A bike commute gone wrong

Biking in the Grenoble area is generally a joy, but sometimes it is not. Profound words, I know, and maybe you disagree, but read my sad story of poor planning and almost getting crushed by trucks.

Today I had an "off site" meeting to give a talk at in St Quentin, and since the weather forecast was good, I decided to go by bike. Things being a little hectic with two kids, I did not have very much time to consult the Grenoble bike path guide, and blindly plugged the endpoints into Mappy. It came up with a very reasonable 8 mile ride, with only a little complexity at the start. Also, on my previous exploits, I had seen people biking on the opposite side of the Isere (the side closest to the Vercors), so even though it had me going on the Route Nationale, I held out hope that I would be able to stay on the bike path. This was sadly not to be. I started the trip by missing the first two turnoffs, which was no big deal since I could make a different left and I was in a comfy fully separated bike path. I found the alternate left hand turn towards the Vercors and soon found myself on a road without a bike lane. There was almost no traffic, so things were still going well for me. I was slightly disturbed by the fact that I had to cross through two busy lanes of traffic to/from the autoroute, but no biggie. There was even a short bike lane which took me over the river. Unfortunately, it dumped me out onto a dirt track with huge river stones, and I quickly found myself mountain biking with my road bike. The bumps were so jarring that my hands were cramping up and at one point they shook my chain off the chain ring and rear cog (not fun to deal with on a bike with no derailleur). Why didn't I just go onto the road? Because I was on top of a very tall dike with a concrete retaining wall (at right in the photo below)

Eventually, the retaining wall disappeared and I slid down the grassy embankment and started pedaling like mad. The problem is that there is no bike lane (see above and below)

which by itself would not be a problem, except that there were trucks and cars whizzing by at 60 mph. Eventually I gave up on the sweet tarmac, and went into cyclocross mode and started riding on the shoulder. The shoulder seems to be a convenient place for people to throw their bottles, because it lights up like a chandelier if the angle is right. I am amazed I did not get a flat tire. I should also mention that it was wet and muddy.

It will not surprise you that I was the only one to arrive by bike.

My trip home was much longer, but I found an alternate route which took me to the bike path on the other side of the river. I only had one crossing of an autoroute entrance/exit to deal with. Nice. 20 hard earned miles added to my bike odometer today.