K, I'm going to get a little self-indulgent here and post way too many photos of my commute. I'm usually in too much of a hurry to stop and smell the flowers, but I took a day off yesterday and had to go downtown anyway, so I cataloged my route along the way.
I start off in suburbia:
The city has actually been putting some effort into improving their cycling infrastructure in recent years, and when the road was resurfaced a couple years ago, they painted in a bike lane. That bike lane takes me all the way to a ravine:
It's paved on this side, but the other side is gravel and very steep, and it's tough to make it up on a fixed gear without spinning out on the gravel and losing all momentum. Once I exit the ravine, I'm in residential for a while:
And yes, everyone in this city drives trucks or SUVs. This road takes me to this bridge:
over this freeway:
Where the road disappears in the distance is a bridge which I'll be on in a minute. Here's the view from the bridge:
Edmonton has something like 18,000 acres of continuous parkland around the river, making it one of the largest urban parks in North America. We need some claim to fame in this northern Canadian city, right? At the far end of the bridge is this:
the latest in controversial public art installations. Many concerned citizens were up in arms about their taxpayer dollars funding what looks like an elephant dung pile. I kinda like it.
To be continued...