Suburbs – Loop-Frame Love

September Critical Lass and upcoming dates

October 14, 2013 Deb

On September 15th, we met up as usual at the Garneau lamppost and rode south to check out the new bike lane on 40th Avenue. Our next two Critical Lass rides will be Monday evenings, October 14th (tomorrow! to help us burn off all that turkey and pumpkin pie) and November 18th, meeting at 6pm in the usual spot. We also have a Kidical Mass coming up: October 27th, meeting 1 pm, location TBA. Wear your Hallowe’en costumes! (Update: Kidical Mass was foiled by the early snowstorm that day! We’ll try again in Spring.)

Here are a few of the photos I took last ride – the full Flikr set can be viewed here.

Keith came along this time, with his fabulous fatbike, and his gorgeous wife Donna and daughter Dani. That Raleigh Twenty that Dani is riding is deceptively fast – she sped ahead of us for much of the ride.

Shamin and Mandy and her daughter. For being so little, she is always ridiculously well-behaved on these rides.

We rode through the residential streets east of the U of A to the LRT MUP,

over the pedestrian overpass to U of A’s South Campus and continuing on the MUP (past a guy on a cool trike) until we reached Lendrum. Somehow we missed the turnoff into the neighborhood (maybe the CoE needs to add a wayfinding sign here?) and found ourselves on the sidewalk of busy 111th Street.

This is the landmark where we turned in Lendrum – the “castle” (which used to be a daycare centre IIRC) near the strip mall with Sunterra in it on 111th Street. This took us back into the residential streets in search of the actual bike path (which we knew was in there somewhere) and the pedestrian overpass over the Whitemud Freeway.

Eventually we found it. This is the corner of 51 Ave and 115 St.

The view of the Whitemud from the pedestrian overpass.

We stopped to admire the view, take some photos, and rehydrate – but you can tell Dani is impatient with the delay.

The on-street bike lane south of the freeway.

We found it! This is the brand-new bike lane on repaved 40th Avenue (you can see Petrolia Mall, the site of the lemonade stand pop-upthis summer, in the background). Hey, this paint still looks wet!

There’s a reason for that! Keith and I both excitedly parked our bikes so we could snap a few photos.

One of the stencils the city use to mark the lane with reflective paint.

The hard-working city staff who were painting the lane.

There was no bike rack outside the convenience store in the strip mall at the corner of 40th Ave and 119th Street, so we took shifts watching the bikes while we all grabbed slushy drinks from inside. The guy at the cash register seemed confused when I suggested they could call the city to arrange for one to be installed.

It was time to head back, so we turned north on 119th Street and headed for the overpass over the Whitemud.

There were a group of guys practicing cyclocross on a course on the other side of the road at this spot. Cool!

The view of the Whitemud at the north end of the overpass.

Continuing north on 122nd Street (the same road, it changes its’ name) past Michener Park. Look how adorable Keith and Donna are.

I love riding past the U of A experimental farm (which is part of South Campus). Here’s the view to the east,

and to the west. Pretty, eh? There’s also a windbreak of willows (I think) along part of it.

Of course we ignored the mad-cow-outbreak-era no-entry sign beside the open gate into the farm (everyone does).

People use this path all the time for walking, running, and cycling, and it’s both the prettiest and most convenient way to get back to the LRT MUP.

See? Much prettier than the perpetual snarl of traffic where 122nd Street turns into Belgravia Road.

There are even sheep grazing on the other side of the path in the livestock area.

The juxtaposition of the old barns and Livestock Pavilion with the new Saville Centre is really interesting, too.

Back over the overpass over Belgravia Road, and this time we rode through the residential neighborhoods south and west of the U of A and along the Saskatchewan Drive MUP, instead of along the LRT MUP,

and past Rutherford House then along the bike paths to our meeting spot at the Garneau lamppost as the sun dipped low.

A final photo of those who remained at ride’s end (taken by Keith with my camera) – Mandy had taken her little one home for a nap.

P.S. – Forgive me for the lateness of this ride report! The Local Good’s election coverage has been keeping me very busy, and one of my WordPress settings is refusing to allow me to upload photos of any size. This will get fixed soon, but in the meantime the extra step of uploading everything to flikr then embedding that takes all the fun out of blogging.

Easter weekend bike ride

March 30, 2013 Deb

April is a tough month to ride in Edmonton, but I’m going to give 30 Days Of Biking another whirl.

