Grand Canal [bicycling, coffeeneuring]

I've been going on Sunday morning bike rides with a friend out here who is training to ride in the MS-150. For this morning's ride, he put together a route that took us north up the Indian Bend Wash, then west on the Arizona Canal, then back to downtown Tempe on the Grand Canal.

(full route)

When S and I first started dating, I would often bike over to his apartment, which was a mother-in-law unit in Phoenix. At the very beginning, not knowing any better, I would ride up from Tempe to Oak Street and then across, due west, to his house. But then at some point, it occurred to me that the Grand Canal might be a faster and more direct route, and it was.

So after that, he and I both spent a lot of time riding back and forth to each others' houses on the Grand Canal. Sometime after I moved away from Arizona, I learned that a project was in the works to develop that stretch of canal - a website says it first got funded in 2015, so that's right around the time that S also moved away from Arizona. After having seen how the Western Canal got transformed in Tempe and Mesa as part of a similar project, I was pretty excited to learn the Grand Canal would finally get a similar treatment. It was already a workable transit corridor, but the deteriorating pavement could at least stand to be improved.

I don't think I've been back to ride on the Grand Canal since its grand opening in 2020 as the Grand Canalscape.

It is both the same and different now.

( photos and more... )