Reason #3 not to use the bike path

I ride bike paths as little as possible. Usually only to get me somewhere fast or if there isn't a safe road to get me where I want to go.

Every day that I ride from home there is a hill that I have to climb up to the subdivision where I live. I would say that 2 or 3 times a year somebody passes me that just can't fathom why I would be on the road with there is a nice, wide, paved path right next to the road. The usually yell some form of expletive out the window surrounded by the words, "get on the" and "bike path."

I have several reasons for not being on the bike path but last week I got a new one. Mudslides.

It seems that all the rain, coupled with the 6 inches of snow we had last week was too much for the retaining wall on Huntington. Bricks and mud were all over the the bike path. It's been almost a week since it happened and crews came out to clean it up but no repairs have been made yet. I'm curious how long that will take.

Mudslides aside, there are two other, more often occurring, reasons for not using the bike path.

1) Debris: This for me is the main reason. There is always tons of junk all over the path. From glass, to sticks, to gravel, to garbage. All the stuff that was on the road gets blown on to the bike path.

2) Kids use the path: There have been multiple times that i have actually used the path and while I'm going up the hill some kids come flying down on their bikes or skateboards and almost hit me. Bottom line it's too dangerous to use the path.

An issue related to this is the use of bike lanes. Algonquin has been cool enough to build some of the streets wide enough to include either painted bike lanes or non painted lanes. The problem with this is the same as reason 1 above. There is always crap in these lanes. What's worse is when the village comes around to clean the streets, they lanes are worse off then before they cleaned them.

The other week I finally saw it with my own eyes. The street cleaner goes by and it's tank is full so out of the top, pouring down the side of the vehicle is the overflow of the tank, depositing all the crap that it cleaned off the road right onto the bike lane.

Anyway I think I'm done typing now. This is the long way to say that hey, we had a mudslide by my house last week.

That's all for now. Maybe someday I'll actually have a race report.