Re-routing
Aug. 2nd, 2014 11:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterToday it was time to figure out how the new routes to the grocery store and bLowes will go. I'm starting to agree with J and K about Palasota Drive, one of the major connecting road options out of here. It's obnoxious, and it can be a whole lot easier to just head towards downtown Bryan on Beck instead. I want to call Palasota an "east-west" road and Beck a "north-south" road, but that's actually all relative to "Aggie North," the axis created by Texas Avenue. This is...a special place.
Grocery shopping was no big deal - just 4.5 miles down to Brazos Natural Foods, then retracing my steps to stop by the Farm Patch and the H-E-B which used to be a half-mile from the Villa Maria house.
bLowes and Village Foods, on the other hand, required more extensive rerouting. So I boomeranged my way almost all the way into downtown, and then over to Carter Creek Parkway, which I have heard good things about from other bicyclists.
There were sections of Carter Creek that were very pretty, in that it was a wide, smooth road with little traffic and a decent number of trees arching overhead. I kind of wish I'd had a time-lapse camera so I could give you a sense of the trip, because the architecture was interesting as well - many a palatial Texas home, but some other oddities tucked in here and there as well. Highly manicured yards along most of it. Meh.
I partially struck out at bLowes; I managed to find six additional bike hooks to finish out the bike-hooking project, but couldn't find some of the parts needed to build Worm Bin Bench II. And after I'd gathered some 2x4's and a sheet of plywood and hauled them to the back to the saw, I observed an "out of order" sign on the saw station. Kind of makes me scratch my head a little when a hardware store's hardware breaks*, but there was no way I could get that sheet of plywood and those 2x4's home in the bike trailer without sawing them down to size, so I abandoned that effort for the time being.
The newer routes are longer by about 1.5 miles (one-way). I think this is going to cause me to do even more trip-chaining, to the extent that I am able. I'd rather that than have to spend time in a car.
* I realize that Lowes is not, actually, a hardware store, it's a big-box store masquerading as a hardware store. But REAL hardware stores carry fasteners which can be purchased individually, et cetera. I don't like the Home Despot either, but this was yet another situation that suggested maybe I should have sucked it up and ridden just a bit further so as to actually get the things I wanted.
Grocery shopping was no big deal - just 4.5 miles down to Brazos Natural Foods, then retracing my steps to stop by the Farm Patch and the H-E-B which used to be a half-mile from the Villa Maria house.
bLowes and Village Foods, on the other hand, required more extensive rerouting. So I boomeranged my way almost all the way into downtown, and then over to Carter Creek Parkway, which I have heard good things about from other bicyclists.
There were sections of Carter Creek that were very pretty, in that it was a wide, smooth road with little traffic and a decent number of trees arching overhead. I kind of wish I'd had a time-lapse camera so I could give you a sense of the trip, because the architecture was interesting as well - many a palatial Texas home, but some other oddities tucked in here and there as well. Highly manicured yards along most of it. Meh.
I partially struck out at bLowes; I managed to find six additional bike hooks to finish out the bike-hooking project, but couldn't find some of the parts needed to build Worm Bin Bench II. And after I'd gathered some 2x4's and a sheet of plywood and hauled them to the back to the saw, I observed an "out of order" sign on the saw station. Kind of makes me scratch my head a little when a hardware store's hardware breaks*, but there was no way I could get that sheet of plywood and those 2x4's home in the bike trailer without sawing them down to size, so I abandoned that effort for the time being.
The newer routes are longer by about 1.5 miles (one-way). I think this is going to cause me to do even more trip-chaining, to the extent that I am able. I'd rather that than have to spend time in a car.
* I realize that Lowes is not, actually, a hardware store, it's a big-box store masquerading as a hardware store. But REAL hardware stores carry fasteners which can be purchased individually, et cetera. I don't like the Home Despot either, but this was yet another situation that suggested maybe I should have sucked it up and ridden just a bit further so as to actually get the things I wanted.
