I Want To Ride My Bicycle: Season 4, Month 4; Mental Health Day

I hate hot weather, especially hot and humid weather like yesterday – unless I can be biking constantly and intensely.

Oddly enough, being up and on the road inverts things completely; that same overheated/drenched with sweat feeling that’s so miserable when you’re cooking dinner, for example, is just wonderful when you’re out on the bike, working up a good productive lather.

I took a well-deserved and much-needed mental health day yesterday.  I did some puttering around the house, and then got on the road a little after lunchtime for a long hard ride.  I rode down the U of M Busway trail to the University, then across the Stone Arch Bridge over the Mississippi into downtown Minneapolis.

You know how they say having a life-threatening illness makes you appreciate life more?  Riding through downtown Minneapolis does about the same thing; the threats to your life – car doors opening, idiots texting, truckers misjudging their clearances – give one that keen focus on staying alive that cancer survivors and combat veterans talk about.  It also made me very happy to find the entrance to the Kenilworth Trail, close by Target Field.

The Kenilworth took me down to Lake Calhoun; a brisk lap around Calhoun and Harriett, and then back up the east side of Calhoun and back to Lake of the Isles, led me to the Midtown Greenway, a long bicycle superhighway across South Minneapolis built in a long-abandoned railbed.  The riding got very easy; the path is sunk well below ground level, which shields you from wind that’s coming from the north and south, but channels it if it’s from the east or west; I was getting blasted eastbound like a dart from a blowgun.  That felt good, after a hard ride out.

Running low on water, I stopped at Freewheel Bike Shop, a repair/coffee shop attached to the Midtown Commons development, down on the trail level.  I had an iced coffee and a lemon cookie and topped up my water.  And drained it (1.5 liters), and topped it up again for the road; I’d forgotten how much hot air and a howling wind will dry you out.

I rode down the Greenway back to the river, for the worst part of the trip – the punishing climb from the Marshall-Lake bridge up to Fairview Avenue.  It’s not an absurdly steep hill, but it’s just loooooooong.  Actually, it’s not even so much that it’s long – it just taxes my patience; “get done, already”, I practically mutter to myself, as if anger can re-mold geography.

But once I got to the top of the hill, it was a nice two mile coast home (not that I coasted; bad idea for the legs).  And I sat on my porch steps and polished off my water, drenched in sweat, and I felt…

…good.  Cleaner – on the inside, anyway; a shower was pretty much mandatory for the outside – and just plain happy.

Gotta do that again someday.

23 thoughts on “I Want To Ride My Bicycle: Season 4, Month 4; Mental Health Day

  1. Sounds horrible. What, was your dentist booked up, you couldn’t get in for a root canal to relieve your longing for suffering?

    No wonder you go to GOP precinct caucus meetings.

    .

  2. A communist an an enviroweenie. I wonder if Berg brings those burlap bags to the grocery store?

  3. Burlap? Don’t you mean hemp, Kermit? If you’re gonna accuse Mitch of being a hippie, then dangit, get your story straight!

    Also on the light side, out here where the GOP does better, many drivers actually make extra room for cyclists. It’s a really nice change from the Twin Cities. Being bike friendly doesn’t mean bike paths, but rather…ya know….say, being friendly to bicyclists.

    Off to get my new hemp shirt! (J/K)

  4. There are unemployed people out there who would be happy to have a job at all

    Then tell them to quit voting for Democrats.

  5. you should have to work without time off
    Mitch is NOT a member of Education Minnesota. Or the state legislature.

  6. “Then tell them to quit voting for Democrats.”

    Mitch, except for the government “jobs”, the Obama Depression is nonpartisan when it comes to unemployment.

  7. That is pretty much reverse of one of our standard routes. About 25 miles considering the extra lap around the lake(s)

    “the punishing climb from the Marshall-Lake bridge up to Fairview Avenue.”

    When we come at it from that direction, we make the extra run up to Summit, the climbs is much more tolerable.

    Flash

  8. Obama Depression is nonpartisan when it comes to unemployment

    From the bottom up? Yes.

    From the top down, not so much.

  9. That is pretty much reverse of one of our standard routes. About 25 miles considering the extra lap around the lake(s)

    That’s about what I figured it. And I usually do it the other way around too, but I figured the back-and-forth of going out via the Busway would break up some of the headwinds, while it’d give me tailwinds on the long drag down the Greenway and up Marshall.

    When we come at it from that direction, we make the extra run up to Summit, the climbs is much more tolerable.

