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.