Empty Freeway Ahead
 

Facilities every 5 miles, brand new super smooth road and no traffic or pedestrians to contend with ... to bad it won't last. My wife has been sick this w/e and I was getting a scratchy throat Sat night and worse this morning so in this era of Covid, I didn't want to join the Sunday group ride. I decided to take a leisurely photo jaunt on the new 4 lane Parkway our night-time group has been riding 2 or 3 nights per week. It's very close to opening, and it will be a shame to lose such pristine cycling conditions. On this warm Sunday before a rainy cold front moves in tonight, I couldn't believe I had it all to myself. Very photo heavy with some interesting (to me anyway) looks at guardrail technology.
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I didn't say nice facilities
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another porta J - could have done without the rumble strips but today they were a help keeping the bike from rolling off the helmet
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probably my best pics of the day
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Eight bridges/overpasses makes for some nice rolling hills here in the flatlands
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starting point of new construction where the existing road had ended at Hwy 58. It's very close to the NC Global Transpark where our group meets. I'm on the wrong "return to airport" side of the Parkway
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Ending point at Hwy 11
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I guess SKT makes the latest in guardrail safe technology ? I was expecting more cushion somehow
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other side
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I was curious what that cable does. Every guardrail is connected to the support post by these polymer blocks. Maybe they're designed to break away on a head on type of impact.
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turn-buckle tensioners for the median cables
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Most of the heavy equipment that was parked on the roadside is now gone
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The end is near - I see this road being open in December or 1st of the year at most. Thanks for coming along for the ride on a beautiful fall day
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now this is a dream! being able to go as fast as you might with zero distractions!

I did a local event ride about 2 years ago outside of Charlotte where a bypass section (toll) had not been opened yet. The race organizers got permission to move part of the ride to the new unopened bypass. Man that was nice. 4 lane interstate type by-pass for like 10-15 miles. Silky smooth and of course, no traffic. It was a cold, wet miserable ride except for that one section which was beautiful. I will never forget it.

john

:thumb: It really is a nice & kind of weird "doomsday-ish" feeling. We're supposed to ride it tonight at 5:30 and it won't be so fun. The wind's howling right now with the front coming in, but the rain's supposed to be out. It's going to be a sufferfest with no wind block :(

In 2019 I had a pleasure of riding two stretches of I-90 in western Montana that were close to motor vehicles in preparation for (I think) bridge reconstruction. Most fun. There were no frontage roads, so it beat riding on the shoulder against traffic.

I check at hoe to see if I took any photos.

They did that here several years ago just before the opening of the new south extension of the I-355 tollway. I didn't learn about it in time but saw the pictures later.... Probably a hundred bikes rode the entire new section of the road, maybe fifteen miles or so. Conspicuous by their absence elsewhere in the Chicago area are a couple of very long uphill and downhill sections.... Would have been fun on a bike!

For TT purposes, seriously........I need to head out there.

:lol: only problem is they're working daylight hours Mon - Sat, but after 6:00 and Sundays it's just as above. Hwy 70 to Kinston and take the Felix Harvey Parkway off 70 on the older end. Just past the airport property, this new section goes to Hwy 11.

Park at the old airport terminal or any of the business parking lots. It's a pretty laid back area and no passenger flights or traffic. Terminal GPS address: 2780 Jetport Rd. Kinston NC 28504

Let me know if you're serious. It's always a treat to meet another BF member.

There's a trail for bikes and peds along the floating bridge section of I90 coming into Seattle. It's a great ride on a clear day.

From yesterday, the empty freeway is still closed to traffic, but all I can see that needs doing is removing the barricades & barrels. I expect it to be opened today...but we had a great run
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Nothing like fresh pavement. When we were kids they were building interstate 580 in Oakland. On the way home from school a bunch of us had a football game out on the freeway. I guess it was about to open and they were doing high speed test out there. We all got rides home in the back of the squad car. Mom swore she never told me to go play on the freeway...

The road construction guys have been nice but we didn't start riding until it was near completion. Also when we were there at the same time theyre working it's around 5:30 and they head home at 6:00. Sometimes they give us a wave. They know we're not going to mess with anything.

^^^ Only missed it by 2 months :lol:. Amazingly the road that looked so near completion is still not open, but will be tomorrow March 1st. We've had a lot of rain in Jan & Feb and evidently there were erosion problems, and the construction was 6 months ahead of schedule anyway so they weren't rushing to get it open. We haven't really been taking advantage of it like we should have - the wide open highway and 30 foot or so rises make for some really tough wind conditions, including today's gusts of 28 mph....still we couldn't let this last day with 84 degree temperatures go by without one last ride. It was fun going out but brutal coming back
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