The greatest inventions of the past 100 years

The Green Guide, an eco-minded off shoot of National Geographic, has a pretty little essay about the Minnesota urban trail system. Its writer, Jay Walljasper reflects upon its ability to make him feel away from the world while simultaneously being surrounded by a 3 million deep metropolitan area.

The article just makes riders want to pick up their bikes this weekend and pedal until they fall over. It is also serves as a reminder that the greenway extends way past midtown and Lake Harriet. This sucker will take a person off into the rural regions of Minnesota, where spandex gets replaced by Carhartts.

For folks who must endure four-plus months of nostril freezing temperatures, the urban bike trails are a money way to forget about the cold. In that sense, they’re a bit of a trickster, keeping folks around despite the annual winter proclamations to depart this place for Arizona. But they never do, and it probably has to do with the trails, or maybe the fear of melanoma.