The Suzhou Creek Bridge Tour has been incubating in the collective People’s Bike mind for a while now, and when, as always, we had no ideas on where to go, we decided to take an exploratory foray to check feasibility and perhaps write a report about it afterwards.  We even have a map, shamelessly stolen from mapmyride.com,  so you can follow along with your finger.

The Bridge Tour, Abridged

We started out in People’s Square, then moved through the Brownian crowds along Nanjing Lu, before really getting in going in earnest. The bridges along Suzhou Creek change between steel girdered monstrosities, elevated highways, walking bridges, strange motorcycle and bicycle only bridges, really, just about any kind of bridge you can imagine. There are areas where EXPO2010 construction has turned roads into potholed moonscapes, or, worse, one lane with gaping holes on the side. There are tiny sidestreets with rabid animals “exploding” (Tyler’s words) and the route is fraught with the ubiquitous guy-who-steps-out-in-front-of-traffic-without-looking. Nevertheless, crossing the bridges is a lot of fun and the route comes highly recommended. Not only do bridges provide the only climbs available in the city, but they also help break up a ride into components where it’s easy to speed up, slow down, relax, or stop for water. It must be mentioned, however, that we ultimately decided we’d rather go for a beer than go the down to Zhongshan park or wherever we had originally planned to stop. Maybe next time.

The second part of the ride was effectively a sprint down Yan An Lu, which can’t be recommended as strongly as the bridge tour if only for the fact that it is dangerous. That said, when the street clears out, there’s nothing quite as fun as going all out down it, especially when your goal is C’s, which, for People’s Bike, it always is.

By the way, if your name is Mattias Erlandsson and you took a picture on this ride and you want it included in the article, you should probably get moving on that.