I Suck at Cities.
I'm usually fairly good at navigating. Give me a landmark or two, and I can usually find my way around well enough I don't burn a tank of gas and a lot of time in the process.
Living in Anchorage has spoiled me. Mountains are east, inlet is west. Hit one or the other (or look up and notice them), and you have a pretty good idea of what direction you're facing. The road can curve and wind around all it wants, but those two landmarks are pretty much constant.
In San Antonio, I've spent a considerable amount of time going down the wrong road. Even with a skyscraper landmark and a completely visible sun, I still manage to end up on dead-end streets in the worst parts of town, dressed in my very sexiest lycra. I even have a GPS bike computer with maps, and I still manage to waste a whole lot of time meandering around.
Sooner or later I'll figure out a route that will get me where I want to go in a reasonable amount of time. Where I really want to go is as far from San Antonio as my little legs will take me, because that means fewer people looking to add my innards to their truck's paint.
Every "bike route" in this town seems to end unceremoniously and unannounced at some busy intersection. They all take me exactly where I don't want to be, sometimes looping back on themselves so I can re-experience what I was trying to avoid in the first place.
Maybe I'm just getting old.
Still, I got in 50 miles today, and some of them weren't going in circles around downtown. That was nice. I found ways to avoid using so much of the Riverwalk to get to points south, which meant my time on San Antonio's tourist pave was reduced considerably. Tomorrow I'm going to make a stab at a direct route so I can squeeze as many miles in as possible before the yellow orb falls out of the sky.
I just have to escape the city.
Living in Anchorage has spoiled me. Mountains are east, inlet is west. Hit one or the other (or look up and notice them), and you have a pretty good idea of what direction you're facing. The road can curve and wind around all it wants, but those two landmarks are pretty much constant.
In San Antonio, I've spent a considerable amount of time going down the wrong road. Even with a skyscraper landmark and a completely visible sun, I still manage to end up on dead-end streets in the worst parts of town, dressed in my very sexiest lycra. I even have a GPS bike computer with maps, and I still manage to waste a whole lot of time meandering around.
Sooner or later I'll figure out a route that will get me where I want to go in a reasonable amount of time. Where I really want to go is as far from San Antonio as my little legs will take me, because that means fewer people looking to add my innards to their truck's paint.
Every "bike route" in this town seems to end unceremoniously and unannounced at some busy intersection. They all take me exactly where I don't want to be, sometimes looping back on themselves so I can re-experience what I was trying to avoid in the first place.
Maybe I'm just getting old.
Still, I got in 50 miles today, and some of them weren't going in circles around downtown. That was nice. I found ways to avoid using so much of the Riverwalk to get to points south, which meant my time on San Antonio's tourist pave was reduced considerably. Tomorrow I'm going to make a stab at a direct route so I can squeeze as many miles in as possible before the yellow orb falls out of the sky.
I just have to escape the city.
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