Monday, being the best day in Michigan so far in 2018, with perfectly sunny skies and warm temps (in the 80’s or upper 20’s C), there was a wreck/car fire on the main expressway home from the biggest job I’ve got going. The entire northbound expressway was shut down, effectively cutting me off from getting home. Google Maps said I was hit.
I ride a road bike, though.
I cut off the expressway about ten miles before the accident and took a simple expressway service drive that I knew bypassed the fire. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one to know that route. The simple alternate was backed up for seven miles.
And that’s where cycling came in handy. I’d ridden in that area countless times, and always on the least popular roads. I simply turned around in the first business I came to and headed back half a mile until I found a connecting road. I chose a route that no smartphone app could have put together and got around all of the traffic – I saved enough time to eat lunch… It took a minute, of course, but I wasn’t sitting in a seven-mile-long traffic jam either.
It was once famously said that the best way to see a countryside is from the saddle of a bike. I can’t agree more, because you never know when that knowledge will come in handy.
Fit Recovery 
That statement is so true Jim. I’ve used my local knowledge several times for this kind of thing. The surprised look on my wife’s astonished face when we end up on a successful re-route = solid gold
Amen, brother… except my wife rides with me, so she’s like, “Well cut over to Spencer and you can get around to Elms”… even though I was thinking that exact same thing! Drat!