Today what started as a random toodle while everyone else was doing other things eventually turned into a ride to my mom’s house! It is quite lovely that my mom and brother live less than 7 miles away from each other now, so I can ride between them! Or, in this case, ride randomly and then feel like I was close enough that I might as well make a detour over to Mom’s for some tea and snacks and light landscaping of her still-new backyard:)
Plus, I was extra delighted that it feels like every time I bike in Vegas, the bike infrastructure gets better. I mean, I have no idea since I’m only seeing a very small section of it and I’m mostly joyriding, not trying to get anywhere specific — but there were legit bike lanes, a whole separated bike path that (I looked it up later) goes uninterrupted for anywhere between 12 and 17 miles (or maybe more?) depending on what you read, with under- and over-passes at many of the major street crossings. (Ha, Las Vegas could use some better or more centralized up-to-date information on the biking infrastructure, I’ve learned in my internet research;) I even saw green bike boxes and signs for the “Downtown to Red Rock Bike Trail” (which is on streets, but with bike lanes). This feels much nicer than the first time I came to Vegas and was nervous that I would immediately get hit by probably a really big pickup truck going at least 82mph since even though there are frequently at least 4 traffic lanes going in each direction on surface streets there were no bikes lanes and speed limits are a total joke. Progress? :)
I also saw this:
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(On the I-215 bike path)
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These white bikes are “ghost bikes,” and indicate traffic fatalities — in this case, five cyclists killed by one truck driver in December of 2020. There’s more info here, on a ghost bike website that I didn’t know existed and also hasn’t been updated for places outside of New York since 2012, it says, though that being said I’m not sure how the 2020 Las Vegas crash got on there. (Interesting to note is that Portland isn’t even an option on that page, though there are many ghost bikes in Portland and I’m sure there’s a map or list somewhere of all of them.)
Anyway. I guess today is an ode to bike infrastructure and building cities that don’t kill people who try to be mobile at human speeds. AND an ode to being able to randomly bike to my mom’s house:)