My second year of cycling to work
After two years of cycling the same route several days per week, I can dream it. Last year I cycled to the office 90 times and tracked roughly 3200 kilometers on my race bike. I didn’t use my e-bike at all. Here’s what my 18 kilometers of commute look like.
I start in my street and I’m met with a beautifully colored sky when I exit my neighbourhood onto the windy polder, crossing the provincial road and cycling next to it, being careful of tractors on the same road, then turning right, passing a small bit of industrial estate on my right and heading towards the dike, where the road bends left and I turn right not long after. Now I’m parallel to the motorway on my left hand side. The sun rises beautifully on my right, but it’s hard to look without being blinded.
There are too many trees on this dike to tally comfortably when passing them with a steady pace. I reach the cold and steep tunnel. If I was still feeling a bit cold by now, I’m definitely warmed up when I’ve climbed out of it. Just out of the tunnel there’s a bit of no man’s land with two large water reservoirs on the right and a field full of solar panels. I turn left on a busy polder road, cycling towards many schoolchildren heading the other direction. Now I’m crossing the road twice, minding the cars here, and swirling to the right and a bit left again until I reach a small hill, where I turn right and downwards, braking fast but not too hard before turning left, trying to maintain speed through the corner.
Now it’s a long stretch of bicycle path, where I just have to cross the street twice. I lean forward and lay my arms on the handlebars after those crossings and just follow along the path for a while until I reach the point where I need to cross the street again. I turn right into a small tunnel under the road, which leads me to the left side of another road. I cross it quickly and climb a little uphill onto a small bridge that crosses the motorway. Downhill again, turning left, turning right, and after a short straw of road straight ahead I’m close to where my grandmother used to live. I’m actually pretty close to where I was born.
I cross another street, cycle a bit further, and cross the last street before I reach the city park from the south. In the park I turn left, cycle straight ahead, crossing a pond, climbing up to a small kind of dike with a large event center on my left, and on the right the park and its water. The sun is still on my right but already easier on the eye. Then I exit the park and wait for the traffic lights to turn green. I can’t recall these lights ever being green the moment I arrive.
Up until here I’m down 30 minutes. Just 15 minutes through the city to go now. I’ll write those down another time.
