To be fair to Joel, in Philly he skated every skate we did, including
both evenings' advanced skates, totaling for the weekend nominally 51
miles. Go, Joel!

"Last year John, Joel and I skated a route that..." actually differs in
one important way from the one just described: we went the opposite
direction. Why does this matter? In principle any counter-clockwise
course with turns at intersections has three additional lane-crossing
left turns. Additional detours to the left create two additional
lane-crossing turns, one entering, one exiting. In traffic, they add
delay, spread out the pack, and lower safety margins, especially across
multi-lane turns. To keep up, the rear of the pack sometimes crosses
into and skates against traffic to avoid the delay, then after turning
left, remains left skating against traffic until each can cross. For
drivers this must seem messed up! A clockwise course with right turns
simply eliminates that.

Applying it to the example, we would need either to skate against
traffic along two short stretches of French Road or add four
lane-crossing left turns; (add two additional left turns for
Wintergreen Way, which we had always taken); turn left onto Edgewood;
turn left onto East Ave; turn left onto Main or Scio; turn left onto
Exchange; cross left onto the Riverway Trail; cross Plymouth Ave
exiting the Trail. Also, skating from the canal down onto French drops
us a steep 30 feet fast through a steel barricade onto loose stones at
the bottom and fast left onto French; and brings us over the 490
pedestrian bridge and down another 30 foot ramp. I'd rather go up and
avoid brake-grinding switchbacks and often puddles. To be fair, skating
clockwise has one left from Alexander onto Park Ave.

If we seem to skate certain streets in certain directions, it's easier
if more boring. Having skated the route clockwise, I do like it. So
does Andrew. Another feature: it passes by East & Scio, so we can skate
this from there too.

From comments written and spoken, I too sense we need new routes, even
revisiting old ones. We've somehow become less adventurous. In 2001 for
the Horses on Parade, we skated many diverse routes to see the 130+
horses in places we'd otherwise never go. So, adventure, anyone?

John