Bike to work
Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.
To celebrate Bike To Work Week, I did just that - I biked to work from Pleasant Gap to Pine Hall Road on May 1st. It was my first bike commute in Centre County, and it will likely be my last.
Not because of the distance. No, that was a mere 11 miles. Not because of the time involved, as it required only an hour (the same time it would take using public transportation). It was all because of two words: College Avenue.
Pleasant Gap to the Nittany Mall wasn’t all that bad. The shoulder along that stretch is very wide and almost always kept clear of gravel and other obstacles, except for the occasional dead animal.
But after reaching the Nittany Mall, College Ave turns into Death Race 2000. There’s no taking the lane on this 45mph legal/60mph actual stretch of road, and the shoulders, while often generous, are so covered in gravel from the winter season that one has to stick to the line for most of the ride.
Sticking to the line doesn’t work too well, though, since there’s barely enough room in the lanes as it is. There are just some times when you’re pulled to a stop at a light only to have an 18 wheel truck slide in inches from your elbow that makes you think, “This was a bad idea.”
Whenever possible, I ditched College Ave, cutting through parking lots or taking back roads that weren’t going to add miles to my ride. Certainly, that helped, but the stretches where I had to be on College were enough to make my testicles ascend. Everything from Decibel Road to just past Elmwood made me feel like a very small bug being approached at high velocity by a very large wind shield.
It begs the question - why did I use that road at all? The alternatives weren’t all that attractive. I could have veered off onto Decibel Road and taken back roads to Lemont, which would have dumped me out on College Ave again anyway. Or, I could have taken Shiloh Road and followed back roads up to Park Ave, which itself is a fairly high traffic area as it is an entrance/exit point for 322.
In order to not constantly feel like I’m about to die, I would have to take College to Shiloh to Houserville, take Puddintown to Orchard to Park, ride through campus and across the IST walkway, and then take West Campus to Blue Course where I would, inevitably, have to ride College Ave to Science Park to Pine Hall Road. That would reduce my exposure to College Ave greatly, but also take me on back roads that have no shoulder at all.
Don’t get me wrong, I love to ride, but getting from point A to point B in this case is severely painful. It’s enough to convince me that driving isn’t so bad after all.
So what would make me feel better about making such a commute in the future?
1. Take my trike. Sure, it’s lower to the ground, but I have a far higher degree of confidence on the trike. I’m sure the lack of confidence on my Speedmachine played into my fears that day.
2. Form a multi-municipality committee to create a pathway from the outlying burbs to downtown State College. Of course, that’s what the Bellefonte Central Rail Trail was supposed to be before it was halted by property owners along the proposed route. Besides, doing this would take 20 years.
3. Choose a new, longer, less exposed route. I don’t really want to have more than an hour of travel time to get to and from work. It’s a shame I can’t use the most direct route, but I can’t.
4. Realize that I ride my bike for fun and not to make a point about saving the planet, so it’s okay to drive my bike to safe riding locations. This is the most likely solution.
Yes, I could make a public stand and decry congestion, the dangers of distracted drivers, and convince others that the more cyclists there are, the safer the streets become, but I have a very strong sense of self-preservation that makes me want to hide out until a bunch of other brave souls do the hard work and make things safer for me.
I never denied being a lazy opportunist. And yet, I feel some degree of guilt in the matter, as though taking on the label of “cyclist” brings with it a certain requisite sense of representing a population of people who pedal. But I don’t want to be a representative. I just want to be a guy out on his bike not worrying about death.