Lisa and I had been contemplating an overnight bike trip to put on some mileage with the touring panniers, this weekend’s Florida Bicycle Association board meeting in Deland provided a good opportunity. FBA’s new Executive Director, Tim Bustos, moved back to Florida from California and has settled in Deland—making it the new headquarters of the FBA.

The meeting was Saturday and there was a meet-n-greet happy hour and dinner on Friday evening. I had a lunch meeting in Orlando, so we weren’t able to get on the road until 2:30. As long as we were not delayed by storms, we anticipated being able to make happy hour.

The Route to Deland

Heading out of town is easy. I have a tried and true route to Sanford/Lake Monroe. It uses mostly pleasant low-volume roads and 6.5 miles of the Seminole Wekiva Trail. There are a few traverses on busy roads, but they are made easy by simple strategies we teach in CyclingSavvy.

North of Sanford is more of a puzzle. I have ridden to the east side Deland and back a few times on a road bike. I know several routes to get there, but they would be out of the way for going to downtown Deland. U.S. 17-92 is the most direct route, but it is problematic for a couple reasons. First of all, it was going to be peak Friday (pre-holiday) rush hour when we got to Sanford. Second, FDOT has striped it with an inconsistent mishmash of shoulders and undesignated gutterspace intended for bicycle use. In some places that space is relatively tolerable to use, in others it ranges from miserable to downright dangerous.

I’ve ridden up 17-92 to Orange City many times to go to Blue Springs. With a small group of cyclists on a Sunday morning, we just ride two abreast in the lane and ignore the varying gutterside nonsense. For the southbound route, there are a few options to use parallel streets on the west side of 17-92. These options add miles, though, and they aren’t as easy to use northbound. So, as I was planning the route, I didn’t anticipate using them. If I had, I could have thought through strategies ahead of time and the ride to Deland would have been more pleasant.

The Ride to Deland

As we rolled out, clouds were gathering. We knew we’d get some rain and we were OK with that as long as we could stay out of the lightning. The clouds provided a welcome reprieve from the sun, making our ride through town even more pleasant.

Holiday traffic was already building by the time we reached Maitland. Using Maitland Ave from Packwood to Maitland Blvd was easy enough. The platoons of traffic changed lanes and passed us safely without incident or commentary. As we waited in the queue at the red light at Maitland Blvd, a large volume of traffic collected behind us. We decided to pull over and release it at the first driveway on the other side of the intersection. This took about 1o seconds and gave us a completely empty road all the way to the left turn onto Lake Shore. I regretted not setting up the cameras to record that, it would have been a really nice example of control & release. There is no legal requirement to do this on a 4-lane road, but with that volume of traffic changing lanes to pass, it would have been difficult for us to negotiate to the left lane in preparation for our turn.

A light rain shower started as we worked our way through the neighborhoods toward Altamonte Springs. But the clouds were not ominous, and the sun was peaking through.

The next high-traffic traverse was Central Pkwy in Altamonte. Central has 14ft lanes between Palm Springs and Douglas. Traffic was light before the I-4 bridge. We rode a little farther into the lane and everyone changed lanes to pass us. As we got to the bridge, a large platoon was approaching, so we moved to a lane-sharing position. Everyone passed us courteously, with plenty of clearance, slowing to reduce the speed differential. Once over the top of the bridge we were in another gap and moved back to lane control. There is a nice long downhill grade on the west side of I-4, We kept up with the traffic in the left lane all the way to the turn at Franklin.

It had stopped raining by the time we entered the Seminole Wekiva Trail through Sanlando Park. This route may seem a bit circuitous when you look at the map. Those who don’t live here might ask, why not just take Douglas? Those who live here know why. It’s a two-lane road with rolling hills and a high volume of traffic. I’ve witnessed near-head-on collisions as idiot motorists passed me into a blind hilltop. I have no proven strategy for dealing with that behavior in those conditions, so I prefer to just avoid encounters with it.

Goofing around on the Seminole Wekiva Trail

I can’t say enough about how much I enjoy a nice long section of trail that goes in my direction (as long as it’s not a peak trail-use time). The trail was virtually empty the entire way to Lake Mary. It was like having our own private, shady bicycle highway.

We made a pit stop at Panera to refill water bottles and check the weather radar. There were ominous clouds to the northeast and we saw a few streaks of lightning. The radar showed the storms moving northeast toward Daytona. I figured at our speed we’d probably follow behind them and avoid any significant weather.

At Lake Mary Blvd, we abandoned the trail. It runs parallel to International Parkway, but with 15 driveway crossings (meaning 30 bone-jarring gutter pan crossings), it’s not a better alternative to the road—a 4-lane divided boulevard with silky new asphalt. Even as we approached rush hour, traffic was surprisingly light on IP.

I had initially anticipated preparing the video cameras at this point, but with weather and time concerns, we chose not to take the time. Mine was mounted to my helmet, but I hadn’t adjusted it. Lisa’s was in its case. While we would have gotten some nice lane control passing behavior on IP, I most regretted that we didn’t get video just north of 46a. At this point IP grows a designated bike lane. We moved over into it after crossing the intersection. There was a queue of cars collected behind us at the red light. We waited for them to pass. They didn’t pass. I looked in my mirror. Every one of the cars in the right lane behind us was headed for one of the shopping center driveways. Fortunately for us, the driver of the first vehicle did not try to pass us before turning right. Kudos to him! A chain of follow-the-leader right turns would have been ugly for us.  This was an excellent demonstration of how being in the bike lane didn’t get us out of the way. In fact, it would have been faster for those turning cars if we had been riding in the left tire track.

The usual route we use from IP to the St Johns bridge was closed for construction a month ago when I was up there scouting a route for the Cystic Fibrosis ride. I didn’t know if it would be open again, and didn’t want to chance it and have to backtrack.

