Raytown to Lenexa... Ow. OW. OW!!!!

So, I forgot I had a meeting at my company's uber-secure, top-secret, underground mega n-plus-one-redundancy mission-critical data center. Of doom.

I carpooled there, shoe-horning my bike into the back of a co-worker's car, and intended to take a bus to get me within 10 miles or so of home. The problem? By the time I got out of there, it was going to be a half hour wait for the bus. With a bottle full of ice water and another full of lemonade and temps in the high 80's, I took the plunge, knowing full-well that I'd have to put my nerves to the test on the treacherous road known as 63rd street.

I took it west for a little more than a mile, and it was a test of my patience and I'm sure I was a test of motorists patience as well. I swerved off onto Swope Parkway and rolled past the Kansas City Zoo, and onto Meyer Blvd. Meyer is a BEAUTIFUL road to ride on once you're west of 71 highway, which fortunately is not very far from the zoo.

Next, crossing Ward Parkway was a chore. It's basically a six-lane divided highway with roundabouts for all the major intersections. And guess what? I was on a major intersection. I slithered through the roundy-round and onto Tomahawk, to Belinder, down to 75th street, and all the way across to Wedd, which is the little road that's part of my "new" route that goes into the ugly industrial park. I ended up using the sidewalk for part of the trip near the I-35 overpass. Traffic is simply too unpredictable and dangerous there, and I don't even like driving my car on that particular stretch of road.

I got home from the data center, a total of almost 18 miles, in about an hour and 15 minutes. Did I mention I averaged something like 13 MPH and that my legs feel like they are on fire?

Oh yeah, Here is the route I took. A bridge out on Tomahawk forced me to go back to Belinder and I could have saved myself a bit of hassle by just taking Belinder. My plan was to go all the way to Mission Road, which -- if I recalled correctly -- has a nice bike lane. Belinder was nice and didn't have much traffic, though.