What Am I Getting Myself Into?

Well, I wound up driving a car (not mine, granted) to Emily and Nolan's wedding in Maryland. I decided to come up with a backup plan to justify Trek and Bosch sponsoring me, essentially, with three loaner batteries for the summer. And the more I've thought about it, the more I realize the backup plan is actually better than the original plan. I'm planning to ride from Rock Hill to Lake Greenwood State Park to watch the total solar eclipse Monday. Here's the route:

Totality happens there at about 2:40 PM. Then the plan is to ride back, and since I won't be in a hurry to get back, maybe I'll take a less direct route:
 
I've had people tell me I'm a little bit crazy to ride so far on unfamiliar highways on a day predicted to have the most traffic South Carolina roads have ever seen. South Carolina is the closest point in the path of totality to almost 100 million people, so experts predict anywhere from 500,000 to 2 million visitors to the state Monday.
From GreatAmericanEclipse.com
I'm excited by the prospect; I enjoy the challenge of navigating by bike in traffic. And it's shaping up to be the perfect scenario to demonstrate the value of the Super Commuter, which Trek touts as a simple solution to the problem of urban congestion.

I chose Lake Greenwood State Park because it's the closest place in the path of totality where I could expect to reserve myself a piece of land on which to watch the eclipse, but it's also likely to be one of the least congested areas in SC along the path of totality, at least based on this "driveshed map":

But then again, these experts are predicting somewhere between 10,000 and 50,000 visitors to the area around Lake Greenwood on Monday. 
Greenwood county is only home to about 70,000, and Newberry county next to it to about 40,000, so YEAH, it's gonna be congested. I'm probably not going to be the only one diving off the highways onto backroads. I'd better get up early Monday. Yikes. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Going all Steve Jobs on the e-bike Industry

I did my first big trial run on the Super Commuter earlier this week. I have to say I was a little disappointed. I thought I’d be able to ride from Rock Hill to Greenville in about 4½ hours, averaging about 23 miles per hour. Surely it wouldn’t make a difference that I was pulling a trailer and an extra bike—I have a MOTOR, and motors are impervious to workload. Or so I thought. After speeding out of town on SC highway 5 in sport and turbo modes (the ones where it’s fairly easy to maintain 25+ mph—any who’ve ridden SC 5 between Rock Hill and York will understand), I did some math in my head about 15 miles in and realized I needed to get 60+ km out of the 500 watt hour battery I was using first or run the risk of running down the smaller two spare batteries I was hauling in the trailer. Running out of battery short of my destination at my brother’s place in Greenville on unfamiliar roads, probably after dark, maybe in rain, definitely with a 60-lb. bike and a 30-lb. trailer and ...
Read more

With a Little Help from My Friends: How My Endless Carless Summer Came to Be

I have a friend named Ray who needed a ride on Mother's Day. I obliged, and he told me his car was in need of major repair and he was looking for a temporary solution while he figured out whether to repair or replace his car. I thought about it for a few minutes and realized I could afford to be without my car for a week or two. I've always enjoyed commuting by bike, and this would give me the chance to get back into that rhythm. A week or two has turned into six, and for more than half of that time, I didn't know, didn't care, and didn't care to know what had become of my car. I was experiencing the liberating joy of being self-propelled, as I like to call it; why would I want to subject myself to that giant metal frown-box again? In the past week, I've learned from Ray that my car is fine, and he took the liberty of having a few repairs done to it, but in the meantime, I've decided to extend that carless week to a carless summer. My friend Emily is get...
Read more