Lake Lansing Loop

This weekend we painted the walls and ceiling in our garage. Over the course of the winter the garage had become smaller and smaller, and it had become increasingly difficult to find our stuff. Thus, cleaning, organizing, and painting took priority this weekend, which seemed reasonable given the rather dreary weather forecast. As predicted, Saturday was a bit chilly and rainy, but late Sunday morning the weather started looking nice enough that we ventured out of the garage for a short ride.

The Lake Lansing Loop has become sort of our standard short ride. We do it when we're short on time but feel like getting in something more than just a spin around the neighborhood. It's nice because the traffic is light for most of the ride, we get our choice of two playgrounds, and we can do it from our house without loading the bikes onto the van. The only real drawback is that it involves several miles of potholes and crumbling asphalt.



Today I tried to take some photos of the route. This is Cornell Road, in the image to the right. Once we get out of our neighborhood, we head north on Cornell for a couple of miles. It's nice. Limited traffic, nice rural scenery with wetlands and cattails. The asphalt is in really bad shape in places, though, necessitating slow speeds and careful route finding.


Cornell Road takes us up to Haslett Road, in Haslett, which has a nice bike lane that we only need to use for about two blocks, and then we're pretty much at the Lake. We turn north and cross a set of railroad tracks, very slowly and very carefully, to avoid the wheel-hungry channels in the road.





Right or Left? After crossing the tracks we always stop for a drink and discuss whether we should go right or left to loop around the lake. We always choose left, probably because we get to the playground soonest that way. Doing the loop clockwise is also advantageous in avoiding intersections on the west side of the lake. But we always stop to consider the option.



"What took you so long?" It's difficult to captain a tandem and take pictures. Many tandem teams designate the stoker as photographer since the stoker has a minimal role in steering. Quinn isn't quite ready to manipulate the camera while riding yet, perhaps because he hasn't been willing to relinquish his role in steering. Maybe if we get a leash for the camera we'll have Abbey take pictures sometime.

As we rounded Lake Lansing Marsh, a large, shiny, yellow object overhead sent down a beam that nearly transported Cindy and Abbey into space. We didn't even know it until we opened up the images on our computer. We'll have to watch out next time we ride around that curve.





The playground stop. Cindy stretched out on the monkey bars while the kids planned a mutiny. This is the smaller but more accessible of the playgrounds on the ride. If you look carefully, the lake is visible in the background.

Cindy took the camera to get a shot of Quinn and me once we started off again. See Quinn looking at his mom across the tops of his glasses? I'm always surpised, when I see the pictures, by how small he looks back there. He doesn't seem so little from my perspective as the captain on the bike.




Once we leave the park, we usually take a short section of sidewalk (not the one in the picture above) to avoid a really busy and narrow stretch of Marsh road that is so rough it's only rideable with a dual suspension mountain bike. It is in really bad condition, as are many of our local roads. However, it's just a couple of blocks until we're on Lake Drive and heading on around the lake.



Lake Drive has a bike lane on either side and wraps almost completely around the lake. It's a really nice ride. It's perhaps a little too flat, but it's hard to find hills around here. Eventually we're back to the railroad tracks and heading home. It's almost exactly 12 miles round trip, and it's almost always an enjoyable ride. Today, we timed things well. Not long after our ride, the wind and thunderstorms arrived.