    I go straight up Marshall mostly out of pure obstinacy, and partly because there are a few choppy little hills on East River Parkway that just kill my legs by the time I get to Summit.

  10. 25 miles? That’s nothing on flat ground.
    My favorite route goes from my house, across Volcano Highway, through Volcano Village (notice the trend here?), across the highway again, into Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, up the unpaved Escape Road to Thurston lava tube, back along Crater Rim Drive to the research center, a hundred meters along a trail a few feet from a five-hundred-foot sheer cliff, then back to Volcano Highway and downhill all the way home. 8 miles, a four hundred foot change in elevation. Takes about forty minutes.

    If you are biking in HI, keep an eye on the county trucks:

    Worker in crash investigated

    Associated Press

    Hawaii County officials are investigating a county Public Works employee accused of hitting a bicyclist while driving a county vehicle with a suspended license.

    Hawaii County Corporation Counsel Lincoln Ashida on Monday confirmed the investigation and arrest of 34-year-old Chris Michael Domino, who faces several charges related to Thursday’s collision.

    He says the Public Works Department also is conducting an investigation.

    Cyclist Jim Gustin, 64, suffered a broken arm and three cracked vertebrae following last week’s accident. Gustin says he was driving in a bicycle lane when a vehicle merged onto the highway.

    Records show Domino has been cited at least 15 times for various traffic infractions dating to 1996.

  11. It’s not a long long long ride at all, but I’m not in peak condition either. Better than last year, nowhere near the year before.

  12. Mitch, I’m glad you enjoy biking. But as far as urban bikers go, here’s a beef I have: on Monday night, 9:30, I’m leaving downtown after a meeting. There is a chick on a bike, no helmet but at least with a strobe light flashing, riding down Washington Ave in the right lane. At every single intersection she blows through the red light. How can cyclists complain about cars and drivers “ignoring” their presence when there are egregious examples like this? You can’t have it both ways. If you ride in the street, obey trafic laws. Otherwise if you get knocked out of the saddle, TS. It’s not the first time I’ve seen that kind of behavior. I once was trapped behind one of those nut job Critical Mass traffic jams.

  13. t every single intersection she blows through the red light. How can cyclists complain about cars and drivers “ignoring” their presence when there are egregious examples like this?

    Well, it is breaking the law at the moment, but some cities have passed laws saying bikes can treat stop signs as yield signs, and stop lights as stop signs. It’s a safety thing; the less time bikes spend sitting still in intersections, the safer everyone is.

    (if the chick on Washington blew through stop lights, she’d still be breaking the law…)

    I once was trapped behind one of those nut job Critical Mass traffic jams.

    On the other hand, those idiots are pretty inexcusable.

  14. Hawaii County officials are investigating a county Public Works employee accused of hitting a bicyclist while driving a county vehicle with a suspended license [and smoking a fatty].

    We’re talking Hawaiian public employees here.

  15. Good point, Mitch. In case anyone is worried about me running bikes off the road: it won’t happen. I give bikers all the space they need. I remember the days of riding north on Chicago Ave to the U of M, watching for opening car doors and playing tag with the buses. Glad those days are far behind me.

  16. Golfdoc50-

    There is a stop sign in front of my house. The street ends in a T intersection at that point, so all traffic must turn. The percentage of cars that actually stop for this sign is probably less than 20% based on my non-scientific, 18 year observation. How can motorists complain about cyclists “ignoring” traffic laws when there are egregious examples like this? You can’t have it both ways. If you drive in the street, obey traffic laws.

  17. At every single intersection she blows through the red light. How can cyclists complain about cars and drivers “ignoring” their presence when there are egregious examples like this?

    I remember being on Washington Avenue on a Sunday morning, staring at a line of red lights. A Minneapolis cop gets in front of me, comes to the red light, puts his flashers on, goes through the intersection, then turns them off. He comes to the next red light a block away and does the same thing. He did it 4 times between 3rd Avenue and the on-ramp for 35W. My whole family was in the vehicle with me and got to check that act out. It made for some lively discussion as we waited our turn at the red lights.

  18. Mitch wrote”Oddly enough, being up and on the road inverts things completely; that same overheated/drenched with sweat feeling that’s so miserable when you’re cooking dinner, for example, is just wonderful when you’re out on the bike, working up a good productive lather.”

    Sometimes you write so evocatively, Mitch, like this. I could almost feel trickles of sweat just reading it. I love this kind of writing from you.

  19. Pingback: Biking Craziness – A short post before logging off for the night. « Cultural Rumbles

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