So there's this remote entrance to the park in which I work and I've been entering through it ever since I started commuting by bike. From the time I was a kid, this entrance - and the path leading up to it - have been hard-packed dirt and gravel and have been easy enough to ride on with my slicks.

This past week, someone got the brilliant idea to dump a truckload of crushed granite -- not finely crushed or even pebble-sized, but the size of sharp golf balls -- on it, rendering the last 50 feet of my commute un-rideable. Mind you, this sized stone will not be settling into the dirt and forming a nice, smooth, solid bed anytime soon.

So today (a very slow work day), I grabbed a big-ass shovel from our garage and spent more than an hour shoveling load-after-load of stone to create a smooth surface about 50 feet long and just wide enough for my bike to pass through without throwing me violently to the ground. It felt "dirty," but it sure felt good. Knowing this section of the park, no one will go back there for another ten years to see what I did, so it looks like I've solved a big problem for now.