I haven’t ridden my bicycle since Sunday.  I had my big meeting on Tuesday and that kind of consumed my life.  Since then it has rained buckets here for days.  I haven’t ridden my bicycle to work for at least a few months.  Today was no exception, but when I eventually do bike to work again there will be a few more obstacles in my path than there were before. 

Anne, Rey and I discovered the first detour last Saturday on our walk to Kayak’s Coffee.  A block long alleyway that has always been closed to cars is now also closed to bikes and pedestrians too.  This is in one of the wealthier neighborhoods in Clayton.  The neighborhood is right across the street from Wash U., so maybe it was the students the drove the hoighty-toighty homeowners to gate their community.  Anyway I did not take this obstruction personally.  Many pedestrians and cyclists used that alleyway everyday.   I never used it all that frequently.  Besides this roadblock is close enough to home I have workarounds.

The second roadblock was at work.  This one I feel is personal.  When I do bike to work, I have always biked through a pedestrian door onto the plant’s tarmac, inside the inner fence.  In addition to the pedestrian door, there is also a pedestrian turnstile.  There is also a vehicle gate, but that is not really pertinent.  All of these entrances are controlled using employee badges.  In between now and when I last rode into the plant, my badge was deactivated from the pedestrian door.  It still works on the turnstile, but for weeks now I thought that the door was just broken.  This week I saw another employee badge through the door.  I rechecked my badge, but still no joy.  It was then and there that it all fell into place.  I have a work around for this obstruction too, but it is not very bike friendly behavior from a company that purports to be bike friendly.