I participated in my second Bike to Work Day this morning. I left the house just after six and started on my preplanned route, which was different than my route last year. I decided on a new route with less turns and more off street riding, though it was slightly longer than last year. My goal was to make the nearly twenty mile ride in under three hours and hopefully closer to two.

I had the first part of the ride completely memorized and stuck completely to the plan until I got to the part of my ride where I was supposed to leave the Cherry Creek Trail and turn south down Yosemite Street. Somehow I missed this turn, and I realized it once I saw the Cherry Creek Reservoir dam in the distance. I turned south and followed signs to Hampden Heights Park, and after asking a walker for directions, I eventually found my way west to Yosemite.

From there I remembered that I needed to ride south to Belleview, take a left there, and ride about a mile over to Havana. At Havana I turned south once again all the way to Peakview Avenue. I took a left at Peakview and a quick right onto Lima Street, which I followed south on a much safer road than Havana becomes. Thus far I had only made one bad turn, but that quickly changed when Lima turned into Inverness Drive. At that point every street I passed was Inverness something: Parkway, Way, Lane, Court, etc. I couldn’t exactly remember which of the Inverness roads I was supposed to take, and I didn’t want to take my map out, so I just followed along what appeared to be the safest roads all the way until I eventually found the South Valley Highway.

Once on the South Valley Highway, which turns into Jamaica Street, I was close enough to the office that I knew which roads to take. It really just consisted of a right turn onto Meridian Boulevard, with one last big climb up to the office. Once in the parking lot I glanced at the watch and realized that I had done it all in just under two hours. After a couple changes to the preplanned route, I soon realized that instead of just under twenty miles I had done just barely over twenty miles. All in all it was a great ride, I just wish the whole thing wasn’t all uphill. Below is the route.