Bike trails in North Las Vegas

We don’t have to go far to find multi-purpose paths where motorized vehicles are not allowed. Right here in North Las Vegas there are 24 miles of paved trails in Aliante that are open to the public as well as the (currently) 5.5 miles of paved trails along the Las Vegas Wash. This will soon be almost doubled when a new trail opens along the Las Vegas Channel from Deer Springs Way to Craig Road. Eventually the two trails will meet, cross I-15 on a dedicated bike bridge and continue to Pecos and Lake Mead. These trails are great for walkers, joggers, skateboarders, roller-bladers, wheel chairs, strollers and cyclists. This recently published story in the Northern/ Aliante View includes a map and more details.

Google Maps adds Bicycle Routes

Have just discovered (thanks to my hubbie - I really don't have time to think recreation this month) that Google Maps has a great feature (can it be new? or maybe we just never noticed it before) that shows bike routes anywhere in the country. Go to Google.com, click on Maps along the top left corner, then when you see the USA map, open the More options in the top right corner and click Bicycling. Then start drilling down anywhere in the country.

I experimented with NLV first and it seems that the light green lines are bike-friendly/bike-lane streets and the dark green lines are dedicated bike trails. I also discovered that Google will give directions between two points using either car, public transportation, walking or bicycling. And you can adjust these little maps if you want to go by an alternate route.

Using this knowledge I explored other trails and areas I am familiar with. Everything rings true unless a route has two designations (i.e. path in a state or national park) and in those cases the bicycle designation seems to take second place (doesn't show on the map). No matter, this will be a great first step in planning any future trips.

It's a New Year

Middle of February, local temps hitting the 60s during the day; looks like the heavy rains we had last month will not repeat any time soon. So time to dust off the bike and begin a new year. Started by pumping the tires (they were at half pressure after five months of hanging from the garage ceiling) and resetting the odometer (I had forgot to take it with me on a few trips over the past three years so the total miles were not correct anyway). But where are the instructions? Never mind. Cateye instructions can always be downloaded from their web site - nice feature. After about 15 minutes of experimenting I finally figured it out and accomplished the task - zeroed out all the whole numbers - but could find no way to reset the tenths - so I start out the year with a 0.1 mile overstatement.

I'm going to make a big push this year to bike more than I did in 2009 AND have a higher percent of commuting miles (as compared to recreational) than I have had in the past. Happy to report that the first 25 miles were all productive as I kicked off the year with rides to church, library and school this week.

Very sweet to be back in the saddle. A few head winds gave me just a little challenge (to make up for being such a wimp and biking the valley floor).