One man's road closure is another man's bike path

Amber and I rode my Lucky Greek 100k permanent populaire on Sunday. It had rained all Saturday and the storm didn't pass until early Sunday morning. We started at 10am and I decided to ride my Trek 520 as it has 32mm tires and mudguards. There was a lot of standing water and mud on the trail.

When we got to Martha McLean park there was a trail closure sign with a detour. We kept going anyway because I always like to know why I'm risking my life in traffic and found the trail has been dug up and replaced with a plowed field and also fenced off. The closure is all the way along the sewage works - a section we normally try and pass as quickly as possible due to the smell. We didn't want to retrace our route two miles so we picked our bikes up and started walking. That was a mistake. Our shoes became caked with mud and navigating the fence at the far end was difficult and slightly dangerous.

We spent five minutes knocking the mud off our cleats at the far end and agreed to take the detour on the way back. We found the nice sign that explained the reason for the closure and noticed the trail is expected to be re-opened in April so my Night Audax ride should not be impacted.

A few miles down the road there was another sign saying Rincon was closed with a gate that we walked around. I decided to check that closure out as well. When we got part way down Rincon we saw half the road was flooded so we rode on the other half. As there was no traffic on the road this was pretty sweet. This time, ignoring the road closure paid off. It was like having a deluxe bike path for a mile.

We got to the Lucky Greek hungry so we ate too much (like I need an excuse). By the time we got back to Rincon on the return leg it was open and we had to deal with the usual traffic. We took the detour on Jurupa to get around the trail closure. Jurupa turns out to have a nice bike lane and was almost as pleasant as the trail. If the trail is not open in time for the Night Audax I guess I can live with the detour.

Just before we entered the detour on the way back we encountered two cyclists coming the other way that had just traversed the same trail closure we had. One was covered in mud - apparently he didn't quite have the bike handling skills required to ride a road bike through a plowed field. It was kind of funny but he wouldn't have enjoyed the joke. It's interesting how bloody-minded cyclists can be when you close our bike paths. I don't think the people who make these decisions appreciate how much we value them.