Icy roads ride report

I have belly ached and moaned this winter whenever road conditions got icy or slippery enough to prevent me from riding. That's because until about a month ago, I didn't have any tires available to me other than skinny road ones. And so I fell down a lot on the ice.

But, about a month ago, I adopted an abandoned mountain bike. It had been left unchained behind my place of employment, by the dumpsters. We brought it in and waited for about three weeks for somebody to come inquire about it, but nobody did, and now it's mine.

I got to take it out on the ice yesterday after it snowed the whole previous day long.



I had made it several blocks and was in a neighboring residential area when I had an encounter of the up-close and vehicular kind. Recapping it to a coworker in an email:

The car was some yellow thing. Maybe a Volkswagon? It was parked parallel to the street on my right, and the windows were COMPLETELY iced over. Hardly a peep hole to see through. So as I got close to it, it backed up suddenly, SLAMMING into the car behind it. Nothing shattered but there was a loud thunk. And then it pulled out into the street when I was right next to it. I had to swerve out of the way and almost wiped out in the process. I yelled at them to stop, but they sped off.

The car had Florida tags, so maybe they don't know much about things like Ice or Snow. Or Driving. Or Not Being A Miserable Human Being. While it may not be fair, I'm harboring some ill will towards all things Floridian today.

I have since let Florida off the hook.

I yelled at the driver to stop because I intended to instruct them to scrape the ice off their windows before continuing. In the moment, latching on to the fact that they had Florida tags, I really did think they might not know about ice scraping. I was prepared to show them how to do it with a credit card if they didn't have a scraper.

That all passed through my head in a split-second while the car spun its wheels and sped away.

A few houses further along, an older gentleman stood in his driveway where he had seen the whole thing. He look bewildered.

A quick thinking bystander was able to photograph the incident:



My ride continued towards, and into, Wash Park. The roads in Wash Park had not been cleared and it was just covered with ice. I got a bad case of the wobbles and nearly fell over. So I dismounted, portaged my bike through the ankle deep snow, and got back on the main road. As I was pedaling off again, a jogger acknowledged the fact that I was riding in the cold and slippery by hollering at me, "You're a brave man!" To which I assured him it was safer for me on the dry street than in the icy, more slippery, park.

I did not stop to show him the print-out of the photograph of my previous encounter with the yellow car.

I made it the rest of the way to work after stopping once to warm my hands.



Safe and sound, at my place of employment, I unclipped my helmet, swung my leg over the back of my bike to dismount, and tore my pants.



Between the new tear and the skunk stripe that comes from riding through wet stuff without fenders, these pants were trashed!

My boss looked concerned upon my arrival, and then looked visibly relieved when I emerged from the bathroom in a fresh, crisp change of clothes.

Eight hours of work ensued, and when it was time to return home, the sun had been out all day and the roads were completely clear. I wore just two t-shirts under my jacket instead of the two long-sleeve shirts from that morning. What a difference!

Between my weather gear and my work clothes, here is a list of all the clothing I carried with me.

• Buff. Worn like a balaclava in the morning and a head scarf in the afternoon. (My buff is my favorite piece of cycling gear. I use it all year long.)


• Two long-sleeve t-shirts. For the morning ride.


• T-shirt and button down shirt. For work.


• Another, heavy long sleeve shirt. For work.


• Tights and (currently trashed) khakis. For morning ride.


• Blue jeans. For work.


• One pair of wool socks, one pair of wool gloves.


• My reflective cycling jacket.

Shirt total: 5
Pants total: 3

That's roughly the amount of clothing I pack for a long weekend vacation!

D2: From Lakeside Amusement to Wall Mart

Route summary!



D2. The northernmost E/W route on the grid. It stretches from the Denver/Jefferson county at 43rd and Sheridan, by Lakeside Amusement Park and Berkeley Lake, across town to Wall Mart, just this side of Stapleton. And between the two endpoints is a nice little ride!

• 0.00 miles - West 43rd Avenue and Sheridan Boulevard. This initial stretch of road is pleasant because you start out right on Berkeley Park. I loved going to this park when I lived near here. It has a rec center with a pool, a fenced in dog park, a public library, a big lake with fishing and a walking trail around it. It was tempting to stop the ride before it even began and loiter about, enjoying the morning here.


• 0.07 miles - Double sharrows!


• 0.52 miles - DOUBLE EFFING SHARROWS. (At Tennyson St.) There are three generations of sharrows painted on this street. The most recent ones look bold and bright. The next oldest are clearly visible, and the oldest ones are very faded. But you can see nearly all of them clearly enough. There's one every couple of feet! It's impossible for a motorist on this street not to know that there may be bicycles about.





• 1.14 miles - Rocky Mountain Lake Park. Another park. With another lake. But this one has a big damn frog.
  
  And how does this rinky-dink little park win the thousand dollar name of "Rocky Mountain Park?" Is it the big damn frog? Must be.


• 2.60 miles - Turn right onto Navajo Street. The turn is labeled. If you're paying attention, you can't miss it.


• 2.92 miles - Turn left at West 43rd Avenue. This turn is not labeled. If you don't know to turn here, you'll miss out on the best part of ride, coming up ahead.


• 3.24 miles - 43rd Avenue dead ends at Inca Street. At the 43rd Ave Foot Bridge!
  
