This view looking north on Cherryvale Bridge shows how tight a stretch it is for cars and especially bicycles.

When we need to get out of the house or clear our heads, we like to drive off South Boulder Road to Cherryvale Road and then left onto Marshall Road and up the valley into Louisville. It’s an area without much development, with a striking view of the Flatirons and links to our history and culture.

It is a favorite local biking road winding out to the vast and linked Marshall Mesa open space trails.

Anyone who drive or bikes the route knows about the one bad, even scary spot. It’s the bridge on Cherryvale over U.S. 36 just south of Boulder. One of the most dangerous places in the county to ride a bicycle, it’s an area that even as a motorist I approach it with trepidation, since there seems to be just enough road for two cars and no more.

The Colorado Department of Transportation is beginning a project to replace the bridge with  a structure that will take the fear out of crossing the bridge. U.S. 36 will be closed Feb. 16-18 during the nighttime hours, which will impact your drive home from Denver on those nights. Cherryvale will be closed completely for a few months, which means we’ll all have to find another route, most likely South Boulder Road to McCaslin or Broadway south to Marshall Road, for our Costco runs. It’ll be worth the trouble come May.

Two Boulder County cottonwoods almost seem to be dancing partners on Cherryvale Road from the Boulder Creek trail.

There isn’t a lot of joy being unemployed, but there are moments, and one is spontaneously heading out on a bike ride in shorts and t-shirt, with the sun out, temps in the high sixties, on a November day.

But that’s what happened today. I took off for the South Boulder trail and rode leisurely for an hour around the CU property and South Boulder Creek, sharing it only with a couple of other bike riders and joggers. I have been biking this trail at least two or three times a week since June, and I have gotten to know a lot of the trees in the area, especially that long line of cottonwoods before the trail crosses U.S. 36.

The grasses have turned various shades of brown and some bushes almost glow with a reddish hue. South Boulder Creek is not flowing like it was in summer. I stop and take an overexposed photo of a prairie dog stuffing his face with grass about ten feet off while his best friend screeches like I work for Death Incorporated.

Those same cottonwoods were a little greener, or at least one of them was, on June 25.

A lonely hawk checks a field scattered with cattle north of Baseline Road. A few golfers are walking the fairways at the east end of the Boulder Municipal Course on Arapahoe. And now, pot of coffee on the brew, I’m ready to take on the afternoon.