Riding in Death Valley

Seems like we’ve been almost too busy lately to bike and I have even less time to write about it. Still we do try to sneak in a few excursions here and there. One, last November, included our first time to bike Death Valley. We love that park and have visited several times, but this was our first time to take the bikes. There are plenty of long runs with more challenging grades than you would expect. Then factor in the strong, steady winds that occur many afternoons, probably because of the extreme temperature changes between night and day, and you’ll have a pretty good work out. Although there is but one short bike-only trail for roadies like us, usually the narrow roads are not crowded and most of the time cars can easily pull into the opposite lane to pass. We visited during the 49ers Encampment last November and even then the road traffic from our Furnace Creek tent site to Badwater and back (35 miles) was not unbearable. By the way, the annual November encampments are one of the best values around for your “nature entertainment adventure” dollar and I highly recommend joining them for a couple of days some year. This non-government commercial site for Death Valley has many additional links that help when planning your visit. Note: I do NOT recommend biking Death Valley during the summer months (usually May - Sept).

Missoni Bicycles for Target

For a country locked in the economic doldrums, it is hard to understand why people go crazy over fads and fashion, unless they have fallen prey to the same "flip" mentality that powered the collapse of the housing market here in Las Vegas and elsewhere. Yesterday's news about people standing in lines for hours to be the first to get into Target so they could buy various items in the Missoni for Target collection that went on sale, about both the Missoni and Target web sites crashing from the heavy traffic, was hard to believe. Then I heard that one of the items was a bicycle. When I investigated I found out that there are several "fashionable" bike models that are available at a variety of stores - Missoni is just the latest of this ilk. Sometimes I'm afraid I'm unAmerican anymore. To think that I've only been concerned with price, size, weight, durability, a comfortable seat - and I have not given 2 seconds of thought to fashion.... I'm probably too old to be reformed. At least I can get a chuckle out of a fashionable bicycle. If you want to see what this sensation looks like, visit BikingInDallas.com

Folding Bike

Last summer Max bought a folding bike. Here is a slideshow of Max folding up his bike and stuffing it in the trunk for transport to a trailhead on the Towpath Trail in Ohio. It is pretty slick. Now I have to decide if I really want to be able to fold a bike, too. I'm not sure yet. (If you are interested, after viewing the slideshow you can take more time to view this annotated set of photos in Flickr.)

Happy New Year

Blessed by lovely weather this week, I reset the odometer for a new year and managed to log an initial 45 miles of short commuting trips. Can you guess what one of my resolutions is? For you locals (Las Vegas), hope you have investigated the RTC Club Ride program. What a great incentive to take the time to green up our environment. (I'll let you know if I win anything this year.)

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).