Yesterday was evidently a SART (Santa Ana River Trail) cleaning day. There were trash trucks out in full effect. In riding by today, it appears that any changes were temporary. Not that I don’t appreciate the effort, because I absolutely do. Maybe even as much as I appreciate street sweepers. I got to say, I really do appreciate street sweepers; it’s amazing how quickly the roads can become almost unrideable for a road bike if they are not cleaned weekly.

Anyways, as I was passing the First Street under crossing or maybe it was Warner, there were 4 cops cars on the “on ramp” to SART.  I’ve been searching the news for any idea of what was going on but to no avail.

I did come across a series of stories about people throwing crappy bikes out in front of cyclists and they fly down the underpasses.  After the cyclist crashes, they beat them and steal they’re bikes.  It’s not a pleasant thought, and it makes me wonder why the cities or county or whoever’s in charge leaves so much room under the bridges for people to hideout.

On another note, significant progress has been made on the Edinger bridge, which hopefully means the Harbor detour may soon become a thing of the past.  I’ll be the first to admit I won’t miss riding my bike down Harbor one bit.  So far I’ve had to take the detour twice this week.

Update: CrimeMapping.com shows a disturbing the peace violation at 7:26am near the the riverbed and 1st St.  Maybe someone got pissed that the garbage trucks took their stuff.

Regardless, November 3rd will mark the end of daylight savings time.  This means that on November the sun will set at 4:57pm.  Which means the sun will set before I get off work, which of course means riding home in the dark. Then it will be March 2014 before I can get home before sunset again.  Four cold, dark, lonely months.  I think we should just adopt daylight savings time year round.  Maybe I can convince my work…

Anyways, I’m thinking about finding some alternate routes that avoid the SART during the dark months.  It’s just too easy to pick off a lone rider at night, especially since all the MAMILs (middle aged men in lycra) riding in their herds and the young male UCI students with something to prove have all abandoned the trail.

We will see, I’ve never had a problem, but it’s pretty crappy that other people have.  It would be amazing if someday the O.C. made an attempt to be cyclist friendly instead of just telling people to ride to work on the sides of buses.