Bike the airport, bike the world

A week ago, I had the opportunity to try biking to Denver's airport. Leading up to this ride, I scoured blogs, emails, and mailing lists for accounts of riding to DIA, but to no avail.

I know I read something last year about somebody commuting to DIA on BTWD. But now, I was unable to turn anything up.

And so now, I write! Denverites, if you are contemplating a ride to the airport, read on!

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There was a needlessly complicated series of events that resulting in me needing to drop off a car at the airport and then find some other way to get home.

I elected to bike it up!

I had been itching to try this ride. Access to an airport has come to stand in my mind as a great measure of a city's bike-ability.

And Denver must have one of the least accessible airports in the nation.

Or maybe I'm just prejudiced by the fact that I lived in San Diego for so long, where you can literally walk to the airport from downtown.

Denver International Airport is on my bike map now. It was a 2 hour ride, but I proclaim it Bike-able.

Two portions of the ride warrant elaboration.

The first is Pena/Airport Boulevard, and the second is Copper Flats/Meadows MHC.

Pena/Airport Boulevard

Holy crap, this leg of the ride a white-knuckle Fright Fest.

First of all, Pena Blvd is a designated bike route.

You'll see a lot of the "DIA Bike Route" sign.



I don't know why it's reassuring, but it is. At least you know, I guess, that you're not doing anything illegal.

Because it does feel like you shouldn't be allowed to bike on Pena. Cars are whizzing by at 70+ MPH. You're basically riding your bike on the interstate.



Or, on an interstate highway with an extra wide shoulder designated as a bike lane.

The shoulder is nice, smooth, maintained as a bike path, and always at least one full car lane in width.

It feels adequately safe.

Until you start riding through shreds of rubber, and you realize that a poorly timed blow-out would send a passing car hurtling into you at Instant Death speeds.

So you throttle and choke your handlebars, and you coach yourself through breathing a lot.

And navigating exit/entrance ramps is challenging. You basically have to stop and dismount, and walk across the ramps. Because you can't really assess the intent of approaching cars while you are moving: Exiting? Not exiting? Blinker on by accident? Exiting without using blinker? Just can't tell at these speeds!

Riding Pena might sound scary.

That's because it is scary.

But it's doable. I'd do it again if I had to.

Copper Flats/Meadows MHC

About 12 miles from DIA is the intersection of East 13th Avenue and Sable Boulevard. Riding away from the airport, your route carries you south on Sable, and then west on 13th, at which point you encounter something a little surreal.

When you turn onto 13th, you quickly find yourself in the middle of Meadows MHC (Mobile Home Community). It's a cute-as-hell little trailer park.

Seriously, there are some neat looking mobile homes, the owners of which are obviously quite proud.

But then after only a few blocks, 13th suddenly dead ends at a chain link fence.

Just as you're about to omfg and pull on the brakes, you see a little slit in the fence, and you see a narrow strip of asphalt continue across a meadow.

So you continue through the fence, into the meadow, and suddenly you're in a crazy No Man's Land.

There's broken glass on the strip of a trail. There's a discouraged looking vagrant pushing a shopping cart across the meadow. Prairie dogs are dodging, ducking, dipping, diving, and dodging. And barking at everything that moves. A couple of bedraggled leathernecks in wife-beaters are drinking beer at 10:00 AM, looking at you with their eyes. Hard.

Then you go under I-225 and suddenly you're at another chain-link fence at Tollgate Creek.



So you continue through another gap in another fence, across this funny little foot bridge, and you emerge on the other side ...



In Copper Flats. A swanky, gated community with a clubhouse and a pool and parking and a flashy website.

And you can't help but assume that at night, the Copper Flats kids and the Meadows Trailer Park kids meet in the barren Prairie Dog meadow and have monkey knife fights in the light of the moon.

Worst bike route in Denver

This is the worst stretch of bike path in Denver.

It's Route D9, along 38th Street, between Lafayette Street and Arkins Court. There are posted signs here indicating that D9 continues on the sidewalk.

There are three problems right away with this.

1. It is otherwise illegal to ride on the sidewalk! This is another case, along with prejudiced traffic lights, where the city is not consistent in its message or in its standards when it comes to cyclists.


2. Riding on the sidewalk generally agreed upon to be a very dangerous thing to do. Pedestrians aren't expecting to see you, and motorists pulling out of driveways, alleys, and parking lots can't see you.



3. Lastly, this particular stretch of sidewalk is particularly nasty. It's always covered in debris and broken glass, and at one point it goes under an overpass where it's dark and spooky. You're guaranteed at that point to encounter broken glass, chances are very good you'll have to ride around some cardboard boxes somebody was sleeping on earlier, and I've more than once had to stop and get off and walk around somebody either walking on that very narrow bit of sidewalk or actually still sleeping on the cardboard.

Last week, I was riding along on this sidewalk after a long ride on the river trails when what is happening in the above illustration happened to me. This old purple Buick in a driveway inched toward the sidewalk ahead and to my left, and then stopped. The windows were tinted and the sun was glaring, so I couldn't see the driver very clearly, but the car had stopped and I was close and in plain sight so I assumed they saw me.

Apparently they didn't, for when I was almost at the car, it lurched forward to turn across me and enter traffic. I could see that its Trajectory Of Lurch intersected my own forward trajectory just a couple feet ahead of the two of us, so I pulled hard on my brakes and yelled, "STOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!"

The car did stop, and I bumped gently into it with my front tire, which wedged neatly between the back of the front right tire and the front of the front right wheel well. The driver had her hood sticking out slightly into traffic, and so put the car in gear and starting backing up. I hollered again, "Wait, wait, wait!" as I kind of hop-scooted along with her to prevent my front tire from binding up in the wheel well and getting all kinds of messed up.

She stopped and I extracted myself, backed up, swung around and continued across the front of the car to the other side -- the driver's side -- where I stopped. The lady jumped out and apologized effusively, saying she hadn't seen me because she was looking the other way at the oncoming traffic.

We both assured each other and ourselves that we and our prospective vehicles were okay, and that there were no hard feelings anywhere, and then we continued on our own separate ways.

That, folks, is why riding on the sidewalk is bad!

Don't do it. It's against the law.

I resolved at that moment not to do it even when the posted signage indicates that I should.

I will from now on be observing a self-imposed Mandatory Detour around that stretch of D9. Because it's dangerous and shouldn't be ridden on.

drift

So I've experienced this thing a couple times during my commute.

Sometimes, you accidentally lean into a bit of ice, and you can feel your traction slipping. And so if you don't want to develop an all out skid-n-crash, you can't move. So you don't brake and you don't pedal, and you can't lean out of the ice. So you just kind of sail along for a few seconds in helpless limbo, hoping that if you just coast for a second, you'll get your traction back before the ice pulls you the rest of the way in.

That's scary.