not going back to the office before the end of the day. I thought that this would be okay, because I could just leave from there, with all my biking stuff in the trunk of the car, and head out to Novi. So, I did.

However, once I reached the I-696 / I-96 junction, which is basically Novi, I realized that my bike shorts were in my laptop bag, sitting on one of the benches in the lab. Whoops. I’d brought them in this morning to make changing easier in the afternoon, throwing a huge wrench into the trip to Novi. After calling a friend to ask where I might be able to buy another pair in that area and coming up empty, I just turned around and headed back to work. Now, here I am.

I think I’ll end up just going to Stony Creek or something after I leave here, just so I can ride around for a bit and relax. I’m really disappointed, because I was looking forward to riding the Tree Farm, especially as I’m (likely) going to be in a race there a week from Saturday.

Ah well.

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This morning I commuted to work by bicycle and everything went great, except for my forgetting my ID badge. It’s not a terrible task to get into the campus or buildings without my badge, but getting all the places inside of there which I need to go will make it a great hassle.

The ride itself went rather well. I left at just about 7am. The sun had been up for a bit over 45 minutes, weather was great, westbound travel meant no sun in my eyes, no cars almost hit me, and one person even specifically stopped for me while I waited at a crosswalk along the Clinton River Trail. With how few cars were out when I left, I can’t help but believe that early morning rides are simply better and safer traffic-wise.

Yesterday I left some food (leftover Thai), a change of clothes, and my laptop at work, which meant that I didn’t have to carry much on my bike and could just duck into the bathroom to change. This worked well, but if I commuted on a more regular basis I’d prefer to carry clothes and food with me and possibly change in a conference room or unused office, as there’s something nice about not standing on a bathroom floor. I’ll also have to come back this weekend to pick up stuff if I’m want it before Monday. Unless I’m already out this way for other reasons it eliminates any cost savings / benefit gathered from cycling to work.

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Today I decided to ride to work and back, just to test out the route. There are basically two routes I can take, but one involves riding in rather busy, shoulderless, 45 MPH roads. I took the other route, which I’ll call the “safe” route, which is a mix of sidewalks, paved paths, and rail trails. Also, before anyone gets too upset about my saying sidewalks, know that most of these are as wide as a typical cycling path, and have very few driveways or roads crossing them. They are also generally situated between fences or berms bordering what I call “island-neighborhoods” and major roads. That is, neighborhoods which have a single entrance/exit to the main road and do not connect each other, and thus don’t provide good residential streets for riding through.

The ride there was a bit more difficult than the return, as there was an almost-constant headwind, and it’s mostly uphill the whole way. The route is 15.4 miles one way and has total of ~1144 ft (~349m) of climbing, with much of that being in the last few miles. The route itself is quite nice, with the middle part going through Rochester, MI, under a nifty looking concrete bridge, and through some nicely wooded wetlands. There’s only a few areas which are actually unpleasant to ride, most of which involving crossing larger local roads.

Hopefully I’ll actually ride to work in a week and a half or so, possibly on the 15th of the month. I figure that I’ll bring a change of clothes and food to work the day before, and leave my laptop there. Then I’ll be able to ride both to work and back home with only cycling supplies.

If you’d like to see it, here is a KML of the route from my house to work. Note that it works just fine in Google Earth doesn’t currently work in Maps: 03-May-2009_TestRouteToWorkSafe.kml

Here’s three photos from the ride, too:

· Sitting on a grassy hill outside of one of the buildings I work in, eating some almonds and taking a break before heading home.
· Beneath Rochester Road, looking south, just south of Downtown Rochester, off of the Clinton River Trail, while on the way home from a test ride to work.
· Looking north along the underside of Rochester Road towards the Croskey Lanni building.

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