Everything got better when I became a green-haired 2D girl. I do fun and unusual things with video games and pinball.

cohost inspired me to do more. Thank you



My medium-distance girlfriend lives in a different suburb on the other side of Raleigh. I'm going to spend the weekend with her. Usually this involves asking Kat whether I can take the car for the weekend, and driving it more than I would like.

But it should be a nice weekend, so it's time to e-bike 38 miles each way instead.

The start and end of the route are cropped out for obvious reasons.

This is my second iteration of the route. The first time I went farther north, thinking "oh I'll get to bike on these nice scenic rural roads that cross the lake a few times!". Now I have learned that the problem with nice scenic rural roads is that they have a speed limit of at least 45, and from time to time a pickup truck will come screaming down them at 60 MPH shouting at me for having the audacity to be there without an equally large vehicle. This happens several times more frequently if there is a church nearby.

This time I'm spending a lot of time in a state park (it's a gravel path, which is tiring, but at least the cars are far away) and on a chain of greenways through Raleigh. When it gets too sprawly in North Raleigh to have greenways, I'll follow a road where it is clearly generally accepted to bike on the sidewalk. It's not like people are walking on it.

The path crosses two interstates on bike/pedestrian bridges, and crosses the most crash-prone surface road I know of (NC-98) at a right angle with a traffic light. Also, it goes through the sculpture garden of an art museum. Hell yeah.


All of this is an improvement over biking in Boston, where people also drive like maniacs in the city, and a trip of this length would have to cross Route 128 at some point, which you cannot do without biking in the on-ramp and off-ramp lanes. I would not do that in a group of fewer than five people.


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