Road Cycling - Tour de Sub-division

I just started ridding what I call the tour de sub-division in that I ride my road bike around all the new sub-divisions that exist on my side of my city. I can do this for hours, cover a lot of ground right from the city and out to exurbia. These sub-divisions have fresh clean pavement and tarmac, no traffic and many twists, turns, paths, straightaways and culs-de-sac. If it is windy, it adds a new dimension to this style of ridding; I can fly with the tail wind on the straits and then labour against the headwinds. I should add that it is perfectly flat here in Winnipeg and this makes up for not having hills. It's a blast, provides a good work out and great practice for turns, sprinting, braking etc.

Does anyone else do this in your regions, as I have seen no other rodies while riding and the locals seem content with riding the 11-kilometre circle in the nearby provincial park? I feel like a kid who has the whole plyground to myself!
:)

What I miss are the unopened Interstates, 8-10miles of 4lane with nothing on them. County took 5yrs to build a 5mi divided road in an industrial area not far away, it was paved for a year in '01 before they finally opened it. County finally put cops on the road to keep out the cyclists and occasional car. Steve

Just be careful in the subdivisions. The driveways create a mess of bike-car interfaces you have to watch. The driver of that car, SUV, or minivan backing out of a driveway does not always look for a bicycle on the road.

I used to ride around my subdivision, but I found it very dangerous. I found that a lot of motorists in my subdivision, especially the residents, do not stop at stop signs, do not use turn signal lights, and/or do not look when turning. The reason for this IMO is that resident motorists feel right at home & very comfortable driving in their subdivision and know that traffic laws are not strictly enforced.

Originally posted by Gordon P
Does anyone else do this in your regions, as I have seen no other rodies while riding and the locals seem content with riding the 11-kilometre circle in the nearby provincial park? I feel like a kid who has the whole plyground to myself!
:)
I think Gordon was referring to new subdivisions where the greatest risk is the gawkers dreaming of which block of land they'll buy, or about the spanky new spec house across the way. They're actually not too bad to be around because they are going so slowly.

Yes, they are great new playgrounds, and few roadies know about them, I suspect, because familiarity makes for faster times on their current rides.

The playgrounds are dynamic, too, especially if the market is booming a little, and more and more country is being developed. But I do spare a thought for the good arable land or bush that is going under concrete and bitumen.

There's a suburb near my home that has had sections of what's called Oceana Drive built over the past 40 years, but they have never been joined up until now. The new sections are a hoot with one downhill worth 70km/h on smooth asphalt and a great sweeping right-hand curve (oops, shouldn't have said that as the urban speed limit is 50km/h here). But it's still a cyclist's dream. Then you go on to the old chipseal bitumen to bring you back to reality.:(

Oceana Drive now links to another road at the end, so there is now a 17km loop I can do from home with some decent climbing and with great views of the river and the city. It's also interesting to see the new mansions taking shape, and how they are really built :eek:

Still, as one section gets clogged up with houses, and driveways and soccer mums, another new one appears.

In a way that's good news for cycling, too, as the subdividers extending Oceana Drive southward are required to put aside public land for shared paths that will form an extension of our round-the-river recreational network that is slowly taking shape.

R

I love getting in some junk miles by riding through my subdivision. I live up on a plateau that has some great views of the valley below.

http://www.neebu.net/~khuon/albums/mountains/PICT0001_003.jpg

However, I do have to be careful. Oftentimes there are kids playing in the streets or riding their own bikes the wrong way, soccermoms with minivans and SUVs not paying attention, teenagers in their ricemobiles peeling out of driveways... etc. Also, many intersections in my subdivision do not have stopsigns and drivers here seem like they couldn't have been bothered to learn the right-of-way rules for uncontrolled intersections. I've seen and been in plenty of close calls just outside my own house which is the only one on a stub street (that is planned to be extended in the future) so people don't expect traffic coming from that direction much less a cyclist.

Prosody Just be careful in the subdivisions. The driveways create a mess of bike-car interfaces you have to watch. The driver of that car, SUV, or minivan backing out of a driveway does not always look for a bicycle on the road.

I ride during the day when everyone is at work or school so no traffic at all. The visibility is excellent and trees, hedges, stop signs and fences are non-existent or small. This is part of the pleasure of riding in these areas. Most are either new or have been built within the last 10 or more years.

khuon, nice photo!

:beer:

Myself, I prefer Tour de Industrial Park. We have an area near the airport with good smooth roads and lots of new pavement that goes round back of the trucking or biolab campuses--would make a great crit course probably--and on the weekends or evenings they're just DEAD, everyone gone, no cars. It's a little dreary looking but some of the stubborn wildflowers and the industrial landscaping lend it some beauty. Roads are constantly being extended and connected to accommodate new businesses (non-retail) so eventually we're going to have a pretty nice loop to work with. I've seen these industrial parks all over the country and they're worth checking out.

Originally posted by caroljm36
Myself, I prefer Tour de Industrial Park.

Office (and light industrial) parks/campuses are also great for this. And they usually have a little bit better landscaping albiet artificial... kinda like a sub-division! :D

Originally posted by Gordon P
Does anyone else do this in your regions, as I have seen no other rodies while riding and the locals seem content with riding the 11-kilometre circle in the nearby provincial park? I feel like a kid who has the whole plyground to myself!
:)

sorta, I never really enter the actual neighborhood but I do visit certain communities in Las Vegas.... (for those who don't know) Las Vegas is made up of about 6 large communities, and it is actually 3 seperate cities (will eventually be 4 if the city gets big enough to merge boulder city and blue diamond) anyhow there is the downtown (strip) Las Vegas, north Las Vegas (I never cycle there), and the southern city of Henderson. In general henderson is composed of 3 big communities, old henderson (flats) south Anthem/Green Valley Ranch (hills to the extreme!) and Green Valley (mix of hills and flats.) In Las Vegas, to the west there is the community of Summerlin, which is a cycling heaven, and basically that is where all the big rides happen... (hills & flats)

so in general there are many flavors to cycling here, and I do get to tour the different places once a year in the Las Vegas Century (which all BF.net members are invited to this year :D)

Originally posted by VegasCyclist
I do get to tour the different places once a year in the Las Vegas Century (which all BF.net members are invited to this year :D)

Is that informally known as The Tour de Sert? :D

A couple of weeks ago in the Los Angeles area (Pasadena actually), they closed the 110 freeway to cars and had a tour going 6 miles down the freeway and then back. It would have been great if it were longer, but it was nice riding the open road.

Be careful going through new subdivisions. I was riding in one and the road suddenly ended. No problem, I was on a mountain bike. That is until I hit the trench they had dug. Serves me right for not paying attention to the road.

I rode the neighbourhoods quite often as a kid and a teenager. It's nice to look at houses' architechture, and the ways they were built, especially in those years when each house was different from the next one. It's a great way to ride aimlessly, but definitely not a way to ride fast.