A dry erase marker and a shoe walk into a bar..

#298

I set out this morning to pedal across town for a handful of errands, leaving my house just before sunrise, trike bedecked with lights and double flags.

Traffic on Cameron Park Drive was a bit heavy but not too bad. There was a crew setting up construction signs, on the shoulder, of course. There are very few bike lanes in El Dorado County, so the shoulders are where most human-powered traffic rides. The road was clear behind, so I zipped around the sign and kept moving.

There was one place where I should have moved farther to the left in the lane - 'taking the lane' to prevent the possibility of an unsafe pass. I was moving along about 26mph at that point and a truck passed me on a double yellow with oncoming traffic. The oncoming traffic beeped at him, drowning out my vulgar commentary.

Since I'm already complaining, I'll also say that the left turn arrows on the signals in Cameron Park are not long enough to get through on a bike. I had 2 of these 'exciting' turns and dropped the F-bomb a few times while watching the arrow turn yellow while I was still powering through the intersection.
AND I've finally determined that the left turn lane on westbound Green Valley Road at Bass Lake is NOT bike-aware. I sat through two light changes, then waited for oncoming traffic to have a red, and scooted over to the sidewalk ped signal. I hate having to do this, but it seemed safer than either turning left on red and less boring then waiting for a car to pull up behind and trip the sensor.

The shoulders were full of the usual entertaining debris. Aside from the red dry erase marker and one grey lace up shoe, there was a very ripe dead raccoon and a very small dead songbird. Glass and metal and anonymous debris as usual.

One of my errands was my every-6-months chem panel, which is a fasting blood test. Riding up hills 12 hours with no breakfast was a drag. After the vampire did her thing, I rode to the Peets coffee in the grocery store, picked up a few groceries, and got oatmeal and tea. Then off to the eye doctor for my annual visual field test (which I passed, as usual).

Riding home, I had to cut into a parking lot on the right, instead of heading directly to my left turn lane. The traffic behind me was just too heavy to safely to get in the left lane. Other than that, the ride home was uneventful.

I pedaled up the driveway, triggered the garage door remote, reached back, pulled off the tallest flag, and rolled into garage.

Sweet!