Thandem Thursday

Cara and John recently got a tandem bike (The Spike) and the four of us have been going on Thursday night bike rides known as “Thandem Thursday” (I believe Cara coined the phrase). Its been a lot of fun. Usually the ride ends at one of our houses with dinner and beer. This past week, we started the ride with a lap around Meadowbrook Park, which is one of my favorite haunts.

I took a some pictures from the back of our bike. I’m never sure if I should post pictures of other people on my blog, so I’ll just keep it to scenery in case C and J want to remain anonymous ☺

Its all a blur to me...


Path in the prairie


Flat, flat land. Sometimes when I'm running here, I imagine that there are monkeys in that tree line in the distance. When I get there though, there never are any.


Later in the ride, we had to stop for a train. "The old Union Pacific doesn't come by here much anymore..."

The next day there was a big ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new bike lane on First St. The mayor of Champaign was there and everything. At least 2 of the local news stations were filming. I wasn’t around to watch the news that night, so I guess I’ll never know if Iris 2 and I made it onto TV. I think the new bike lane is great and all, but it would be nice if it didn’t randomly start at Gregory and then randomly end somewhere just north of Springfield (the whole thing is less than a mile long) and also if it wasn’t covered in gravel, shards of glass, and general rubbish that frat boys toss out their car windows. But still, the debris is not the fault of the people who created/designed it and having this bike path is a really great start. I’ve already been using the path for a couple of weeks, and I definitely do feel a lot safer with it there. It was really inspiring to hear that there are a lot more bike lanes, etc, planned to make cycling even more safe in Champaign-Urbana. On a place like First Street though, where the road is ridiculously wide and there are stop signs or stop lights every block (so cars can’t go all that fast), I already felt pretty safe riding. What would really make a difference would be to have bike lanes in places where it is not already safe to ride (like on Neil or Prospect or Kirby, for instance). I don't know if that's even possible though. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Video of the ribbon cutting cermony