Biking in Ames (Part Flood)

You know what is so disagreeable about biking in Ames? No, not the flooding. The flooding is Sight-Seeing. We are all natural disaster voyeurs. We stare at tornado damage (and tornadoes), earthquake damage, fire damage, etc. Anything that rips that thin layer of "we've got it all under control" off.

To be fair, I'd stare at tornadoes, if I could ever see one. Lived in Iowa seven years and still haven't seen a tornado. I didn't have to live in Turkey this long before I was in an earthquake.

No, the thing that is really annoying about biking in Ames is this:

You see, that is a path. That is the path I was biking on. And that is where the path just ceases to be. This really isn't the first time it's happened. However, in Des Moines, most paths actually connected you somewhere, or worst case scenario, put you out at a sidewalk. Ames sometimes does that with little paths that don't last more than two minutes, but it also has a tendency to put you on paths that just end.

But I was biking during the high river waters, which also made it interesting. I don't know if it was an official flood, but some areas were flooded.

I also had a few more paths end on me, though it wasn't the city planner's fault this time.

That was a path at one point. Now it is a river.

And this.

That mud covers a path. I kind of got the hint as I was biking toward it because I was heading downhill and I could tell the stream was higher than the underpass.

Of course, technically Brookeside was closed. I figured I wouldn't sue them if I met my untimely demise by ignoring the barricade. Above was only one of the reasons it was closed. Here is another.

I also biked through puddles deep enough to cover my pedals at the low point and kept having to turn around because of blocked paths. But it's all sorts of fun to see what's happening. Well, depending on how long it takes them to get Brookeside running again. It certainly won't be fun a month from now.