Almost every single day of the week I go shop at the local superstore: Meijers. Several weeks ago I discovered someone had built a bicycle lane out to Meijers and I thought -- how wonderful -- I shop at Meijers many-many times a week. Before this, bicycle paths never went where I needed to go -- to hardware stores, schools, bakeries. Finally a bicycle path I will use almost every single day.
My initial reaction was great pleasure: I like the fact that I don't have to fight traffic. A trip to Meijer's always meant a fight for space against two ton vehicles whose impact on me could be deadly -- and cars, all too often, resented my presence and passed by far too near me.
But all that is in the past. I've got my wonderful, segregated from cars, bicycle lane. Everything should be alright, right? However, there is a problem -- a somewhat major problem. The bicycle lane is interrupted, almost every 100 yards, by driveways -- entrances & exits for the Ground Rounder, apartment complexes, Flap Jack Shack. All of that would not be that bad if it were not that many of these interruptions are punctuated by bone jarring bumps.
I ride a thick tired bike -- a mountain bike -- and I get jolted hard, as many as ten times in six hundred yards. That still would not be that terrible if I were not carrying a basketfull of groceries. I learned my lesson quickly when the very first time I hit the jagged bump, two watermelons in my basket split into two pieces and almost immediately I was transporting runny, mushy watermelons.
One could say I learned instantaneously. I now bike slowly -- come to an almost complete stop, when I encounter those severe bumps.
One part of me is furious. One more time bicycle riders are treated as second class citizens. Here's a road for you, a lousy, interrupted, rutted, road. Nevertheless, at least the road is free of cars -- and that's why we bicycle riders continue to take it.
I briefly considered going back out on the main road -- a protest against the inadequate bumpy bike lane -- but one day, biking back from Meijers, I was eating grapes, oblivious to my immediate surroundings, but very conscious of the beautiful green hills that loomed all around me as I road peacefully, in a leisurely way.
Before I never dared look long at those hills. I never dared look long at any thing far away. If I did, I'd be creamed spinach on the highway. But now I am not on the highway. I am in a leisurely, uncrowded bike lane. And the world around me is peaceful, and very beautiful.
I will continue to fight for better bike lanes, but until then I'll accept what little I get.
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein