A smattering of stuff

I am so happy for the onset of autumn that I can hardly stand it.  The air smells like burning wood, the night arrives earlier, and I find myself wanting to go to a college football game.  Or at least watch one on TV.  For the purposes of this blog, the weather has gotten so much better for biking it is not even funny.  Instead of being bathed in sweat when I arrive home in the afternoon, I am merely glistening with perspiration.  Quite a difference, I assure you.

Before I get to my day’s rides, I have some good news to share with you.  The League of American Bicyclists has bestowed on our fair city not one but two awards!  We’ve received an Honorable Mention as a bike-friendly city and a Bronze-Level Bicycle Friendly Business Award.  The former is due to the construction of more than 120 miles of cycling facilities in the past 8 years; the latter is due to the installation of bike-commuter facilities, like showers and bike racks, at local businesses.  This is such good news and portends a great future for Memphis as a biking city.

Yesterday was a quite uneventful day on my bike.  I left for work in the morning then came home in the evening.  Now that the beginning of the semester has given way to the realization that we’re not getting out of this until December, my students have become much more docile.  Despair with do that to you.

Here’s a map of my ride yesterday.

See that?  How wonderfully boring.  There and back again, on the same road no less.  Sometimes that’s nice.

Aaaaaannnnnd here’s my map from today.

This is what running an errand at Poplar Plaza does for my ride.

You’ll note the circuitous route I took from campus to the store.  I completely skipped Central and Highland and instead biked down Midland to Greer to Joffree.  Why the extra miles?  It was rush hour when I left my office.  And as short as the bike ride down Central and up Highland would have been, I just did not feel like dealing with traffic.

But I had to ultimately, as I needed to run another errand on Cooper, which meant biking from the end of the Chickasaw Gardens route down to my ‘hood.  It wasn’t so bad until Cooper bottlenecks at Central (coming from the north).  I’m not going to be dramatic and say that I almost got run off the road, but I did choose to wait on the sidewalk next to the nursery at Cooper and Central until the light turned red and I could safely rejoin traffic.

Thursday I’m biking to campus and then Boscos for a beer around 8ish.  Hope your Thursday is good too.

Oh and guess what?  We’re still waiting.