3:30 – 4 – Bike Commuters Show and Tell 
Jessica Rodriguez, Adam Durand, and Jack Spula talk about car-free commuting and demonstrate their two – (or three – ) wheeled wonders.

I should give The Chicken Avenger a hose-down this week. There are a bunch of other workshops, including a session on urban chickens and another on vegan gluten-free baking, and it’s completely free and open to the public. Here’s the schedule. This event is right up my alley.

And while you’re standing there in the snowbank, pause to pity the poor pedestrian. I keep telling people not to shower sympathy on winter cyclists but on the winter walkers who have to negotiate unshovelled sidewalks and perilous mini-glaciers at many corners. Residents, homeowners and businesses mostly do a lousy job of clearing their walks, and the municipalities do an even lousier job of educating and policing. It should be obvious that many folks become in effect housebound by the conditions. And many others struggle: the other day in my neighborhood, I saw a young woman trying to push a double kid stroller over a mass of crusty snow between her and a crosswalk. Amundsen never had it so bad. And I frequently see people operating wheelchairs in the street because the walks are impassable. I think we bikers need to organize some kind of solidarity with our transportation cousins. I guess we can always call City Hall… and then wait for spring like everybody else.

Last night, as our regional blizzard hit – and to my mind, the snow is a beautiful thing, indeed, at least till the ambient crud turns it to a crappy shade of brown – I went for a two-wheeled spin around the neighborhood. It was at the beginning of what was to become an extended rush hour, and over at Goodman and Clinton, as I’m sure at other major intersections, the fume-belching traffic was stop and go – mostly the former. Even with my Nokians, I slid a few times; the detestable brown “pancake” (a.k.a. “car snot”) was beginning to semi-solidify. This stuff prevents your lugs/studs from getting purchase, so you shimmy a little or a lot. But all in the all, such conditions make for a fun ride; just watch out for fishtailing or rotating SUVs, etc. Rides like this are also work, so you might not click off many miles. My little excursion was more easily measured in yards. But this is a matter of principle. I try to never let a blizzard go unanswered. I mean, isn’t it every RocBiker’s duty to demonstrate that there’s no such thing as “unrideable conditions”? Hey, I also mean within limits. But what limits, exactly? As with jazz, if you’ve got to ask, you’ll never know.

(Footnote: I’ve been away from RocBike for a while because of some health concerns that luckily didn’t turn into anything major, but did throw me off my game temporarily. Great to be back!)

But we have not rolled into that blessed Nirvana Terminal, the mass-transit paradise where one achieves oneness with Intermodality. RTS fares have gone down, but so has RTS service in some respects. For example, on Route 92 there used to be two bus runs (i.e. two round-trips) in the morning and two in the evening. This meant fewer people on each bus, of course, but it also meant the route had some capacity and flexibility that today would be of some use in attracting riders driven to mass transit by current gas prices. (Notice I don’t say “high” gas prices – I say, let ‘em hit $10 a gallon, as in Europe; and let us subsidize the poor somehow, in cash or in transit service, so that they won’t suffer from the excesses of the privileged. And then let us the windfall to build bike facilities and boost mass transit.) So now the bus service on Route 92 works extremely well, and very cheaply, for those whose destinations and schedules are compatible with the service. But many people, including many would-be intermodal cyclists, are simply out of luck.

We need more as well as cheaper service – more routes, and more buses on many routes, and more ways to tote more bicycles on each bus. Here’s a cautionary tale: one Friday evening this past summer, I was planning one of my frequent intermodal trips to Newark. I showed up at Midtown Plaza to catch #92 eastward about ten minutes before the scheduled departing time (5:10 pm). But lo and behold, when I rolled up to the bus, which as usual was set to move out on time, I found the bike rack was full – that is, two bikes. This particular bus, like most that do the longer runs, was a coach-style one, so there was no way to bring a bike on board, even if the driver had been willing to break/bend the rules and allow this to be happen. So what did I do? I cancelled my trip and waited till Saturday morning – but not to take the bus to Newark, since there are no freakin’ weekend buses at all to Newark and Lyons. Instead, I rode the whole way on Erie Canal Trail, which is a delight, for sure, but not what was in the game plan.

Lessons learned: first, you can ride a folding bike and be prepared for anything (I unfortunately had left my Dahon at home); second, if you’re unable to board the one bus that makes an evening run like this, you’re outta luck, since there’s no later bus to catch; and third, RTS may be artificially limiting demand by cutting buses/routes, and then producing surpluses by, on one hand, letting the buses become (over)crowded and thus lowering labor and fuel costs per capita; and on the other hand, bringing home the bacon from Albany in the form of transit subsidies.

