to ride a bike
Mar. 9th, 2003 09:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ilanaramaWent out for a bike ride yesterday. Wonderful. Although perhaps I should have been less ambitious than to ride 30 miles for my first road ride in three months. The final five miles were somewhat less than wonderful.
It was a beautiful day, sunny and mid-50s, a perfect day to be outside. Ah, Colorado. You can go skiing one day and biking the next, without skiing on rocks or biking in a parka and Klondike boots. (Eat your heart out,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ikkyu2.)
I rode north on CR 250 up the Animas Valley, which is a popular route for cyclists because most cars take the parallel US 550, and it's relatively flat, and quite scenic as the mountains rise all around. Lots of other riders. On my last road ride I'd gone about 7 miles out before looping back, but this time I continued on into new territory.
I hadn't realized that last summer's forest fires had made it down to CR 250. For a stretch of three or four miles, everything to my right was blackened and dead, and in several places the fire had jumped the road and burned the left side as well. I saw at least one house being rebuilt; most of the houses that still stood among the charred trees were for sale. People leaving in droves, I guess.
The sort of ironic thing was that far to the left, in the center of the valley, a huge development is planned. All of Durango is up in arms about it. The developers want to put 600 to 800 houses in a "New Urbanism" style subdivision. The big problem is that there isn't enough basic-style urbanism close by -- that unless serious commercial and industrial space is included, and it looks like it won't be, everyone there is still going to have to drive, drive, drive to the "real" city for work, shopping, and so on. A convenience store does not equal a supermarket.
I just don't see how they can possibly expect to fill 600 or 800 houses, when so many nearby houses are for sale. It's a burn area. It's the flood plain (and my husband, who grew up near here, remembers seeing it underwater). I hate to be a NIMBYist. But I don't really want to see a huge development in the Animas Valley. At the very least, it will ruin my lovely bike route.
It was a beautiful day, sunny and mid-50s, a perfect day to be outside. Ah, Colorado. You can go skiing one day and biking the next, without skiing on rocks or biking in a parka and Klondike boots. (Eat your heart out,
ikkyu2.)I rode north on CR 250 up the Animas Valley, which is a popular route for cyclists because most cars take the parallel US 550, and it's relatively flat, and quite scenic as the mountains rise all around. Lots of other riders. On my last road ride I'd gone about 7 miles out before looping back, but this time I continued on into new territory.
I hadn't realized that last summer's forest fires had made it down to CR 250. For a stretch of three or four miles, everything to my right was blackened and dead, and in several places the fire had jumped the road and burned the left side as well. I saw at least one house being rebuilt; most of the houses that still stood among the charred trees were for sale. People leaving in droves, I guess.
The sort of ironic thing was that far to the left, in the center of the valley, a huge development is planned. All of Durango is up in arms about it. The developers want to put 600 to 800 houses in a "New Urbanism" style subdivision. The big problem is that there isn't enough basic-style urbanism close by -- that unless serious commercial and industrial space is included, and it looks like it won't be, everyone there is still going to have to drive, drive, drive to the "real" city for work, shopping, and so on. A convenience store does not equal a supermarket.
I just don't see how they can possibly expect to fill 600 or 800 houses, when so many nearby houses are for sale. It's a burn area. It's the flood plain (and my husband, who grew up near here, remembers seeing it underwater). I hate to be a NIMBYist. But I don't really want to see a huge development in the Animas Valley. At the very least, it will ruin my lovely bike route.