Day 20 - 3rd Street Connector - PedalPushin 2024 - CycleBlaze

February 26, 2024

Day 20 - 3rd Street Connector

We knew the weather wasn’t going to be quite as good as yesterday as it was calling for mid 70’s with no precipitation.  But those clouds certainly didn’t look like the forecast.  And so the day began …

Skies are giving warnings … but only a few sprinkles
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Today’s goal was to find the other (eastern) end of the 3rd Street Bike Blvd. so one could split the top and bottom of the loop in half.  As we have ridden the western part of this connector, today we were determined to find the eastern part.

Rain is coming … just not for us
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Coming down from the Ina Street zone, the ride down the Santa Cruz was fairly normal, not a lot of bike traffic, and noisy from the interstate.  We did pass the loop counter before turning east at St. Mary’s which then connects to 3rd street / University.  The ride through the campus was slightly less crowded than before and we were entertained by the little food delivery robots.

Santa Cruz counter … 29000 this year … but on the RIllito Counter … 39000
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3rd street mural
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Not sure what to think about the delivery robots but they were quite nice to us and paused to let us go through.  I would think that college students could simply walk somewhere for food but I’m not going to college anymore, nor will I again I’m thinking.

College students just can’t walk for food …
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Our route got us most of the way across the city, but we turned north on a bike route to bring us out at the Pantano Park zone.  The north connector while a bike route was not the best as the surface of the road was quite worn and cracked.  Believe we will have to try a slightly different approach if we get the chance to ride this again.

Loop Art … the “pig bike”
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Karen PoretLooks like a warthog, actually..Or, a boar..the tusks are a throw off. However, I do know the warthog is probably better suited for this bike than the mean boar. Just sayin’….
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2 months ago

Turning up the RIllito wash, we kept trading sides trying to remember the best ride.  We missed a few times around the mall but got an interesting tour of the homeless population as well as the drug users who were lighting up almost on the path.  We did see one city worker attempting to clean up one zone but it seemed as soon as he raked an area, the population just oozed back in and by the time we backtracked, the place didn’t really look much different.

Back on the Santa Cruz, we headed back to the Ina Street zone having had a nice ride with a few variations.  So mission accomplished.

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Today's ride: 42 miles (68 km)
Total: 1,710 miles (2,752 km)

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