The Aerie
Biked to work again today. At the last minute I dashed back into the house to grab my scarf, which turned out to be absolutely necessary. If I hadn't, I suspect I would be frozen solid somewhere long the bike path into downtown.
There was a wicked wind out of the northeast, a slightly unusual direction for Minnesota. Our prevailing winds are usually from some flavor of west - southwest, northwest, etc. Not that it made a tremendous difference today - it was simply my right eye that froze shut rather than my left one.
Downtown Minneapolis has tossed a bone to the bicycling community by defining a few bike lanes here and there throughout the city. These bike lanes are mere paint on the pavement: they aren't going to help you if someone driving an SUV while talking on the phone and drinking a latte suddenly drops their bagel. You're still going to be road pizza. But I was trying to find a set of lanes that would take me diagonally across the grid of downtown to the building where I park my bike.
I have yet to find these lanes, although I'm sure they're out there: from the farthest corner of the Metrodome to Tenth and LaSalle must exist somewhere as a set of bike lanes. However the only lanes I've found take me far out of my way: the diagonal travel problem means that I am traveling around the perimeter of downtown, and where the lanes might meet there are various buildings and streets that interrupt them.
The problem, see, is that downtown Minneapolis is crooked. The original town was laid out on along a northwest-to-southeast diagonal that paralleled this portion of the Mississippi. But as surrounding villages were laid out, they were set to a north-south axis. When Minneapolis grew to engulf the surrounding hamlets, the collisions of streets made for some confusion.
When biking to work, I am attempting to go directly east across a grid of diamond-shaped city blocks. I arrive where the crude "A" is marked on the map to the left, and I'm trying to reach the crude "X." But if you follow the streets, you will see that the street running southwest past "A" runs into the tangle where the diagonal streets of downtown crash into the north-south streets of the rest of the city. Where they run together my bike path turns to follow the southern path, leaving me with no way northwest to my destination. I can't go northwest from "A" because that's the Metrodome which is on higher ground - I'd have to carry my bike up two flights of steps.
The only thing for it is that I will have to go northeast tomorrow, towards Washington Avenue. There's a bike path a couple of blocks further up, but that takes me well out of my way.
The only other thing is to do what I did today, which was to ride up and down sidewalks in a crazy zig-zag to reach my goal. That's slow, particularly since I wait for the light to change to green before crossing these streets. Sorry, but having been hit by a truck once I am not eager to repeat the experience. Although at that time, I actually was crossing with the light, but still, why push my luck?
Slowly, slowly I'm building up a safe way to get to work on my bike. Hopefully I'll live long enough to tell somebody about it. If I don't get hit by a truck, I may freeze to death.
Posted by Albatross at March 21, 2006 10:23 AM | TrackBack