Unfortunately right now the roads in my neighborhood look like this:

… and the bottom of my driveway looks like this:

…and I don’t have a winter bike yet, and studded tires won’t fit under the fenders of my Raleigh-built 3-speed lovelies. The roads inside my neighborhood will look like this until they melt. Many sidewalks are not much better, because the many houses under construction, awaiting purchase, or with snowbird owners mean long stretches of sidewalk are left unshoveled. Typically, in a city where people use brooms instead of shovels to clear their sidewalks, that would only be a nuisance, and so I’ve been considering winterizing a vintage folder or shopper to extend my cycling season. With a couple of dumps of wet heavy snow this winter, it means the terrain is pretty rough right now.

Luckily the multi-use paths in my neighborhood have been plowed by the city, and I have wonderful neighbors who shovel, so I can ride on the sidewalks for errands until the residential roads are clear. Not having studded tires will pose a problem if when the weather turns colder again, but I can use a regular bike for now. So, today I topped up the tires, oiled the chains, and took my daughter for a ride down the MUP alongside Rabbit Hill Road to the shops at the corner of 23rd Avenue. We had a particular mission in mind…

Hot cross buns from Prairie Mill Bakery. Mission accomplished. (How lucky am I to have them in my neighborhood?)

We also crossed the road to go to the drug store. Apart from a rack hidden in a snowbank, some mud, and a couple of large puddles to roll through, the conditions were lovely, sunny and above zero. Who’s to complain?

My New Neighborhood

July 15, 2012 Deb

As I’ve mentioned before, my past six months have been absorbed with house hunting and moving. Our new neighborhood is next-door to our old one, still in the southwestern suburbs of the city; we wanted to keep the kids in the same school, and we like the area’s New Urbanist plan, which really does work as intended to make the subdivisions more walkable/bikeable (well, when the streets aren’t covered in snow, anyway).

So why move? We needed a floor plan that works better for our family; much as we loved our old house, our needs have changed since we bought it (before kids), and we really wanted a home with all the bedrooms on the same floor and the kitchen and living room overlooking the back yard. The house we bought has good bones, a big yard for gardening, and good solar exposure. As we have time and resources, we’ll be making lots of changes to the new house that allow us to live more sustainably, which will be an ongoing topic on my other blog. Today’s post has more to do with showing how our new location will still make it possible, with some diligence and work, to live car-light here and to model an active outdoor lifestyle for our kids.

When I spent some time with Google Maps, I found that our new house is:

2.0km from the kids’ school (25min walking or 8 min cycling for an adult),
easy cycling distance from the cluster of shopping strips (1.7km to the Save-On Foods)
2.4km from the new rec centre (and the weekly farmers’ market!),
3.0km from the new big-box area with proposed pedestrian-friendly ‘main street’ that’s being built on the other side of the Henday ring road (10 min cycling), and
750m from a shopping strip that will include a yoga studio and a restaurant (2 min cycling), that includes a drug store with a convenience grocery section.

Yes, there is a bike rack already at the drug store. Planning fail on not bringing a longer lock or a reuseable bag.

Public transit is decent; currently my husband drives ten minutes or so, then parks and takes a 20 minute LRT ride downtown for work. I’m planning to work from home. The kids will be able to take a school bus to school, as well.

So the current walk score of 10 (eep!) and transit score of 32 don’t tell the whole story of what it will be like to live here in a couple of years once all the local amenities have been built. I think living car-light will be completely doable for us in this location.

One of the other big attractions of our new area is its proximity to the Whitemud Creek ravine for recreational walking and cycling. Our house is only 100 ft from the trailhead for a network of recreational trails along the top of the wildlife sanctuary that I’m enjoying exploring with my kids. Here are a few photos:

a paved multiuse path winds along the perimeter of the neighborhood at the top edge of the ravine,

with signage that shows a map of the main trails
and photos of the wildlife that live in the nature sanctuary along the creekbed,

and lots of inviting side trails to explore on foot.
(This one leads to a handbuilt child-size bench with a view of the creek below.)

Where the paved MUP crosses into the wildlife sanctuary, there is a broad meadow and a sign on the fence.
You can really tell here that this part of the area used to be farmland.

Where the paved path currently ends, there is a former farm driveway that connects to the MUP at the other end of the ravine, beside the uber-eco Larch Park development, so we think this will be paved at some point as well,

but there is also a well-worn footpath that leads down through the forest to the meandering creek.

There are lots of trails like these, much better suited for walking than cycling, including the abandoned piece of 142nd Street that leads down to the power line right-of-way and a path alongside the creek under the Henday to the other side, and a steep downhill path edged by caragana bushes that leads to a former coal mine (no, we haven’t found a shaft, just slag heaps). There’s all kinds of wildlife living in the ravine, too; so far my kids have seen a beaver, a coyote, and several species of birds while exploring these trails with their dad. I haven’t been quite so lucky yet.

Loop-Frame Love

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