Another time I faced a similar situation – a full bike rack on a Friday evening on #92 – but in this case the driver let me slip my bike between the pair on the rack and fasten it with bungee cords. Not an ideal solution. I silently prayed to Hermes to keep my bike from getting dumped or dented.

The best-case scenario would be to have “people mover” type trains that allow bikes to be rolled aboard easily. But we live in a region of transit backwardness, where the discourse is largely limited to moans and groans about prices at the pump. In this context, I suppose that anything said or done about the buses is an improvement.

I’ve had three bikes stolen. The first time I was about five years old, and some kids from a few blocks away (this was in Niagara Falls) took my red two-wheeler from near our side porch. My dad retrieved it a few days later, after it had been thrashed and dented. I’ll never forget the experience.

The second time, my old Royce Union, a stolid but dependable ten-speed, was taken from the garage behind my apartment near Park and Oxford. You needed to know a little trick to open the garage door, and my landlord wrongly thought this meant he could keep the door unlocked. The third rip-off was in front of the old Genesee Co-op on Monroe. I had my old Raleigh ten-speed, the replacement for the Royce Union, locked with a padlock and cable out in front of the building. Turned out the cable was a lot more secure than the padlock. A witness told me two kids snipped the lock in two seconds with a cable-cutter and sped off.

I also had a near-miss with a bike I locked in front of the Monroe Library years ago. There were four or five bikes locked there that day; witnesses said a pick-up truck had stopped at the curb to “unload” a few thieves who’d been riding in the truck bed; the thieves hopped out brandishing tools, and in mere seconds they had cut the cable locks on several bikes, hoisted them aboard the truck, and made their getaway. My bike was the only one left unstolen, but it hadn’t been untouched. As is my custom today, I was using two locks, a u-lock and a cable lock. The thieves cut the cable in a split second but were deterred by the u-lock – too time-consuming to deal with under the circumstances.

Well, I hope there are some lessons in these unpleasant memories. We all need to share info about theft-prevention, which is even more challenging in some other communities. I’m still trying to refine my strategies, but here’s how I approach the problem right now: first, I don’t keep any bikes in the garage, even though that’s where I guess they belong. I keep them in the house (they’ve got sculptural value, too, even if they do take up a little space). I’ve know too many people who’ve lost their steeds from a garage, even when the bikes, doors, windows, etc., were locked securely. Unless you’ve got some kind of surveillance system or a set of Fort Knox-worthy barriers, a thief can easily get into the garage, which then provides good workspace and adequate time to do the dirty deed.

And of course, unless your bike is in a secure interior space under your obsessive gaze, it should be locked to something solid. I suppose, as well, that bikes left inside a home when you’re away on vacation, or whatever, should be locked – unfortunately, a bike is especially attractive to a burglar, since it can double as the perfect getaway vehicle. Then there’s the question of crimes of opportunity: too many bikes are stolen because the owner neglected to lock it while “popping into the store for just a minute,” etc. You may need only a minute to do your errand, but believe me, the thief needs only a half minute to spirit your bike far, far away.

Next is the subject of what locks are best and exactly how to lock the bike up (worth a whole dissertation). The “New York locks,” which include u-locks and big superhardened chains, are very good, but they’re also pretty heavy. There are other brands out there that have grabbed market share since the “Bic” fiasco some years back – when it became known that cylindrical-keyed u-locks could be opened with a ballpoint pen (mightier than the sword in this context, I guess). I used to have a Kryptonite New York flat-keyed u-lock, but I gave it to my son to use in downtown Providence; the lock weighs almost four pounds, but that’s only about half the weight of the best chains. Plus, when you use any KNY u-lock, you need to secure the wheels, either by removing the front wheel and putting the rim within the lock, or by carrying another lock as a supplement. My son continues to defy the Fates by failing to lock his wheels – even though he just invested in a new, pricey rear wheel and cassette. Alas, what’s a nagging dad gonna do?

Most of the trustworthy authorities say it’s good to have two locks of different types, to frustrate a thief who’s carrying only the tool(s) for cutting one type (e.g. a saw versus a cable-cutter). But you’ve got to find a compromise between weight and security: Today I travel with two locks, a Kryptonite New Evolution “Mini,” a two-pounder favored by bike messengers; and a slightly less than two-pound Specialized keyed (not combination) cable lock that has small strips of metal embedded in the braided cable, a feature that defends against smaller cable-cutters. I use the Mini to secure the frame to a rack or signpost (the lock is too small to get around large poles or posts, etc.) and the cable to secure the wheels, which have quick-releases.

