September 2019
Night Activities!
Bike the Night!
First time for me - we decided to try out
the Bike the Night event, organized by Bikehub. The ride
starts at Sunset Beach downtown and goes around False Creek, past
Granville Island then over the Burrard Street Bridge and back to
the West End. Our plan was to exit the ride at Granville
Island so we could take the short walk home.
Getting to Sunset Beach in the West End was a bit tricky.
Plan A would be to ride over the Burrard Street Bridge, but the
bridge is tall and we would probably arrive with tired kids.
Plan B was to start at Granville Island and take the bike ferry
over to the downtown side and then ride along the seawall to the
park. We rode Plan B.
After an ice cream fuel up, we got
in line on Beach Avenue for the start of the ride. We think
the ride got started a few minutes late (7:45 was advertised, but
there was a distant speech at the front of the line that we didn't
hear). The ride started very slowly as packed queue slowly
expanded to riding speed. The first few hundred meters was
less than walking pace.
We started on Beach Avenue and rode under the
Burrard Street Bridge. Beach Avenue is only one lane each way
and pretty quite most days so this didn't seem that much different
from a regular ride. When we got to the Granville Street
Bridge, we turned up under it and let out onto Pacific Street - one
of the major routes downtown.
Once we were on Pacific Street, we rode down the hill into
Yaletown. We had all of the East bound lanes so suddenly
there was a lot of space between bikes. The police blocked
all of the intersections so we kept riding, even if the light was
red. There were volunteers and lots of people ringing bike
bells as we rode past people watching us.
Once you ride past BC Place, the
tall buildings start to thin out. There aren't any tall
buildings on the ocean side (there may be a park there some day) and
the skytrain and causeways block building on the city side.
The skyline gets busy again once we rode
into the Olympic Village. We had our only real bunch up on
Olympic Village. Our bike path would make the village an
Island so they had to stop us from time to time to let cars get
through.
The last leg of the ride for us was along
6th Ave. Again, no tall buildings (steep slope on the left,
railway tracks on the right) so it feels quiet. We got off
6ths on the access road for Granville Island and rode down to
Granville Island.
At this point, we got off the ride so we could walk
home. The kids had a great time and wished we had gone all the
way. Maybe next year!
Tags: biking(6), Vancouver(5), bridge(2), underneath(2), ice cream(2), Olympic Village(2)
People: Nara(1), Claira(1)
From: John Harvey Photo > Blogs for 2019 to 2005 > September 2019
Last Modified Sunday, September 15th, 2019 at 13:26:27 Edit
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