We decided to use a CyclingSavvy strategy on SR 46 to bridge the gap. By now, rush hour traffic was intensifying. We got video of this on the way home (embedded below), but I really regret not shooting this rush hour traverse. It worked perfectly. We heard one angry honk from several cars behind us at a point where we were traveling in a queue of heavy traffic (a traffic jam of motorists). But it was as safe and uneventful then as it was again on Saturday afternoon and would be on any given Sunday morning.

Likewise, we had a flawless traverse of the I-4 interchange at 17-92. It’s less complicated northbound than southbound (we shot video southbound on Saturday). But there was a massive amount of traffic merging onto 17-92 from I-4. That was no problem at all, we controlled the right lane until we saw a motorist slowing to merge behind us, then we moved to the wide shoulder to climb the bridge. Aside from the wide shoulder, the bridge sucks. The pavement is grooved concrete—perfect for catching glass shards and setting them up like sharks teeth—and the traffic noise is a deafening combination of high-revving engines and tire buzz from the surface.

Descent into Hell

The other side of the bridge is where things become problematic, especially  in heavy traffic. The first thing that happens is the shoulder opens up into a high speed right turnout for Lake Monroe Park. It’s pretty easy to come down that bridge at close to 30mph on the bike, so I typically move to lane control if I have a gap. I was able to do that, but Lisa (who is in better shape and climbed faster than me) was waiting at the park entrance. I pulled in and stopped just as a huge platoon of traffic came over the bridge. Watching the endless traffic and looking at the 2-foot-wide gutter space on the road ahead (just enough to make us look like jerks for controlling the lane), we decided the quiet solitude of the Spring to Spring trail would be worth the extra travel distance.

This trail winds under a lush canopy. It’s really beautiful, albeit somewhat impractical for transportation. The tight blind corners can be quite treacherous where there are a lot of users of varying skill. It was completely empty Friday evening.

When we got to the Dirksen trailhead, I got out the iPhone GPS to determine which way to go. I wished I had taken the time to fully plan an alternative to 17-92. We could go left to Shell Rd or right and use a neighborhood route. I’ve used Shell many times, but it is a narrow 2-lane collector road serving a lot of neighborhood streets and I didn’t know what rush hour traffic would be like. The route we chose turned out to be a really nice one. We used it on the way home, too.

Since I wasn’t sure how heavy rush hour traffic would be on Highbanks, I opted to go back to 17-92 early, rather than attempt a left on Highbanks from Naranja. Where we entered 17-92 again at Colombia Rd, there was a standard 5ft “bike lane” (undesignated). The hostility began almost immediately. Approaching Highbanks the bike lane continues to the right of a dual-destination right lane. Traffic was stacked up at the light and numerous cars were flashing right turn signals. I pulled into a gap as traffic ahead of me slowed. A white car came from behind, accelerating to close the gap and attempting to buzz me. I slid to the right and let him pass so he could slam on his brakes behind the stopped traffic. Then I pulled back into the lane and stopped behind him. He waved his middle finger at me as I stood there behind him. I pretended not to notice. It was clear he had only accelerated after seeing me signal and move into the lane (there was a lot of space behind me when I did it and traffic was slowing in all lanes). Lisa had pulled into the queue several cars ahead of me. He blasted his horn at us in parting.

The striped area is 29 inches wide.

That set the stage for the next few miles. Now we had reached FDOT’s despicable 29-inch, double-striped, gutter lane. I’m pretty sure this is what the roads of hell look like—heavy traffic, hostile motorists and a nasty, substandard space painted to look like a bike lane.

This stretch of road goes over some gently rolling hills. We were able to get enough of a gap in heavy traffic to control the lane on the down-hill (with light traffic changing lanes easily), but we decided to stay far right when climbing. Interestingly, I think the width of our panniers counteracted the normal effects of the substandard lane. I have ridden in this space on a road bike and experienced very unpleasant close passing. But I think our panniers hanging out over the fogline caused everyone to move over more than usual. This didn’t eliminate the yells of “get off the road,” which, as often as not, issued from vehicles in the left lane.

I was relieved for that gutter lane to go away at Enterprise Rd, but I had forgotten what the road configuration was like on the other side of the intersection. Thinking the high-speed entrance was a merge lane, we took advantage of a gap to to move into it and release the traffic that had stacked up behind us at the light. I figured it would lead us to the next section of bike lane, which I remembered being standard-width.  To my dismay, the arrows pointed the other direction. Instead of a long merge lane, it almost immediately became a 1000ft continuous right turn lane. That was our cue to make a right turn and look at the map again.

We were entering Orange City. Once past the continuous RTOL, 17-92 has fresh pavement and freshly-striped (undesignated) bike space which meets the 5ft standard. There are numerous intersections and driveways, every few hundred feet, all the way through the heart of Orange City. I was concerned about hook/cross crash risk with that volume of traffic and that many opportunities.

Orange city is one of those places that looks to have a rich grid on the map, but in reality 80% of it is dirt roads. Looking at the map, we had an option to go to the right or left for a parallel paved route. I’m very familiar with the roads on the west side of 17-92, but I have never used them at rush hour and didn’t know what kind of traffic volume there would be. It’s also hilly on that side. I decided we should take Levitt, on the east side. It seemed easy enough and looked as though it would bring us out on Minnesota, which is where I wanted to set up to get through the 472 interchange.

Turns out, we should have taken the known west side route. Levitt was wonderful, no traffic at all. With good reason. Despite Google marking it yellow—as a thru route—it is not. We had to backtrack 2 blocks and head back out to 17-92. And the sky was beginning to look ominous again.

The crossing of the 472 interchange is complicated. Well, the physical strategy for it is quite easy. The complicating factor is the human element of very hostile motorists. The over-exposure to meanness had already frayed our nerves and worn us down.

My original intention was to turn onto 17-92 from Minnesota with a green light. This would have given us an empty road to get through the interchange. But now we were going to be doing this with a platoon of traffic.