One last thought: if I were taking my bike into an office or other semi-public building, I’d lock it to something immoveable indoors, like a pipe or radiator. Again, I’ve heard too many stories about bikes being stolen from storerooms, and so forth. You’d be amazed how thieves can case a joint and brazenly invade in broad daylight. Sometimes building owners and staff think they’re doing you a favor when they allow you to bring your bike indoors – for example, I’ve had staffers at Union Place, the NYSUT headquarters on Union St. right near the Inner Loop, ask me to bring my bike inside rather than use the very good “sine wave” style rack (rack designs merit another whole dissertation) out by the parking lot. I always decline the supposed favor. All in all, it’s preferable to lock the bike outdoors in a visible space, using truly secure locks – not toys like those skinny cable locks that unaccountably are in wide use, even in high-theft areas – than bring it indoors and unwittingly hand it to a rip-off artist.

Ian’s living in Providence, so we arranged to meet in Boston and head north from there. I chose to, or made the mistake of, going from Rochester to Beantown by plane, mostly because I had a leftover credit from AirTran. The credit reduced my fare to a staggering 10 bucks! But… the airline charged me $69 to take my boxed bike along. (I could have taken my folder in a large suitcase for nothing, but I wanted to ride my hybridized Kona, which has a gear range more suitable for the kind of “mountaineering” the route entailed.) Lemme tell ya: there’s nothing pleasant about standing outside the busy terminal at Logan Int’l and reassembling a full-sized bike, especially in the dark, and most especially when your bike-mechanical skills are as basic as mine. But this prefatory transpo-adventure had a happy ending. I got the bike together, made my way to a subway station a mile or so from the airport, and got to downtown Boston without entirely losing my sense of direction or my cool, such as it is.

Ian had an easier time: he took his bike aboard the commuter train from Providence and met up with me in the heart of Boston. Then, after a stop at an excellent Back Bay bikeshop for some last-minute adjustments, we boarded Amtrak bound for Portland, ME.

On this route, Amtrak accommodates bikes the right and proper way: for a $10 surcharge, you can roll your bike aboard (loaded with panniers or not) and stow it in the oversized luggage area. I can’t see why this service couldn’t be added to every Amtrak run, but as a rail enthusiast and member of the Empire State Passengers Association, I understand the train folks have got bigger fish to fry.

Portland, which I hadn’t visited in 35+ years, is a fine city indeed. Ian and I enjoyed the waterfront and restaurants, and frankly, I could have been persuaded to stay seaside for a few more days. But the Open Road beckoned… at least till it became clear that the road we’d chosen, largely because in this region there are practically no viable alternative routes that actually get you where you’re going without unreasonable “detours,” was not beckoning but in effect hollering, “Watch out, stupid.” In short, Route 302 north from Portland is not a cyclist’s dream: it’s got incessant heavy truck traffic, plus in the summer, an endless stream of moto-vacationers seeking fresh air even as they foul it.

The part of our route that took us through central and northern New Hampshire was much better in terms of road conditions – but of course we were hauling loaded bikes over some serious hills and mountains, too. I do love riding in hill country – the flats can get pretty boring, and besides, steady headwinds in the lowlands or plains can be mighty discouraging, much more so than even demanding ups-and-downs. Overall, I think NH is prime biking territory. Especially prime is the Dixville Notch area. Ian and I went through this high pass during a series of thunderstorms; we kept ourselves safely away from lightning (which should be one of the bike traveler’s biggest concerns) but we couldn’t dodge the raindrops.

After an exciting but wet descent, we holed up at The Balsams, a historic hotel complex, set on a mere 15,000 acres, that “donated” us a gazebo for shelter. When the storm cleared, we pushed on through a wetland plateau that gave us the best wildlife sighting of the trip: a moose that was browsing at roadside jumped and ran through the spruce thickets as we zipped by. We hadn’t noticed this fine specimen of the natural SUV of the North (maybe the label does a disservice to a noble animal) until it moved – and luckily the movement was not in our direction. You’ve got to take “moose crossing” signs seriously in this neighborhood, even if you’re nonmotorized.

When we left NH, via a seriously short trespass into the extreme NE tip of Vermont, we thought we’d conquered our quota of hills. Not so. This past of southern Québec, which despite many Anglo names on the map is a solidly Francophone region, is similar to the Southern Tier/Finger Lakes in the quality and quantity of long, long inclines. And even the major roads, which are wondrously free of heavy traffic, can be challenging when you’re packing lots of gear.

