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Bicycle Rides, Rambles and Blogs

My Experience in the Mile High City

Denver Colorado has an active bicycling scene. There are dedicated bike paths, lanes, and numbered routes. You can pick up a map of the numbered routes to navigate your way around. They also have a bike rental system where you can pick up a sturdy, but heavy bike at a kiosk and ride it to another location and drop the bike off. Beware, if you use one of these rental bikes make sure you read the fine print or you can find yourself hit up with extra fees. If you are just visiting the city and want to ride around exploring the city and the roads out to the mountains, I would recommend renting from one of the local bike shops.

I ended up renting my bike from the Edge Doctor bike shop, on Broadway and 9th. I ended up with a nice new 2015 Fuji aluminum frame road bike with cable disc brakes. Helmet and flat change kit included for a little more than $40 per 24 hour period. Unfortunately, I only had one day to rent a bike and it was on a cloudy sometimes misty day with temps in the low 50’s. So, I did not head out towards the mountains instead I chose a nice flat bike route.

The route I took was the Cherry Creek Trail. This trail goes from the confluence of Cherry Creek and the Platte River out to the Cherry Creek Reservoir. I can’t be sure of the exact distance but I almost went the whole distance but the weather turned a little more nasty. Here is my link to the ride:

http://ridewithgps.com/trips/3431228 . This path, when possible separated the bike riders, from the pedestrians on the different sides of the creek.

If I get back to Denver before my son moves east, I hope to ride out to Golden and maybe up Look-Out Mountain. I would also explore some other rides maybe out to Boulder as well.

I made some other observations about Denver. Some of them do not put the bicyclist in a favorable light. To list a few: 1. A rider going against traffic. 2. A couple of instances of riders blowing through stop signs and red lights and not taking their turn at four-way stops. 3. A bike rider pulling a left hook (my son said this was common) where a bike rider came down the left side of a row a cars stopped at a traffic light and then making a right turn in front of the first car in the line. I will note that the riders doing this were either the young hipsters or maybe a commuter. (I didn’t see too many roadies except on the bike paths or way out of the ‘burbs.) 4. Last but not least, I noted that there seemed to be more riders without helmets than I saw wearing helmets.

Denver, Colorado is indeed a great area to bike ride in. I just hope the local residents don’t spoil it for themselves and everyone else.

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