College: Day 5
The weather was nice outside this morning so I decided that I would ride my bike to campus for the first time. I left a full hour earlier than I would have if I were taking my car, just to make sure that I wasn’t late. The trip went surprisingly well: My average speed was 16.3 MPH. There was surprisingly low traffic volume on the road which made for a safer feeling ride. From the time I left my front door to get my bike to the time I sat down outside of my class room (I arrived early) it took about 45 minutes. Five minutes of that was pulling my bike out of the shed in my bike yard. Taking a car the same route results in a 37 minute commute from start to finish. It only took seven extra minutes on a 6.3 mile commute!
The results actually surprised me. I was a little worried about finding a place to secure my bike, but it turned out that there was a bike rack right outside the entrance nearest to my first class.
The trek over was fairly decent except fora a major design flaw about 2/3s of the way through the trip. Crossing a bridge near landmark mall is impossible unless you ride in a regular traffic lane. At the last apartment complex on the south side of the bridge the sidewalk bends into the complex and then promptly ends (without so much as a ramp). I decided to go past anyway since the sidewalk appeared to resume on the other side of the entry way. After about 50 feet the sidewalk turned into a well worn dirt path. A few feet after that I found a bus stop. Seriously, a metro bus stop in the middle of a tree surrounded path on the side of the road. a little ways after that and the path was replaced with a concrete barrier. I check the traffic and when there was an opening I hopped down onto the street and quickly speed up to my top speed of 25 MPH. At that point decided that it was best to just take the road the rest of the way. Latter when there was a red light I jumped back onto the sidewalk to keep going, then stayed on it until I got to Alexandria campus. The actual time on my bike was 29 minutes. I arrived a full hour early and had plenty of time left over to write this entry. I’ll post again with the results of my return trip.