The light was red. We pulled up behind the queue in the left tire track. My hope was that the majority of traffic in the right lane would be heading for that ramp, so we would be able to release them to our right very quickly (the ramp forms 300ft past the intersection). If all went as planned, it would look like the photo on the right (you can see that video clip at 3:29) and there would be no incivility.

I was half right. The traffic flow was perfect, except for the guy who slid easily into the ramp, then slowed down to yell “get off the road!” No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.

For a mile or so after the interchange, the shoulder was clean and striped to the left of right-turn lanes. We used it without incident. North of Taylor, it begins to disintegrate. The RTOLs cut through it, there is gravel and sand—it’s basically unusable. We were grateful for it to go away entirely.

At Beresford Ave, thru traffic is diverted off Woodland and the road becomes 3-lane (one in each direction with a center turn lane). This made for easy passing, which all but one motorist managed to do without hurling insults at us.

We arrived at the Dubliner to a warm welcome from our FBA colleagues. And beer. Within seconds, the sky opened up as the next round of storms arrived.

Culture Shock

I do most of my cycling in the urban core of Orlando. Within my 5 mile range, it’s very rare that I even get honked at. I hadn’t heard “get off the road” in, well, longer than I can remember.  I occasionally venture to the burbs and typically experience some amount of incivility, but it is not so constant that it colors the whole trip.

I’m sure traffic volume had some influence on the hostility, but it wasn’t like we were causing a back-up. Most of our time on 17-92 we were completely marginalized, attempting to use the inconsistent-but-consistently-crappy infrastructure. Of course, that makes the hostility harder to bear, it’s like being kicked while you’re down.

This Slate article, Your Commute is Killing You, gave me a few clues about the intensity of the hostility up there.

Commuting is a migraine-inducing life-suck—a mundane task about as pleasurable as assembling flat-pack furniture or getting your license renewed, and you have to do it every day. If you are commuting, you are not spending quality time with your loved ones. You are not exercising, doing challenging work, having sex, petting your dog, or playing with your kids (or your Wii). You are not doing any of the things that make human beings happy.

People who live in that corridor—Debary, Orange City, Deland—have some of the longest and most miserable commutes in the metro area. Add in some hate radio and you have a recipe for a sociopathic attitude toward other road users. The pervasive belief that cyclists don’t belong on the road is made worse by the marginal gutter lanes intended for our use.

I don’t know how to solve the incivility problem since there’s no political will to do it—even among bike advocates—but it is definitely an impediment to cycling. One thing is for sure, we are not going to build our way out of it, especially with facilities that reinforce the beliefs behind it. Even for people like us who are comfortable and confident in traffic, relentless hostility takes a psychological toll on our will to ride assertively… or our desire to ride at all.

The Wiggle Route

For the ride home, I wanted nothing to do with 17-92. My goal was to avoid every inch possible.

We attended the morning half of the board meeting and headed home after lunch, around 2:30. I’m not familiar with the streets of downtown Deland, but decided to see what Florida Ave had to offer. Good choice! It had light traffic and signals to cross the busy roads. When we got to the end of it we jogged a block to the west and took Clara Ave as far as it went. A small subdivision connected us to McGregor where we’d have to go back to 17-92.

Riding south around the 472 interchange is facilitated by Firehouse Rd. I’ve used this a number of times, it takes you around the outside of the ramps and back to 17-92 south of all the merging and diverging. From there, it’s another 800 ft to Minnesota. This time we used the west side route.

It was very hot out, these residential roads offer more than a refuge from neanderthals and noisy traffic, they offer a blessed tree canopy!

When we got to the end of the west side route, we did a quick dogleg to the east side of 17-92 and followed a route I had explored a month ago as an option for the Cystic Fibrosis ride. Hillside was a bit stop-sign-infested, but the route worked well, taking us to Saxon Blvd. Using Saxon for 1000ft to get to Enterprise was easy with the dogleg technique we teach in CyclingSavvy.

We swooped down through Glen Abbey and back across 17-92 again. A short collection of neighborhood streets brought us down to Highbanks. I usually take Shell Rd from here, but it has less shade than the neighborhood streets on the east side, so we crossed back over and headed for the Spring to Spring trail.

We did it! We rode from Deland to the St. Johns bridge without having to use 17-92 for more than a few hundred feet. Best of all, there was not only zero incivility, we exchanged friendly waves with 4 motorists and heard, “that’s the way to travel” from one.

One thing I really wanted to do on this trip was shoot video of the 17-92@I-4 interchange. Most people climb the bridge on the wide shoulder, but on the other side of the bridge, you have to leave the shoulder to stay to the left of the right-turn lane, then hold your ground with merging traffic and control the chute to Orange Blvd. The lane in which you enter Orange Blvd., becomes the on-ramp to I-4 East, so you have to change lanes right away. So here’s what it looks like:

Since road construction forced us to cross the 46@I-4 interchange, we shot some video there as well. This is pretty straight-forward—it works best to control the left thru lane through the interchange. The traffic lights at I-4 collect so much traffic that if you rode through in the right lane, you’d probably have to do a jughandle turn to make a left on Wayside. Here’s what that one looks like:

The rest of the trip was equally pleasant and uneventful. We stopped for a snack at Panera. The Seminole Wekiva Trail had a few more users on it than Friday, but wasn’t crowded. We used a slightly different route to get to Central southbound. Instead of taking Laura to Central and climbing the hill on Central, we took Citrus to Douglas and entered the left turn lane for Central. This allowed us to turn onto Central with a green light and climb the bridge in peace without a platoon of traffic passing us.

The wiggle route is about 4 1/2 miles longer than going directly up 17-92. It has more stop signs, obviously, but fewer traffic lights. It was definitely worth it for the solitude and shade.

I probably won’t be riding to Deland again any time soon, but I look forward to using the wiggle route on my next trip to Blue Springs—at least for the ride home.

Who knew bike transportation could be so pleasant!