We went through towns like East Hereford, a sawmill town that’s surrounded by forests (duh!), lots of Xmas tree plantations (destined for, among other places, Long Island and Westchester, one local farmer told us when we stopped in St. Malo for lunch) and a dwindling supply of dairy farms. We also stopped for libations in the college city of Sherbrooke, from which we accessed La Route Verte, the newish Québec system of bike trails and designated roadways. (Check it out online – maps, etc.)

You notice how different the ambience is in Québec from that of NH and even VT, even though both the latter are heavily populated by descendants and relatives of Québécois/Québécoises. Ian posits that Québec Francophones are more European in their vehicle choices: smaller, more efficient and cheaper cars and trucks overall. What we saw on the roads, and what we didn’t see, tended to confirm the theory. I do hope that this and other aspects of what various commentators see as the province’s ongoing “Europeanization” drift down our way against the prevailing winds, both meteorological and political…

To be continued… with short notes about cycling in Québec City, hearing Paul McCartney almost by accident, tenting among the Vanbagos in a surprisingly (amazingly) quiet and pleasant private mega-campsite (again, that Québec ambience), and other stuff.

My trip took me to several northern Italian cities: first to Modena, home of fabled tenor Luciano Pavarotti, almost equally fabled soprano Mirella Freni, and oddly fabled, expensive, gas-guzzling Maserati, whose headquarters are not far from downtown. Modena’s population is about 177,000, and I’ll bet the figure includes about 40,000 regular cyclists. As in many European communities, regular Modenites in huge numbers get around by bike, doing the shopping, dropping around to the caffe/café, going on dates (two per bike, and not on tandems), and otherwise getting through the day. If you wander the deliciously narrow and pedestrian-friendly streets and alleyways of the old parts of town, you see hundreds of bikes locked up everywhere. The bikes tend to be utilitarian, affordable models, some of them decades old and well-worn. (It’s only out in countryside, on the beautiful but narrow ancient roadways, that you see helmeted, bright-jerseyed riders on fancy road bikes.) Partly for economic reasons, and helped along by a human-scaled urbanscape and bike-friendly traditions, Italians depend heavily on appropriate transport technology.

The principle held true for two other communities I visited: the small city of Vignola, mid-sized Parma, and sizable Bologna (ca. 400,000 people in the urban core). I recommend all three to bikers and walkers – again, it’s the traditional urbanscape that makes the difference. Bologna, with plenty of piazzas and 38 km of “arcades,” i.e. Gothic-arched covered walkways, is especially attractive to pedestrians. I think this town’s Renaissance and Baroque architects could teach our RenSquare planners a thing or three. (And isn’t it odd that not long ago, Rochester was courting Parma interests for a deal to redevelop Midtown Plaza – without so much as considering the physical features that makes the city of Parma a resounding success?)

Not that Italy is a total biking Paradiso. At least in the Emilia Romagna region that I toured, the secondary highways are miserably clogged with trucks and cars moving at excessive speed, and there’s precious little space for bikers or pedestrians. And in the suburban zones, you see many working-class cyclists pushed to the margins, same as you see around home. But in Italian town centers, everything’s rosy: ample bike paths and lanes, urban traffic that’s respectful of cyclists, and an official commitment to alternative transportation. Modena also has begun a bike-borrowing/rental program. You just put down a deposit and get a key, then access publicly-owned bikes at any number of parking stations around town. There’s no fee for the first three days – perfect for travelers, though I must say the bikes themselves are a little stodgy in design, solid and serviceable but not suitable for long rides.

Well, I’m now coping with transpo-culture shock. I went to the Rochester Public Market this morning and did a few errands. Amazing how few bikes you see around the market (I counted about a dozen), considering the huge turnout (thousands on- or just off-site) on a Saturday morning. Part of this is the durability of the Auto Craze, part is the result of the Rochester’s failure to create the infrastructure that would seduce people into going to the market by bike. Why, the city only recently added another parking lot, this one on Railroad St. And still – as any competent traffic planner should have foreseen – the cars and “light trucks” jam the access roads and turn the market grounds into ground zero for air pollution and conflicts with mere persons who make such daring, self-indulgent moves as trying to cross a street! Maybe RocBikers, joined by Critical Massers and others, should target the market for some kind of actions. City Hall shouldn’t be allowed to ignore or downplay bike issues any longer. (I note with pleasure the departure of Dumbass Supremo Steve Minarik, the Republican boss who did something to offend everyone – and did everything to maintain the status quo that barely acknowledges alternative transport. Not that I expect M’s replacement will be much better.)

One last note: Italian towns also are home to vast numbers of motorbikes and scooters. This was especially evident in Bologna. But the odd thing is, I didn’t hear any straight-pipe monstrosities like those that take over Rochester-area roads every summer. Interpret that as you will.

