Martha's Road Challenge

Way back in the dark ages of June 11, 2012 a woman named Martha, who writes the Living Among Tourists blog challenged the riding community

"to photograph your usual ride, the one that most illustrates the path most taken- the drudge, the glory, whatever it is that you see all the time on your way to work or play. What's the view?"

This is not really a hard challenge but it was a little more difficult for me than I would have liked. The reason why is that I ride 5 different roads on my daily 35 mile commute. I also try to mix it up now and then by riding a freeway for a bit or riding a wooded back road (which is okay in the daylight but at night the deer come out). I also ride a road that is empty and wide open then clogged with traffic...open then clogged. How do I capture that?

I leave my house and come to the center of town. Living in Florida, I deal with snowbirds. Normally I get through this light quickly during the summer, during the fall and winter it can take 10 minutes.

After the light 8 miles of easy road. A bit if a sweeping turn here and there but not two bad.

A left onto a main road. This is actually a dangerous road, it's got the passing stripes but is often to busy to try passing. There is always some idiot that tries it however. in the last year I know of at least two fatal accidents on this stretch.

A right turn puts me into a lightly populated housing development, the real estate crash meant that a lot of land was never developed or was converted back into farmland. Another left takes me on the longest part of my route, and the emptiest. Often at night I am the only bike on this section of road. During the day you may see a gator in a roadside pond, turtles trying to cross and lonely cows doing what ever cows do.

And then...their are three sections of the road where the traffic gets really heavy. A mall development is one and then two heavily traveled North - South roads. At this point I am going West. At night, East.

 

I make it through the traffic, then have a nice little run on a two lane highway to work. I make a left and travel less then a mile to my job. The photo below is me in the turning lane. I work for 3M Electronic Monitoring systems.

That's my trip.  35 miles pretty much every day on my bike (I took my car in since it be easier to get the photo's) in all types of weather.  Here is Florida it's either "hot and dry", "hot and wet," "hot" or "buggy."