Yesterday morning I had a meeting downtown. The bike is usually my first choice for going anyplace within 5 miles, but especially for going downtown. I love to ride in downtown, but I also have very little experience with driving a car there, so I don’t really know where to park one. That unknown makes the bike even more appealing.

It was an exceptionally lovely morning. The humidity is still low enough to wear meeting clothes on the bike (come summer, I will have to take a change of clothes if I want to use the bike). My objective for the ride was to keep my exertion level to that of walking. I didn’t want to sweat (insofar as that’s possible in Florida). I don’t have a speedometer on my bike, but based on experience, that’s ~8mph for me.

Let’s talk about speed for a minute

There is a myth in bicycling that is sadly perpetuated by many accomplished bicycle drivers as well as bikeway advocates. That is that one cannot ride at a casual pace on the road. This mindset is a developmental plateau on the way to becoming a liberated cyclist. The first big step is learning to control your space, but the leap to freedom is learning that you can do so without riding at the highest speed you can muster.

A number of years ago I posited this notion of the need for speed in the company of one who knew better. I was firmly corrected. Of course I didn’t believe it, but I went out and experimented and discovered he was right.

I suffered from this mindset for a while, myself. A number of years ago I posited this notion of the need for speed in the company of one who knew better. I was firmly corrected. Of course I didn’t believe it, but as is my wont, I went out and experimented and discovered he was right.

The fact that this myth remains ingrained in many “vehicular cyclists” is an indication of a deficiency in the way traffic cycling has been taught and explained. Previous cycling education programs have basically dropped people off at this plateau, with a fixation on lane position, the unspoken belief that they have to go fast and no other tools. The poor dears are exhausting themselves trying to accommodate the culture of speed, really to no avail. It makes them say things like, “When we design roads and promote policies, [the casual cyclist] is the guy we should be thinking about — not ourselves, the efficient vehicular commuters, but the folks who just want to mosey around comfortably.” Aside from seeming  paternalistic, that statement causes me cognitive dissonance because I mosey around comfortably by default, unless I have a non-traffic-related reason or desire to ride faster.

People! Passing motorists have no idea if you’re going 8mph or 18mph! Nor do they recognize or appreciate the difference if they get stuck behind you for a few seconds. RELAX!

The truth is, a general traffic lane supports the cyclist who is hammering as fast as she can (a range of roughly 15-25mph), as well as the casual cyclist who is not exerting herself (8-15mph). Good route options (as are prevalent in the urban core) and the strategies taught in CyclingSavvy further enhance road travel for both slow and fast cyclists. The segregated urban cycletrack only supports slow cycling. By our cultural and political nature, such facilities will be socially and, ultimately legally, compulsory. It’s a poor trade to “accommodate” the lowest common denominator. Especially since it really doesn’t.

Before we get the tangential “yeah but” comments about busy suburban 2-lane roads. I’m talking about riding in the urban core where there are numerous route options and lots of roads with multiple lanes. The urban core is where advocates want to build special infrastructure. This is where it is ALREADY easy to ride. We’ll talk about 2-lane roads with no alternatives and semi-rural, over-developed areas some other time, OK? But keep in mind, no one is trying to help you out with that while they’re clamoring for unnecessary, symbolic stuff with pretty-colored paint in downtown.

So, back to the route

I live very close to the Cady Way trail. My hope is these little maps can benefit anyone coming into town from it, as well as those who simply live in surrounding neighborhoods.

I decided to take the neighborhood route half way. No cars passed me while I was riding between home and Ferncreek. I had to wait a few seconds to get a gap to turn left on Bumby. I left space for a car to pass on my right to turn right, one did. I’m not crazy about Ferncreek, but it’s the price for the quiet, treelined streets and there wasn’t much traffic. Entire blocks of the bike lane were visibly unusable, which was fine with me. I did have occasion to discover why there are huge piles of leaves in the bike lane there. The lawn service guys are blowing all the leaves off the lawns into the street.

Robinson was nearly empty when I turned onto it. I maintained my casual pace (which gained a bit of free speed coming down the little grade toward Lake Eola). A few small platoons of cars passed me in the left lane without trouble. There wasn’t a hint of incivility.

At rush hour, I might use a different parallel road due to traffic density, but there are a number of options with either no traffic or more lanes. South Street actually works well since it has 3 lanes in the same direction. I will be happy to draw other route options on the map, upon request.

I needed some photos of the skyline from across the lake, and I wasn’t late (yet), so I pulled over and snapped a few. The bike is the perfect vehicle for such an errand!

On Orange Ave., I practically coasted along with the cars. I love riding downtown. I love entering the cavern of buildings with an unhindered view of it all.

I pulled in to City Hall without a minute to spare. Locked up next to Mighk’s bike and headed in for a meeting to take a look at the City’s planned wayfinding system. Good stuff. More on that in a future post.

After the meeting at City Hall, I had another scheduled at B3 (to discuss how CyclingSavvy can helping the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation with their first bicycle ride event next fall). Such is a day in the life of my unpaid, unofficial job. But before leaving downtown, I needed a photo of the new Amway Center (for a job that offers actual income). I love the bike racks they installed!

From there,  I headed up Garland. As I got to Robinson, there was a freight train inching its way into town. I had a green light, so I turned right onto Robinson, putting me ahead of a bunch of traffic to the west. (The car in the photo actually turned right behind me and then passed me. I had stopped on a stop bar, which I assumed was for the crossing.) During the long wait, lots of traffic collected. The signals at Orange, Magnolia and Rosalind kept us all going the same pace through downtown. After crossing Rosalind, I decided to pull into the Eola Park Centre parking lot to release the traffic. This just makes things more pleasant for all of us and delays me about 10 seconds. When the traffic was past, I went back out onto an empty road and continued on my way.

