Take the Long Way Home

Although this sentiment by Supertramp may seem at odds with my last post, I wanted to tell the story of having to take the long way home last night. The story begins yesterday morning when I took my truck in for a scheduled service and warranty repair. I rode my bike to the office, packed the bike into the truck, drove to the appointment, then rode back to the office. The ride back from Tim Dahle Nissan is actually pretty nice. I'm on quiet roads, or a road with a nice shoulder the whole way. No complaints.

Yesterday evening, I headed out to pick up the truck, and headed straight into a closed intersection. This wouldn't be so bad, except that it was a choke point on my commute back to the dealer. Let me explain.

Heading east from my office basically involves taking 4100 S. Other options are taking the shoulder-less 3500 S, or taking the equally shoulder-less Redwood Road to 4700 S. Either of these options requires fighting through a freeway ramp intersection. Not pretty.

Getting onto 4100 S during the evening commute means that I use the light at 1300 W. There's barely a way to get across that street to head east in a car. It borders on suicide on a bike. Well, in retrospect, I could act like a bike, head west on 4100, then act like a pedestrian and use the crosswalk at Redwood Road. Too bad I didn't think of that last night. Anyway, back to our story.

As I approached the crash-closed intersection at 4100 S and 1300 W, I had to come up with an alternate route home. I ran through all the options I just mentioned (except for the crosswalk one) and realized that I wasn't going to do so well on any of those. Then I reached out and thought of the Jordan River Parkway Trail that parallels 1300 West and could put me onto 4100 S away from the problem. So, I turned north, away from my destination, and headed for the dreaded 3500 S. I figured that I'd use the sidewalk to get to the trailhead there.

Did I mention that when a street lacks a proper shoulder for placing construction signs to hinder bicycle traffic, that the construction crews use the sidewalk for their signs to, again, hinder bicycle traffic? Well, they did. Anyway, after avoiding construction signs and other cyclists on the wrong side of the trail, I finally got myself back to 4100 S and on my way to get my truck, only an extra 5km into the ride.

I was glad that West Valley has finally decided to finish paving the trail so that I didn't have to take the skinny tires across loose gravel or rutted dirt. And I was very glad that they finally built a pedestrian overpass so that I didn't have to cross the traffic there.

I was quite glad to be on a bike, though, seeing that traffic had backed up for about a mile. And I was just zipping along the opposite direction.

I did eventually get to the dealership, pick up the truck, and drive it home. But there was a little extra excitement on the way.