Helderberg Avenue: Albany’s Hidden Bike Path

I went for a nighttime ride tonight, and decided to explore our soon-to-be neighborhood. We’re moving into the Helderberg Neighborhood (near PS 19) in June. I wanted to explore Helderberg Avenue, which I’d noticed both up by South Main Street and down by Academy Road, but which, according to the map, ends at a few points in between.

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I started on South Main and headed southeast on Helderberg. It’s a very quiet street that runs across other fairly quiet streets, so there were few if any cars. I did see quite a few cyclists down the main streets to both sides. The temperature was perfect for a nighttime ride — cool enough for jeans and a fleece, but warm enough to not have a chill in the air.

On the map, the first break in Helderberg Avenue is just southeast of Cardinal Ave. If you’re driving a car, that’s as far as you can go. If you’re riding a bike, though, you can cross Cardinal, ride up a hill that’s also someone’s driveway, and pass between two posts and a garden onto a little paved path that leads to Sycamore Street. Easy as pie, and pretty, too. A jogger passed me on the short path and said, “Nice lights!” The path goes down a little hill to the sidewalk on Sycamore. There’s a three-way stop at this point, so it’s a safe crossing point after you hop the curb. (You can also go down the sidewalk a few feet and exit onto the street via a driveway.)

At this point, Helderberg is more like a wooded alley, with several lovely houses fronting the street. No cars to be seen.

At Pinewood Avenue, Helderberg ends again if you’re driving. For a cyclist, another path leads you through to Ramsey Place. You can continue on Heldenberg all the way to Academy Road, and then across Academy onto one of the campuses. I’m still not sure which part of which campus I’m on when I ride this way. A lot of this area is part of the Albany Medical Center, but not all of it.

In any case, I continued down a campus path to Princeton Drive, then to Holland Avenue. I turned left on Delaware Avenue and then right on one of the most fun streets in Albany — Park Avenue. This is a brick street that rockets straight down to MLK Boulevard and Lincoln Park. I had just had disc breaks installed earlier in the day at the Down Tube, so I zipped down the hill at about 25 mph and jammed on the breaks at the bottom. They worked like a charm. (Although they need to be broken in, as Eric at the Down Tube had cautioned.)

The rest of the ride was a lovely cruise through downtown, including my usual trip to the mall at Empire State Plaza, one of my favorite places to ride at night.

Then it was home to degrease and lube my chain on the screened porch while listening to John Gielgud’s 1941 radio production of Hamlet. What a great night!

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