A friendly moment

When I pulled into the parking lot entrance, a car was waiting to turn onto Robinson. I thought, from its position that the driver intended to turn left. I whipped a U-turn and rolled up on the right side of it. Then it occurred to me that I didn’t recall seeing a turn signal. I was in a pretty poor position if he was turning right, so I got his attention and asked. Turns out, he was turning right, but he rolled down his window and said, “you can go ahead and go first.” We exchanged a friendly greeting, traffic cleared, I pulled into the right lane, he turned out and passed me easily in the left lane. This may seem silly, but that friendly human connection made my little pull-out feel as worthwhile as getting the road to myself afterward.

It was a really nice ride, both ways. I lost count of how many friendly waves I got from other road users (cyclists, motorists and pedestrians). Not a second of unpleasantness.

This is a great city for people like us, who just like to ride our bikes.

Monday evening I rode to College Park for dinner. The green line is the route I took by bike. The Orange line is the route I would take by car. Both are 3.65 miles. The bike route has 5 traffic lights (not including Edgewater and Winter Park). The car route has 14. I haven’t timed it with either vehicle, but I suspect both would be pretty close.

I can say with certainty, I would find the car trip unenjoyable, and probably frustrating. The bike trip, on the other hand, is quite pleasant.

On my way to College Park, a little after 6PM, I had 5 motorist interactions: one driver let me turn right onto Bumby Ave and enter the queue for the light at Corrine Dr; another driver waited patiently for a few seconds and passed politely on Lake Shore Dr; another waited patiently for a longer stretch while I navigated the pitted pavement in front of OMA on Rollins St and then passed me courteously; another waited behind me while I stopped to let a pedestrian cross in the crosswalk at Florida Hospital, then stayed behind me til he entered the left turn lane at Orange Ave; and one more passed me easily and politely on Winter Park St.

On the way home, I had not a single motorist interaction. None. I rode 3.65 miles without being passed by anyone. It was kinda lonely.

Mount Cady

I have great admiration for people who make a regular long-distance commute. The longest commute I’ve had was about 11 miles and I didn’t bike it every day. In the last few years, my commute shrunk to 3.5 miles, then to the length of my condo. Now I use the bike for utility trips and some meetings. My radius is roughly 6 miles, with most trips being under 3. I feel very fortunate to be living in close proximity to almost everything I need. In most cases the bike is the most convenient means of transportation to get there. Determining factors are time/distance and trip quality. Cleaner, greener and cheaper are secondary considerations (not necessarily in that order). Oh, and difficulty parking the car is a deterrent to driving it, even if I don’t really feel like riding the bike.

Sunday I planned to make a trip well outside my normal range. My destination in Tuscawilla is ~15 miles away. By car it would be about 25-30 minutes (off-peak) and fairly frustrating—car trips are time wasted in between what I was doing and what I want to do next. By bike it was an hour and 20 minutes… into an 18mph headwind/crosswind. But I was outside, getting exercise, so I didn’t regard it as lost time. It was a weekend, and I had time to spare.

A great asset

I live near the South end of the Cady Way Trail. It turns out that using Cady Way for a little over half of the way is actually the shortest and fastest route. During the day, this makes for a pleasant ride with few traffic lights. Using Beach St. instead of the trail eliminates the stretch of stop sign hell. Mount Cady adds some topography to the ride, while crossing 436 without delay. I seldom have to wait to cross Forsyth and Goldenrod, the median refuges make that pretty easy. I avoid some delay and risk at Hall by doing a jughandle turn to the right northbound lane to get to the trail on the other side. Heading westbound there, I get a gap on Aloma and ride into the left turn lane for Hall (you can see what I mean if you zoom in on the satellite). I was pleased to see two other cyclists doing that Sunday. That’s much safer and quicker than using the crosswalks. Someday, they plan to build a bridge there.

All-in-all, my ride north was uneventful. I was hoping for some tailwind reward on the trip home, but I didn’t head home until after 9PM. By then the winds had died down to 6mph and moved from East to Southeast.

A different route home

After dark, the trail is not an option for me. It may seem odd, but I feel much safer on the road. The features that make the Cady Way Trail a quality ride during the day — isolation on its own right-of-way — scare me at night. There are several stretches of that trail where there is no escape, no lighting and no one around to hear you scream. There have been robberies and assaults on it as recently as last month.

The road route home from Tuscawilla is a little over a mile longer than the trail route, but it is mostly low-volume streets. There’s a short stint on Tuscawilla Rd that can’t be avoided, and a short stint on 436 that can be by adding extra miles. I’m comfortable controlling the lane on 436 (day or night), so I opted for the shorter distance. I did add a few tenths of a mile avoiding most of the bike lane on Lakemont and all of it on Glenridge — both of those are notorious for glass, which I can’t see in the dark.

I had a really nice ride home.

What makes a long trip worth biking

I didn’t experience any incivility in either direction. That is something that always enters my mind when I’m planning a bike trip to the burbs. Ugly behavior is more prevalent out there than it is in town. This trip was free of negative energy.

Though it took 3 times longer than driving a car, it was much more enjoyable. Still, the equation to determine whether to drive the bike or car always includes time available. The decision also includes my level of energy and ambition at the time. I suspect I may be more physically ambitious than the average Central Floridian, but nowhere near as ambitious as many of our readers.

On the way home, I was thinking about what made my bike trip worthwhile and how that fits into strategies for promoting bicycling.

