Moments sublime

Well, as the weather yesterday and today has been lousy I have been sidelined and realize two things. One, that our season is rapidly winding down and two, how fortunate we have been these past two months with warm sunny days that have allowed us to ride almost every day. One of the humorous things I found myself thinking about was learning about the traffic circle bypass. This is the arc of paved pathway on the south side of the thruway circle that extends from Washington Avenue around to Route 28 where it passes over the Thruway. The irony is that, the first time Rich Burzine and I went out for a ride together in late July we had agreed to meet at "the Hurley Rail Trail". Now, in my mind, this was the parking lot at the south end of the trail on 209 where it turns into the woods. Rich, for some unknown reason, thought I meant that piece of paving near the circle. We sat at our respective sites waiting for each other for about 15 minutes before one of us called the other. Rich told me where he was and, while I really was not sure what this part of "the Trail" looked like, I drove up and met him in the commuter parking lot. We got on our bikes, crossed Washington Avenue, and rode the full length of that "trail" which is about a tenth of a mile. Then nothing. WTF?!?!? What is this thing we asked? What kind of a moron builds a useless strip of bike path connecting nothing to nowhere anyhow? We rode back to our cars, packed our bikes and went down to the lot on 209 and went for our first ride together not thinking any more about that path. It was only the week before last when Rich Maletta and I tried out a new route from the Hurley Four Corners up Hurley Avenue out Washington intending to go out Route 28 to Hurley Mountain Road. I became a little nervous about how we, on bikes, would navigate the traffic circle which would be a challenge, not just for the obvious reason of traffic whipping around it, but the fact that it is actually modestly uphill as well. I was about to ask Rich how to do this when the purpose of that "useless" trail became brilliantly clear. It was a path for bikes and pedestrians to avoid an extremely hazardous (read "insane to even consider trying") maneuver. I told Rich to follow me and we made an uneventful crossing of the circle. I further realized that for our purposes it was best to stay on the left side of Washington Avenue, traverse the bypass path and remain on the left side shoulder of 28 right up to Kenco avoiding four crossings of Washington Avenue/Route 28. My riding had come "full circle".