There & Back Again: A journey to and from the doctor.
One philosophy I subscribe to is that, in an urban setting, our worlds are as big or small as we want them to be. In order to avoid using a car, I have scaled down the radius in which my daily or weekly errands occur. The Publix down the road from my townhome is easily accessible via cargo bike. The bank is downtown. My business is well within a bike's ride and most of my social events are, too. These are all deliberate decisions that I've made over the past few years. They have increased my quality of life tremendously.
One snowy day during my final week of work at the City, I rode my bike the whole five minutes to my primary care physician's office which I'd selected for its proximity to my home. I figured I'd just go get things checked out before leaving the warm embrace of The Man to get serious about The Bike Library.
The appointment went well, but I had some additional questions and they referred me to a specialist about ten miles away, in Cary. The morning of my appointment was 15°F so I caved and used my car (🤢) because the bus would have taken over 60 minutes longer each way. Boo. End of story.
Or is it?
The week of the appointment was rather chilly. Still bikeable, within a certain distance...
The morning of the follow-up appointment a week later was a balmy 55°F and I was ready to log my 20 mile utilitarian ride. I mounted my trusty Trek 950 and flipped my flip-flop pedals to the seldom-used clipless side. I meant business and had somewhere to be.
I planned my route using a combination of Google Maps and Strava. This made me feel like I at least would somewhat know where I was going as I trekked a town and a half over. I also brought a spare battery pack and plugged it into my phone, which would serve as my GPS for the trip. Quadlock FTW.
The trip started out easy and smooth, rolling through the neighborhoods. Hillsborough took me past the State Fair. Eventually I passed the forest near Western & Buck Jones, soon to be deforested for the Western BRT since there are no other roads nearby that could be good candidates for a Raleigh-Cary BRT line.