  I wasn't positive this thing existed. I decided to do this ride in the first place because somebody arrived at this website by searching for "denver d-2 bicycle 43rd bridge." I felt bad for whoever that was because I, until now, I didn't have a lick of information about it.
  
  So when you turn on to it, 43rd dead ends after only a few blocks at Inca Street. Beyond Inca are the train tracks. Before the tracks is a several stories tall foot bridge. I didn't think it was open at first because of the abandoned fire tower look it has, but when I went in for a closer look, I discovered that it's a solid, concrete over pass. There's a small stairwell in the middle that you have to carry your bike up (PORTAGE!) and then you have to carry it back down the other side again, obviously. And then there's a small patch of dirt between you and where 43rd continues.
  
  Portaged my bike and got some mud on my tires. Awesome.



• 3.45 miles - Left on Fox Street.


• 3.53 miles - Turn right onto West 44th Avenue, which will carry you right over I-25, and then curve north to parallel the freeway.


• 3.99 miles - Turn right onto East 45th Avenue. And welcome to Globeville! This is a neat little neighborhood. Globeville proper spreads out farther than this, but this is a cute little 3x8 blocks neighborhood confined by I-25 the to west, I-70 to the north, and the Platte River to the south and east. Watch out for the White Owl on your left. Apparently a groovy little dive bar. I'll have to go back for a few brewskies some time.



• 4.46 miles - Across Washington Street is BikeDonalds, which sits right on the South Platte trail, has ample bike parking and bicycle themed art on the walls inside. Either stop for a milkshake, or continue through the parking lot, onto the trail, and north one exit.


• 4.72 miles - Go under E 47th Ave (it's labeled), keep going for a heartbeat and then turn around and proceed up the ramp. Turn left onto 47th and continue towards the Colosseum/National Western Complex. 47th Street will go underneath I-70 and then dead-end at a stop sign. Turn left. Hard left. Onto Humboldt.


• 5.32 miles - Turn right onto East 47th Avenue.


• 5.92 miles - Here's a funky little place where 47th starts to curve northwards, and then crosses York and you have to turn hard right, almost doubling back the way you came, and then continue across to remain on 47th. It's not tricky. It'll make sense when you see it. It's not a big deal.



• 6.24 miles - Right onto Clayton


• 6.54 miles - Past Dunham Park and then left onto 44th.



• 6.77 miles - Right onto Steele. The first block or two of this stretch of Steele is pretty unwelcoming, but it gets friendlier.
  
  This is the beginning of an annoying two mile detour that is necessary to get around the damn puppy chow plant.


• 6.90 miles - Between 43rd and 42nd, there are some train tracks that proceed east from here to Smith Road, which is where we ultimately want to go. I didn't investigate at the time, but if there is some cleared brush along the tracks that might support a mountain, or otherwise-off-roadable, bike then this could cut almost two miles off the route, as well as offer a brief, natural, rails-to-trails style respite from the otherwise very urban route.
  
  Warrants further attention.


• 7.59 miles - Right onto E 35th Ave/Bruce Randolph. Down shift before turning. There's a steep little climb for one block. Continue past the City of Nairobi Park.


• 7.97 miles - Left onto Jackson.


• 8.72 miles - Jackson veers right and becomes Smith Road. Continue along Smith. Smith runs right next to the rail road tracks. I had the misfortune of riding down Smith once while a train was passing. The noise from the train was so loud that I couldn't hear anything, so I never knew a car was behind me until I could see it at my side as it passed me. Scary!
  
  Watch out for where the tracks cross the road here. They'll rattle your bones a little.


• 10.71 miles - Just west of Quebec is the "Last Bus Stop In Town." It's a filthy little bus stop, the closest one to the mega big-box strip mall across the street. If you pass by here at the right time of day, you'll see six foot tall piles of Wall Mart and Home Depot shopping carts. It's the only solution for people who are dependent on the bus for transportation and who also need to do low-price/high-volume shopping.
  
  There's definitely an opportunity here for something. Be it some kind of a cart return service, or a shuttle service to and from the bus stop. Or maybe just a nicer bus stop. One that's not a bench surrounded by mud and litter. A canopy, some pavement, a trash can, and a cart return would do wonders, really.


• 12.00 miles - Wall Mart. Effectively the end of the route.



• 12.14 miles - End. The actual end of the route. Between Wall Mart and here, there are lots of prairie dogs to bark at you.
  
  The speed with which industrial/residential land turns into natural/feral land makes me realize and appreciate how much we're imposing our modern, urban lives upon the original, kinder and gentler, more natural inhabitants of the area. Those prairie dogs don't know what Wall Mart is, but they don't know what bikes are either.

To wrap up loose ends, I thought I'd return home at this point by jumping on the Sand Creek trail, which appeared to intersect Smith Road here. But I was unable to find it!

I think. Maybe I found it. But Smith Road was blocked off due to some kind of construction related in no doubt to the expansion of the nearby subdivision. So I veered into, and got lost in, the underbelly of Stapleton. I floundered around for quite a while until I stumbled upon Westerly Creek, which I was able to follow down to Montview and, ultimately, home.

I find it easy to protest Stapleton's cookie-cutter, "little boxes" style of development. But the streets were so nice. Wide, with sidewalks and bike lanes. And walking/biking trails all over the place.

They're doing some things right.