• First and foremost was the confidence and empowerment to choose the best route without fear of any road. Without that, reaching my destination would not have been possible. I prefer trails and low volume roads because I don’t care for traffic noise, but I can connect them or opt for more direct routes because fear is not a barrier. The ability to choose any road has nothing to with speed, strength or elite talents. It is available to anyone who wants it. It simply involves gaining a better understanding of how the roadway works and using it to your advantage. You can do that here.
• On the way out, the trail was a great asset. It provided a shorter route and fewer traffic light delays than a road route. I am grateful that our community has invested in it and other trails like it. Unfortunately, it did not offer me the social safety I need to ride home at night. But having the confidence to use the roads, day or night, allowed me to chose a better route home.
• Luxury of time. Generally, I have found that when my life is not hectic or rushed, I’m more inclined to chose the bike vs the car. As soon as I feel stressed for time, I have a hard time getting my head around an extra 15 or 20 minutes of travel time, let alone adding an hour or two.
• Physical energy. Short trips don’t take much energy. I tend to operate at very low speeds because hammering a 2 mile trip doesn’t save any time over moseying. Short trip time is mostly determined by traffic lights. Longer trips require more effort, especially covering the distance into a headwind. I still don’t hammer, but I pick a speed that is sustainable and offers enough time gain to be worth the energy. My trip to Tuscawilla was an hour and 20 minutes (including stopped time), and, except for a short, congested area on the trail, I rode at a higher aerobic output than I usually muster for a 15-minute trip downtown.
• Did I mention it was a lovely spring day? Yeah. 78°.

Even though I prefer to use my bike, and do use it for more trips than I use the car, my decisions are rooted in practical considerations that have little to do with infrastructure. I suspect that’s the same for 99% of the population.

This is what people want! They want to use quiet, shady streets with light, slow traffic to get to their destinations.

Even though this route is relatively direct, it involves 12 different streets in less than a mile.

Living in Audubon Park, the majority of my local trips are on roads with no traffic. It’s absolutely deluxe! I can get from here to downtown Orlando, Winter Park and Maitland with very little traffic interaction.

The challenge for most people is our convoluted street network—it takes a lot of local knowledge and a good sense of direction to navigate it. The advantage is there is little traffic because the cut-thru motorists can’t figure it out. The disadvantage is, a person without that street knowledge can’t either. Most of my routes involve connecting more than a dozen different streets within 2 miles of my home. It’s become second nature because I do it all the time, but it would be unreasonable to follow a map or cue sheet with such frequent turns.

The map image (above right) links to a google map with two quiet street routes from Cady Way to College Park. These are among several perfect corridors for wayfinding. I use both of these frequently, choosing the one that comes closest to my final destination. These routes offer features that make cycling a superior experience:

• They are shady and quiet, free of the noise and frustration of traffic (traffic frustration being more of a factor in my car than on my bike).
• They offer lots of opportunity for community interaction with humans walking dogs, jogging or just out in their yards. I have usually exchanged friendly greetings with 3 or 4 people within 2 miles of leaving home. I place a high value on that.
• I see very few cars, even at rush hour. The motorists I do see are typically friendly and will exchange a wave and smile as readily as anyone. We’re all operating in space that is understood to be human.
• Amazingly, both routes are only 1/10th of a mile longer than the arterial route. While they have more turns, they also have fewer traffic lights. For someone traveling at 10-15mph (regardless of the road’s speed limit), it’s faster to add a tenth of a mile if you’re subtracting 5 red lights.

This could be a powerful tool to promote cycling. Due to our lack of connectivity, we’d also need better permeability to complete a truly useful network of preferred routes. But we’re working on that, too.

Previous posts on this topic:

Little Big Things

A Slow Street Movement

Connecting roads less traveled.. and finding shade

Strategic trail connections can make biking easier than driving

Connect the Quiet Streets

Sorry, I’m too slammed to elaborate, I just wanted to get this up. But don’t hesitate to ask for route advice!

Yesterday, I had the time and was thinking about it, so Lisa and I rode up there to solve the mystery.

There is, in fact, a path connecting the two roads. But someone has strung a metal cable across it. Here are some photos:

It would be possible for a skilled mountain biker to jump over the concrete curb, but we carried our bikes through. The cable across the path begs the question, “why?” Is this private property or is there some public right-of-way there? If there is right-of-way, what would it take to create a bike/walk connection? It would be useful (specifically at rush hour) to be able to cross Corrine at the Palm/Bumby traffic light.

The freshwater springs that feed our rivers are among Florida’s better features. Aside from being beautiful, sparkling, blue-green ribbons of water in the forest, they run a consistent temperature year round. In summer, the 72° water is a human playground and refuge from the heat. In winter, it offers manatees refuge from the cold. This has been a brutal winter for Florida manatees.

Blue Springs State Park (Wikipedia) in Orange City is a winter home to hundreds of the friendly sea cows, and a major eco-attraction in Central Florida. The headspring dumps over a million gallons of water into a half-mile, crystal-clear run that feeds the St. Johns River.

We often ride up there in summer. It’s a fun destination for a distance ride because you can cool your core temp in the spring before heading home. From Orlando, it’s a little over 70 miles round trip. LisaB and I and our friend Cindy took advantage of the perfect weather and rode to Blue Springs State Park today. Here’s the route.

I actually took this one the way out, the line was just as long as when we arrived.

Because of the park’s popularity in manatee season, it fills up early and there is a long queue and wait for motorists to enter.

The rangers give each driver the option of waiting along the dirt road on the other side of the entrance (30 – 40 minutes) or turning around and returning another time.

Since the determination is not made by the number of people, but by the car parking spaces, we hoped they would let us in.

There’s no way to pass the queue since the lanes are very narrow, so we just waited in line and slowly advanced as each motorist was informed of the situation. As we were approaching the back of the queue, a car passed us (within about 30ft of the last car). Must pass the cyclists. Whatever, we didn’t get upset about it. But after several minutes of waiting, his conscience must have gotten the best of him. He stuck his head out the window and apologized for passing us. He didn’t realize that was the end of the line. He said, “I’m so sorry, that was really rude.”

It pays to go by bike

At the front of the line, we asked if there was bike parking available. The ranger asked his coworker, who said it was fine to let us in. Woohoo!

Ours were the only bikes at the racks.

The manatees didn’t disappoint. It’s been warm for a few days so there weren’t dozens of them huddled in the spring (I’ve been to the park when it was like that). But we saw about 10 while we were there. Most of them were on the move from one end of the spring run to the other.

