More bike lanes!

So I was driving around today and noticed these dashed white lines on the side of Ruffin Road in Kearny Mesa (Sorry, no pics!). It didn't take me long to figure that Ruffin Road (between Kearny Villa Rd & Aero Drive) is being prepared for new bike lanes.


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Preliminary bike lane striping is down and I noticed in some areas around Balboa Ave that the motor vehicle lanes are being re-aligned slightly. From how it looks, my guess is that some street parking on Ruffin Rd is being removed. I'm sure those people will be pissed off, but it's great to see that the City is implementing more bike facilities.

You can see more about this project in the City of San Diego Bike Master Plan. This improvement is listed as Project 23 (page 123) in the document.

Mr. Bus Driver, move that bus!

Darn buses kept getting in my way on the bike commute home. At one point I managed to catch the confluence of, I think, 3 buses on part of my route. They insisted on taking turns getting in front of me and letting passengers off.

Of course when a bus pulls over it completely blocks the bike lane. The evening rush hour traffic was heavy enough that it precluded me from even thinking about taking the lane to pass the bus on the left. It didn't seem worth the risk.

So I slowed down and waited. I guess there are worse things that could happen.

Car-free for a Day Challenge

Kathleen, who blogs as TechnoEarthMama, put out a call last week for people to sign up for her Car-Free for a Day Challenge. For anyone who committed to one car-free day this week she would match by going car-free herself. She's well underway. Check her site for her progress.

Since I just started doing my once weekly bike commute car-free, she said to go ahead and sign up. So sign up I did.

Well, today is my bike commute day, the day I was committing to be car-free. Did all go as planned? Not exactly.

Update in the next an upcoming post.

Just when I thought

Just when I thought I was getting stronger on hills, a guy passes me on the last climb on my way home like I was standing still. I know it's all relative. He was on a nice titanium Moots bike and here's me on my 25 lb steel cross-muter with a backpack to boot. Oh well. I was happy to ride past a long backup of cars that had spilled over to the side streets because of heavy traffic on the freeway this morning. That's what I get for gloating.