Good ride

Hooray! Bike ride today! My wife even recommended I go, so I had a clean conscience while I was pedaling.

Just a short ride -- about 20 miles down 57th Street to 118th to Lakeshore and back home. Of course, after three weeks of not riding, well, my body is telling me I've been a bad boy. A very bad boy.

I was enlivened by watching the south wind wave across the soy bean fields along 118th. It really was like a sea of green. Lots of monarch butterflies, grasshoppers and gold finches out. I was shadowed -- literally -- from a hawk above. But lots of fresh road kill (is there a connection to the hawk?). Too many dead skunks and possums on the road.

Bad joke: Do you know the difference between a possum and an opossum? A possum is what you see walking along the side of the road. The other you hit with your car and say, Oh! Possum!

Lots of bicyclists out on Lakeshore. Pier Cove was packed. It's a free Lake Michigan beach. West Side Park, a park that the county started charging for this year for the first time, was empty. And Allegan people wonder why the parks millage failed last week.

I was also thinking of the recent story The Sentinel did on bike paths. You know my feeling on bike paths -- they're the kiss of death. But in one of the stories, the Allegan County parks manager talked about Allegan being a "black hole" of bike paths, that is, there are no formal paths in the county.

And you know what? That's OK. There are few roads on the west side of the county that need paths. M-40 could use more pavement for cyclists, but that's a state road. 58th Street north to Holland is terrible -- no shoulders at all in some places -- but it's also terrible for cars, so, as Spock would say, "Sauce for the goose."

Mostly, though, Allegan doesn't yet have enough traffic to warrant many bike lanes or paths. I always advocate wider shoulders no matter where.

Thought: Don't be afraid to bike ride in Allegan County -- unless you're a possum.