Weekend Recap

Saturday morning six (6) hearty rollers showed for the Coffee and Donut ride. After a brief discussion regarding keeping parts of your person warm during winter riding, we headed out.

Our first (1st) stop was at the new damn dam at the confluence of Skunk Creek and the Big Sioux River. The consensus of the Sioux Falls biking community is the non water control gates – the gates keeping rollers and / or pedestrians from using the damn dam to traverse the river – should be opened to let this be used to cross.

During construction of the damn dam, there was a temporary bridge in place near the damn dam. This would make a wonderful connector to allow non-motorized traffic from the east side of I-29 to the west side of I-29 and vice-versa.

What we’re hearing from certain City employee types is, essentially, the general public should consider themselves damn lucky to get within spitting distance of the adjacent country clubs. The gist, the country clubbers will never agree to allow such a useful bridge placement to occur. I’m trying hard to not let myself regress into a profanity laced rant railing against the country clubbers and the City type enablers.

Anyway, don’t be surprised if a concerned group of residents mount a campaign to get a bridge approved, designed, installed, and put into use. Like-minded individuals maybe should think about sliding me their contact information for once the meetings and strategizing begins. Word.

But, I digress…..

After we’d checked out the damn dam, the ride continued in search of new bike friendly infrastructure of sorts. I showed the group the new dedicated bike lane on West Avenue. This summer crews reconstructed that road in the vicinity of the convention center. Bike lanes were part of this.

Leaving West Avenue we rolled east on the sharrowed 10th Street. Again, summer reconstruction made this a much smoother surface and sharrows were painted.

The ride ended up at Queen City Bakery. We warmed ourselves, inside and out, and then used the bike trail to get back to O’Gorman High School. Good times.

Ride On.