Commuting - It counts as a commute... (lots o pics)

Even if it was 20 miles longer than normal....

Yesterday was a great day for riding. I took off a few hours before normal and headed south. Down Portland to Minnehaha Parkway. Stopped for the first pics at Lake Hiawatha:

People enjoying the park:

http://www.werstnet.com/site_images/blog_images/5_4_06/Hiawatha_Walkers.jpg

Downtown from the bridge:

http://www.werstnet.com/site_images/blog_images/5_4_06/Downtown_Close.jpg

It's actually further than it looks:

http://www.werstnet.com/site_images/blog_images/5_4_06/Downtown_Real_View.jpg

I kept heading away from downtown, which is where I needed to be, and went south through Minnehaha Falls to Fort Snelling. Here's a shot of the trail there:

http://www.werstnet.com/site_images/blog_images/5_4_06/Falls_Trail.jpg

Stopped on the Mendota bridge for a nice wide shot. I'm getting pretty far from work now:
(clicky)

http://www.werstnet.com/site_images/blog_images/5_4_06/Snelling_Stitched_sm.jpg (http://www.werstnet.com/site_images/blog_images/5_4_06/Snelling_Stitched_lg.jpg)

I took the trail on the south side of the river towards St. Paul. This is where the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers come together:

http://www.werstnet.com/site_images/blog_images/5_4_06/Rivers_Converge.jpg

From here I can see the wrong downtown. The bridge is 35E, which has a seperate bike/ped path to get across the river. That's where I'm going to turn around. It's a nasty climb to get up to it, but that's the price I pay for taking the downhill into Mendota. I hit 28mph spinning 42x16 on my fixie. Spinny... I got down to 8mph by the top of the climb...

http://www.werstnet.com/site_images/blog_images/5_4_06/Wrong_Downtown.jpg

After the river, I went through Crosby Farm from the backside. There's a ton of deadwood that is just sitting by the trail. We're going to try to get a crew of Sat Night Riders down there to hide some of it because it's a great spot for a fire late at night. We were supposed to go this morning, but we decided that while drunk at 1am...

http://www.werstnet.com/site_images/blog_images/5_4_06/Crosby_Farm_Wood.jpg

After another evil hill to get out of the park (4mph at the top!) I took the east river road over to Ford Parkway Bridge. This is where the trail starts. I didn't get a shot of the trail, but it's all new asphalt. The different colors of bricks are a map of where you're standing:

http://www.werstnet.com/site_images/blog_images/5_4_06/Rock_Park.jpg

It looks over another park. The trails down there are tempting, but by now I'm running late to get to work and get changed:

http://www.werstnet.com/site_images/blog_images/5_4_06/Rock_Park_View.jpg

After crossing the bridge, I rode down to Minnehaha ave. It's a diagonal that pretty much spits me out right at work, with a bike lane almost the entire way. This is the widest it gets. Might be the widest bike lane in the city:

http://www.werstnet.com/site_images/blog_images/5_4_06/Widest_Bike_Lane.jpg

Most of the way it's like this, still plenty wide:

http://www.werstnet.com/site_images/blog_images/5_4_06/Normal_Bike_Lane.jpg

I stopped a couple of blocks from work for some Taco Bell. It's kind of a housing project, but had nice benches. In the background is the Light Rail. The path that I normally take to work runs along the fence here:

http://www.werstnet.com/site_images/blog_images/5_4_06/Lunch_Spot.jpg

All in all, a good ride. I only ended up being 5min late, and got 24 miles in. Then I was told a few hours after I got there that I'm going to start training my replacement on Monday... That's actually a good thing, because it means that I'm being promoted!!!

Congratulations on the promotion, and thanks for the commute pictures. It looks like you've got a nice relaxing route into work.

That's not the normal route. Normally it's just a straight path that runs along the railroad tracks. Hop on two blocks from home, get off two blocks from work. 4.7 miles, 18-20min... I'll take some pics of that today when I head in.

The promotion kind of worries me. They're basically creating a 'digital pre-press' position for me. I'm going to be setting up pretty much all of the jobs for my department. As opposed to running the machines, which is what I have been doing. So if anything isn't set up right, it's going to come back on me. The whole scope of my responsibilities still isn't clear... I guess we'll figure that out over the next couple of months...

Hey, it's great to see some pictures of my neighborhood parks and trails! Yesterday was a gorgeous day.