La Junta goes after the cycling tourism market

[Cirrus]

Don't ask why, but I happened to be looking at the La Junta city webpage today. I noticed that they have a fairly prominent link to a page called Cycling in Otero County. This surprised me, because there is no traffic in La Junta so everyone drives everywhere. They are clearly hoping some people from the Denver area will read it, so here are the key bits:

Originally Posted by City of La Junta

Most urban dwellers find southeastern Colorado to be remote and isolated. That's fairly close to the truth, though we do have running water and flush toilets and cable TV, and even broadband Internet service.

But we do have some isolation here. That's one of our strong points. Tired of the urban rat race? Tired of trails packed with pedestrians, other cyclists, baby strollers, and a few bootleg stinker scooters? Fed up with having to pay for parking while you go ride a trail? If you can even find parking in the first place? You don't need to be.

Spaced along the trail system we find a series of small rural towns with histories and architecture dating back to the 19th century.

From any of those towns, you can hie off down the county road system, for miles and miles and miles of safe riding through one of Colorado's most bucolic areas. Yes...the county road system is a public road system. But the traffic almost all of these roads is so light as to be nearly non-existent. On the trip documented in the following images, for example, I came across but 3 farm trucks in 21 miles. And motorists around here are cyclist friendly - they'll wave at you with all of their fingers; they don't pitch things out the window at you, and they'll give you plenty of room on passing. "Road Rage" is a city thing, driven by all those rat-race pressures that vaporize so quickly on a quiet country morning or evening.

This ride started out at The Barista in La Junta. The Barista, at 2nd and Santa Fe in La Junta, is a coffee, ice cream, and sandwich shop. Though patterned after one of the more upscale shops in The Big City, The Barista is quite low-key. You won't find the long lines typical of The Big City, and the service is far more personalized. Their paninis and wraps are very nicely done, with a weekly menu handwritten on a white board near the door. They have free broadband wireless Internet access if you just have to do a corporate check-in, but really...why bother? The whole point here is to get away from that.

[awholeparade]

Yes, the most annoying thing about riding your bike is finding parking.....what?! Just looking at those pictures, I really don't see a draw for cyclists.