The white marks are scars from boat propellers. Most adults have those.

This guy had a little buddy. The fish might have been eating algae off the manatee’s skin.

Unlike our summer rides, the return trip wasn’t a sweltering suffer-fest. It was a gorgeous day in the mid 70s. We used a slightly different route to take advantage of the Seminole Wekiva Trail. We also used Shell Rd. to skip a few miles of the highway. U.S. 17-92 isn’t a horrible road to ride on, but the traffic noise wears me out after a while. I’m very much looking forward to the completion of the Spring-to-Spring Trail as a peaceful option.

Bonus attractions

As we headed down International Parkway Blvd. We came upon the Lake Mary Criterium. I’d forgotten about that. We stopped and watched a few laps of the CAT 3 race. They were moving way too fast for my camera

Not far beyond the race, we encountered a couple Sandhill cranes.

After a short visit with the cranes, we headed to Panera for a snack. The Panera on the Seminole Wekiva Trail sees a LOT of bike traffic. The bike racks are always overflowing. Dining destinations are a good motivator!

The trail was crowded, too, but we were in no rush.

Route stuff

Outbound on a Sunday morning, I tend to use the most direct route. Roads that are normally busy or intimidating have very little traffic on a Sunday morning. Coming back, the route ends up being a little longer because I detour to find quieter roads (and shade in the summer).

Click to enlarge.

Coming back through Altamonte, we explored a traffic-avoidance route that I’ve given to a few people, but never used myself. I’ve never much cared for Oranole Rd. It should be easy to ride on, but it’s a cut-thru so the motorists who use it can be jerks.

The old route was Broadview to Mt Vernon to Oranole. The new route (shown right) is slightly longer, but much more peaceful. I always enjoy checking out new neighborhoods.

Once into Maitland, I feel like I’m almost home. The route from Maitland to Audubon park is one of my favorites. It’s just so simple and low key (even at peak traffic times).

My legs feel great! I’m pleased that I can get on a bike and ride 72 miles without pain and feeling strong at the end, even though I typically ride no more than 10 miles a day. I have a lot of years of regular distance riding in me, but I think the regular use of the bike for transportation really helps with that.

Blue Springs is a great bike destination if you’re looking for a place to go on a distance ride. I have few other variations on the route linked above that allow you to avoid more of U.S. 17-92. They all add a few more miles, but sometimes that’s worth it. If you want to try it, feel free to contact me for specifics.

Then, by a stroke of very good luck, my husband and I met Keri.  I made a passing mention of my desire to ride, more by way of complaining about my bad route luck than anything else.  I had zero expectation that this problem could be fixed, so I was shocked when I got an email from Keri with a route to get me to work; she even offered to ride it with me!  As I looked over the map and visualized each road, it was like a whole new world opening up.  I realized that I had deemed riding to work as impossible because I was thinking of how I drive to work.  Though it is so obvious now, I hadn’t thought about zooming out from my daily drive and looking at how smaller roads might connect and get me to work by bike.  Even as a newbie to transportational cycling, the route was a breeze and only involved about 45 seconds of an arterial road–even I could handle that.

That first route served as a key that unlocked our full potential for family cycling.  We have found that you can get almost anywhere by bike using a combination of residential roads, bike trails, and short spurts on the busier, arterial roads.  So when a friend asked me if I thought she could start riding to work, I was able to confidently say, “absolutely – let me make you a route.”  I’ve learned that, even though both her home and her work are off two major arterial roads, there is almost always a way.  I also knew that once I got her safely to work, she would be more willing to run errands by bike, more willing to start getting out with her kids, and then she would be hooked.

I’ve grown to believe good route planning is one of the most powerful tools for encouraging people to ride–far more powerful than adding 10,000 miles of bike lanes to roads everyone is too scared to ride.  Don’t get me wrong–I’m not anti-facility, not by a long stretch.  Instead, I’d rather see efforts directed at teaching people to take back our residential roads and then put funding towards building more trails and bike infrastructure.  We shouldn’t need a bike path on a 25-mph road; to me, that indicates a real problem in the community.  I’d love to see people bringing bikes back to neighborhood streets and have these quiet streets complemented by a solid bike infrastructure that would enable riders to circumvent the worst arterial roads.  To me, this would be the ultimate “share the road” mentality: cyclists and motorists working together to find a good balance that leaves everyone safe and happy on our roads.

The day after a cold front is always windy. I didn’t care. Saturday, we planned a destination and route to ride into the wind — 65 miles round trip to Clermont — then get the big tailwind push coming home. It worked like a charm!

Route-planning through sprawlsville

I enjoy recreational riding, but I don’t enjoy driving to a ride start. Over the years, I’ve studied maps to find good routes in and out of this sprawling metro just to get to more scenic riding areas. It’s no easy task.

While I’m comfortable (safety-wise) riding on the big arterial roads, they are not very enjoyable once they’re full of noisy, stinky auto traffic. In the interest of time and distance, I’ll use them on the way out of town because they have very little traffic at 8 AM on a weekend morning.

This is a better-than-average cross-section of sprawlsville (in any direction outside Orlando). Red roads can be very busy and intimidating for most cyclists. Orange and yellow are moderately busy. The blue and green are through the only neighborhoods with entrances on more than one road. All the white ones are offshoots, loops or single-entrance subdivisions.

Coming back into town, I try to find roads with less traffic… and more shade. This is where route planning becomes a challenge. Very few quiet roads in sprawlsville are connected to more than a single arterial road. Even when you do manage to find a good connection to traverse a section of town, it still may dump you onto an undesirable road, which you’ll have to use to get to the next network of pleasant streets.

One can gain an advantage with local knowledge of connector sidewalks and trails. We found two in our exploration, they’re noted on the route map. The connector from Lake Orlando to Mercy Dr. (#2) was a surprise. I had planned to turn there onto Mercy, having no idea there was a gate across the road at that intersection. Fortunately one of my riding buddies spotted the sidewalk under the palmettos. The alternative to that little cut-thru would have been to dump out onto one of two unpleasant roads.

