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You probably don’t know it, but there are three designated bicycle routes crossing Pennsylvania from east to west and four running north-south.

Why would you know? There’s nothing special about these routes. They are regular roads designated with nondescript letters.

In fact, being letters with no apparent logic, they are something less than nondescript. How would you guess “Bike Route Y” runs 409 miles along U.S. Route 6 from Matamoras, in nearby Pike County, to the Ohio border? How many Hazleton residents are aware that they live minutes away from “Bike Route V,” which rolls through Freeland to the Tomhicken Road on its way to Bellefonte, before leaving the state via West Poland Road on the far side of Bessemer?

Obscure though they might be, these seven trans-state routes (and two other short ones in Philadelphia and Erie) are the result of decades of effort by bike advocates. They have been getting a bit of attention recently because May is National Bike Month, with May 16 to 20 designated Bike to Work Week, and Friday touted as Bike to Work Day.

Amid all that pedal-power awareness, PennDOT recently unveiled a new interactive map that makes it easier to see where these “Bicycle PA” routes are, and to follow them.

The online map lets you zoom in and out. Get close enough, and it shows the posted speed limits and which roads have a paved shoulder greater than 4 feet – which, as noted in an editorial in this space last month, is the distance vehicles must legally give a bicycle when passing.

You also can open detailed PDF maps of route segments – segment 23 of Route V is that stretch on the Tomhicken Road, for example, from state Route 93 to a bit beyond the border of Black Creek Township.

Don’t like tangling with cars and trucks on the road? Our region has a growing number of rails-to-trails arteries, most of which are very gently graded and devoid of motor vehicles.

You can sample a bit of one, with a guide, courtesy of the Lackawanna Heritage Valley National and State Heritage Area. Guided rides are slated in Scranton for this Friday and May 27 at the 7th Avenue trailhead, and June 5 at the Weinberg Memorial Library at The University of Scranton. All three rides are scheduled to start at 1 p.m. (For details, go to lhva.org.)

Or you can ride one of these area trails at your leisure: the Back Mountain Trail, the Hazleton Rail Trail or the venerable D&L Trail, through Lehigh Gorge State Park, which was recently extended into Mountain Top.

For more information, traillink.com is a good place to start. But the Web is awash in helpful sites, including explorepatrails.com and the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources’ site, DCNR.state.pa.us.

So pump up those tires, don those helmets (required of riders under age 12, very highly recommended for everyone) and bike to work, or just bike in the woods.

There was a reason you enjoyed it as a kid, and re-discovering that joy is, as they say, like riding a bicycle.

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