As you may have read on our Facebook page, our designer Paul got clipped by a car yesterday on Assiniboia Ave. Head over to the Leader-Post’s website for photos of Paul’s poor, slightly bashed bike. Paul’s okay, by the way. But he took a pretty good flight over the top of the car (not truck, as reported in the article), which swerved into his bike lane sans signal and cut him off.
Today, I was out for a bike ride myself. I headed south from downtown and ended up going through the university. On my way back downtown, with a healthy breeze at my back, I took the Wascana Parkway. The bike lane, though, was covered by about a 1/2 inch of sand and gravel from winter road maintenance and I was pretty much forced to the far left of the lane which brought me in pretty close contact with traffic whizzing by on the Parkway.
And while I’m on the subject of the Parkway, when you’re heading out to the university, it’s really nice that the bike lane’s there. But as you approach the university, you face the challenge of crossing two lanes traffic moving at maybe 80 k.p.h. to access the turn lane into the university. If I could turn my head 180 degrees like an owl, I could probably manage okay, but I can’t, so I’m reduced to sneaking peaks over my shoulder and trying to gauge when there’s a gap in traffic big enough to make it across.
Fun times.