We all have something in life we don't like, something that rankles our fur or makes us anxious. For a cyclist sometimes its that road on our regular ride that we can't avoid but wish we could. I have such a road in mind. It embodies all the things I like least about a road on which I have to ride my bike. I say "have to ride" because there really is no back alley, no shortcut, no alternative to the route.
What are the characteristics that make that road for me? Probably the same things that make it so disliked by other cyclists. Its very narrow and has no shoulder or bike lane. It has a speed limit of 55 mph, meaning the traffic on it goes 60 +. It has a series of tightly packed small hills that allow you to disappear below the crest of each hill so that a high speed car doesn't know you're there until its nearly on top of you. The traffic that haunts this road is composed of pick-ups, SUVs, dump trucks and semis, in an unpleasant density that regularly presents the convergence of vehicles that draws, for the cyclist, the short spoke. This road also is disintegrating under the onslaught of heavy vehicles and high speed. Its edges are crumbling away and are fractured and torn in many places almost two feet into the road. This condition forces the cyclist to ride in from the edge of the road in spite of the need to be on that edge. It is a road that is screaming for repair, traffic calming and a bike lane. The only things that could make the road worse would be psychopaths with shotguns and unchained rabid dogs. And for all this, the section of road I'm talking about is really less than a mile long (at least the portion that cyclists need to use).
So have you recognized the road yet, my fellow rider?
If you came up with a road that Hunter's Pedalers ride almost every weekend, the one that connects the beautiful ride out Millhopper Road to the great outer reaches of placid country cycling in Alachua and High Springs, then you are correct. Each time I move out on to it I put the hammer down and sprint with all my might to get safely to 232. Each second is counted as I watch the mirror and judge the rushing vehicles, wondering when I will have to go off-road. (Eject! Eject! Eject!)
By now you must recognize 241, at least if you have ever ridden it. I used to think that the thread of asphalt called highway 20 that connects Angle Road to Lakeshore Drive was the worst, but now that the G-H Trail provides a safe alternative to most of that dangerous pavement, that nightmare has largely faded from my consciousness. I imagine many casual cyclists would venture beyond the end of Millhopper into the hinterlands of Alachua if only that tiny piece of road on 241 weren't so deadly.
So if someone (reporter, politician, friend) asks you what would most benefit the safety of cyclists, remember to tell them about that stretch of 241 and you'll be doing every cyclist in Alachua a big favor.
Following winds, my friends
Rob Wilt