Stringing together neighborhood streets typically increases trip mileage by 10-20%. For utilitarian purposes, this can be impractical for a long commute, which is why most serious transportation cyclists learn to ride assertively on busy roads. For a recreational ride, enjoying the journey matters more than the distance. But a sustainable commute requires some level of enjoyment as well, for most people.

Another challenge is knowing the traffic volumes on a particular road. It can be quite unpleasant to find yourself on a narrow 2-lane road with steady traffic in both directions. It looked fine on the map, but… there you are. In general, I’ve discovered that if there are very few parallel thru streets in a semi-dense area, 2-lane thru-roads are likely to have uncomfortably high traffic volumes. This is the case with most of the non-arterial roads that lead out of town: Clarcona-Ocoee west of Apopka-Vineland, Silverstar where it goes around Starke Lake, and to a lesser extent, A D Mims (which we ended up using). Sometimes it’s better to find a 4-lane road, if possible. Sometimes you have no choice. West of Ocoee, the roads take on a more pleasant rural character and auto traffic is sparse.

Along the way

One of my favorite things is the first view of Lake Apopka from Fuller’s Cross Rd. There’s some special significance to that view when you’ve ridden there from downtown. It’s rewarding. I’m sorry I didn’t take a camera. (The other photos in this post were taken at other times.)

Once past Winter Garden, the West Orange Trail offers a pleasant 10-mile bicycle route to Clermont. We made use of that, along with thousands of other cyclists enjoying a beautiful Saturday. Because we weren’t hammering, we found no difficulty from the volume of trail traffic (hammering definitely belongs on the road).

The trail goes through the town of Winter Garden and has been a huge catalyst for revitalizing its cute downtown. The downtown has not been very kind to the trail itself, hacking it up into a weird and hard-to-navigate sidewalk that jumps to a median between two narrow, brick lanes. When passing through town, many of us use side streets to bypass that madness. Winter Garden is a great place to stop for lunch, though, so we did go into town on our way back.

We stopped at the farmer’s market, too, but good Florida produce (such as it is) is still a few weeks away. My favorite tomato grower at Lake Eola Sunday market is in Winter Garden on Saturdays. I can’t wait for his tomatoes to come back in season… a few weeks more, I think.

West of Winter Garden, the West Orange Trail runs past the Oakland Nature Preserve. We didn’t stop this trip, but it’s been years since I’ve been out there, so a visit is in order one of these days.

I really like the new extension past Killarney station, connecting the West Orange Trail to the Minneola Trail. It immediately heads off into the woods with some fun little hills and curves. This section is built to generous new standards — looks to be about 12ft wide. There’s one section where it parallels CR455 and Old 50 that it gets kind of narrow and annoying. We chose to use the road there and were pleasantly surprised not to be harassed for it (that’s hit-or-miss, harassment was pretty common on Old 50 even before the trail was built).

Our main mission in Clermont was to tackle a couple steep hills. Once each was enough for me. Skyridge Rd is barely old enough to be on Goggle maps. It looks like something you might find in San Fransisco, thus it always has cyclists on it—testing their mettle… or gear ratios. (Don’t believe the grade percentages on mapmyride, they’re worthless. I discovered that in Pennsylvania!) The big reward is at the top — a view looking east to Lake Apopka. Scenic views in a flat state are few and far between, so they’re quite special to us, even if they’d be unspectacular to anyone not-so-topography-deprived.

Something in the air

Riding through the west part of town has the potential to be unpleasant. It’s one of those pockets of hostility I (and others) have discovered over the years, so I typically approach it with a little bit of hesitation. It’s the part of town where you find an abundance of the stereotypical vehicle-types cyclists love to hate—lifted pick-up trucks and jacked-up, pimped-out muscle cars. To be sure, we saw plenty of both.

And every single driver treated us courteously.

In 65 miles (less the 18 or so on the trail), we heard not a honk or yell (directed at us), we experienced not a single pass under 4ft (most were over 8ft and the few that were closer actually slowed down). There were no stupid motorist tricks, no uncomfortable situations.

What’s normal? Close passing is pretty rare for me, but other cyclists complain about it all the time. I’ll let you decide why that is. Probably a little bit of honking and yelling would be typical in my experience — with that number of miles through that part of town. There were even several cases on 2-lane roads where motorists waited behind us patiently for close to a minute (not sure what that is in dog-years, but it’s pretty significant in motorist-years). When they passed, they did so with lots of clearance and no sign of bother. They all received a friendly wave from us in return.

We’ve all suffered the long summer and the brutal reprise, after 2 tantalizingly nice days a couple weeks ago. I sensed a vibe of collective happiness all over town. It was the same yesterday as I rode closer to home.

Kindness leaves an impression, too

Audible harassment is something many of us try to tune out. If you let it get to you, you become bitter or quit riding. While it’s not a huge problem in my daily travels, I was still struck by my emotional state in the complete absence of it. Or more importantly, what felt like the presence of peaceful coexistence.

It felt like higher level of freedom. I have freedom in my confidence and skill to ride on any road, but I don’t always feel welcome wherever I choose to ride. No matter what kind of positive energy I use to counter it, feeling unwelcome due to the hostility of others pulls against the joy of cycling. It’s so unnecessary. When I encounter nasty spurts of pointless incivility, it makes me feel bad about my community.

This weekend’s riding was like being introduced to an alternate universe where things are as they should be. I thought, what if everyone felt this way all the time? Safety—actual, subjective and social safety—on all the roads of our city. How would this change our culture? How would it enhance our community? That’s the ultimate goal of the Civility Initiative, and it’s a worthy goal. A weekend like this makes it feel attainable. I bet nearly everyone would want that, if it occurred to them… if it felt real and possible.