I Bike To Eat

June 9, 2012  PEDALS adventure.  Most of my favorite biking adventures have a component of eating as part of the adventure.   It is my opinion that ALL bike trails would be better with some type of snack place to relax at during or after the ride (especially Starbucks!) .  With that in mind, our urban adventure this morning was biking to IHOP on Washington Center and Lima Road for breakfast.
When INDOT widened Highway 3/Lima Road to 4-6 lanes, a very wide multi use sidewalk was installed on both sides of the road.ALMOST to Washington Center (more on THAT later.) We decided to ride "against traffic" on the sidewalk because it made it easy for us to see if someone was going to turn into a cross street in front of us or a left turn on the side of us.   It was an easy ride with not much traffic at 7:15 am on a Saturday.  There were a couple of gentle hills that caused us to downshift, prompting Tom to comment that we never notice these hills when we ride in a car!    As I said, the ride was easy...UNTIL we were within 1/2 mile of our destinaation.  There, unexplicably, the wide sidewalk abruptly ends at Ludwig road. The irony of the ending sidewalk is that the corner of Lima and Ludwig roads is a major shopping and eating area: Sam's Club, Lowes, Meijer, Applebees, Logans Steakhouse, Starbucks, Panda Express just to name more than a few!  If one were inclined to TRY reduce gas consumption by switching to "pedal power," your safe travels end just  as you get near the Promised Land of shopping and dining.  It would be like running the gauntlet to get yourself to some of these desirable locations.  Why put 4 miles of nice sidewalks that essentially go nowhere and end them before a possible destination?  Trust me, the ride down Highway 3 is not one you should take for its aesthetic qualities because there are non.  The Highway 3 "trail"  is desirable because of its potential destinations...FOOD! (NOTE: see title of blog entry above and ending below).
Luckly, we were prepared for this as we had been scoping out this potential adventure all winter, planning the easiest and safest route to pancakes.  Our final plan was hatched after checking out Google earth on Friday night: cross Ludwig at the light, attempt to go thru the parking lots of a couple businesses, cross a empty lot and go around a small "dead end" guardrail and enter the Ludwig Park housing addition, then use the lightly traveled addition streets to get to Washington Center immediately across from IHOP.   The plan worked great, although the empty lot was a bit bumpy as we walked the bikes. 
As we came out on Washington Center, the plan was to cross only the first 1/2 of the road and wait in the median strip for traffic to clear the other way....the plan was unneeded.  The lack of early Saturday traffic gave us a clear road both ways and we easily zipped across...we were at Pancake Heaven and this is why this entry is called "I Bike to Eat."   I ordered my usual International Crepe Combo (2 eggs, 2 bacon, 2 sausages, and 1 totally delicious cream cheese and strawberry crepe) and didn't feel the least bit guilty about the calories...I had just biked over 4 miles and had another 4 to go back.   YEAH!
As a side note, we had shopped at Dick's Sporting Goods on Thursday and I had picked up a dry fit golf shirt and a long sleeved, collared  dry fit hiking shirt to wear while pedalling.  The dry fit for comfort and the long sleeves to cut the wind when it is cool, and a collar to look nice at any restaurants we may come across that we want to enter.  As Tom (dressed in his own long sleeved collared dry-fit fishing shirt) so aptly said over our coffee. "I don't want to be mistaken for someone who takes biking seriously."  My new clothes kept me just cool enough, just warm enough, and just fancy enough to walk into a restaurant right from my bike.
With breakfast over, we again got a break and were able to dash across 4 lanes of Washington Center at once with no traffic in sight.  Tom spotted a house with 3 connected rain barrels and we had an interesting chat with the lady who lives there about how her husband created their system. (My rain barrel system was an internet purchase of a converted pickle barrel!)  We did learn on the way home that one should always press the "walk" button at an intersection because the "walk" sign is not automatically displayed when the green light  is showing. The best part of the "walk" sign is that they give you a countdown to when it will turn to red, allowing a person to judge their time and speed.  We again rode on the sidewalk "against" traffic and found out it was a bit of a challenge to cross Lima Road near our housing addition...our earlier path was not appropriate.  Next time we will be going all the way to Dupont, using the crosswalk there (there is no crosswalk at the Starbucks light) and entering the shopping center parking lot that take us to the entrance of our addition.
I give this ride 2 forks up and hope to do it again and go to Cosmos, the IHOP's locally owned next door neighbor breakfast restaurant.  The Pufferbelly Trail of the Rivergreenway takes us to Dunkin' Donuts and DQ; I think I'll call this  ride down the sidewalks of Lima Road/Highway 3 the  "PANCAKE TRAIL."

Ride Stats:  9.7 miles; Time: 1 hour 7 min.; ODO 256

Notable Nature Sightings:  A house w/ a triple rain barrel system connected to the entire roof that still has water in it although we are officially in a drought.  Impressive!