If it’s not too much of a contradiction to say so, CM has become a solid local institution again. But we need to get more bikers out for it. (Make a note: we ride the last Friday of every month.) In a town where such boondoggles as Renaissance Square can pass for transportation projects/progress, grassroots action is especially important. Hey, maybe an upcoming CM ride can take an inside tour of the infamous Mortimer Street garage, which so many “downtown interests” are committed to preserving, even as they salivate at the prospect of tearing down attractive old buildings nearby. I remember an Urban Assault ride a few years ago that went up and down the ramps of the Farash building’s parking garage (I mean the suburban-looking office building that houses the IRS, et al., right across East Avenue from the Little Theatre). Probably trespassing – I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Don’t lock my body or bike up in jail! – but a nice complement to taking back the streets. And lots of fun and exercise. Anyway, isn’t the Mortimer Street garage, that prime component of the Uglysphere, a public space?

But back to the snow. Ah, what a pleasure to glide silently through a couple inches of powder on a trail glowing with reflected ambient light. The purity of it all. Well, of all but the embedded particulates and various toxics that come with every form of precipitation.

On Sunday afternoon I mounted my older set of Innova steel-studded 1.5” tires on the Kona. Just in time. Because on Monday I needed to commute out to the RIT campus for the first day of classes. Everything worked great – though for while I’ll have to use East River Road instead of the Lehigh Valley Trail (north section) and thus will exchange a great nature experience for a couple miles of looking over my shoulder. I keep dreaming that trail sponsors will start plowing the most popular lengths of trail to encourage year-round bike commuting. But that’s a long way off.

This morning I rode out Monroe Avenue to Pittsford and the Nazareth campus. Some people are amazed I take this route. Frankly, I do so only because it’s the quickest way from my house, and I have trouble mobilizing my body in time to do the longer, slower, but much more pleasant Canalway Trail. But Monroe isn’t too terrible for the “reverse commuter.” Very little motor traffic heads east from the city line early in the morning.

With some snow and slush at the fringes, Monroe Avenue doesn’t put its best face forward, no matter what time it is or which way the traffic is flowing. But don’t rule it out. Just be careful, especially at the I-590 juncture.

You can also go intermodal. The Monroe bus line (number 7) has frequent service from very early to pretty late, so you can toss your bike – I mean lovingly cradle it – on the carrying rack and climb aboard to comfort. Quite often I bike the whole way out to Nazareth from the Highland Park neighborhood then take the bus back to the city from the Pittsford four corners. Satisfying and cheap.

This afternoon, though, I saw some of the downside. It happened a minute after I’d got off the bus across from Monroe Square, near Union Street. As I was re-mounting my panniers, a young woman carrying a two- or three-year-old in her arms came up and asked me if the number 7 bus had just gone by. When I said it had, she seemed more distressed than impatient. She’d been struggling to navigate that Rochester early-winter special, the unshoveled commercial strip sidewalk. And carrying a little kid obviously added to the burden. I told her another bus had to be coming sometime soon, but she took up her precious cargo again and headed west on foot. She really could have waited – but there was no shelter at the bus stop, or anywhere close by, so walking into the wind made some kind of sense.

That’s the reality that those who warm up to things like Renaissance Square – a maxi-station project gone berserk – would rather not think about. They scheme to get their developers’ windfall built with (mostly) transportation money, while those who (literally or figuratively) miss the bus and pound the pavement get the cold shoulder.

Maybe we need a true intermodal task force, a real political coalition of mass-transit and human-powered-vehicle folks, to address the full range of problems. I’m going to think more about that after my next bike commute, i.e. early tomorrow morning. And there’s bound to some additional time for contemplation on Thursday or Friday, when I mount the new Nokian carbide-studded tires that I ordered through Freewheelers, my favorite “LBS.” The well-worn Innovas on my bike are approaching the end of their service life. The Nokians, with long-wearing studs and (reportedly) superior grip, will help ensure my personal service life as a winter cyclist won’t be unnaturally short.

Jason’s note: This is Part 12 of Jack’s essay about his recent trip through the northeast. Here are the previous installments:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 |Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 |
Part 11

Travel by bike often translates into travel with bike. That is, when you need to make an intermodal connection, your vehicle becomes a piece of luggage. So it was for me at one point this summer: I needed to get back to Rochester for a few days of paid employment, in part to finance my summer rambles, and that meant a quick zip west from Schenectady by train or bus. For this “detour,” I picked the train, mostly because I like Amtrak – which you should keep in mind when you see the criticism below. (And did I mention I’m a member of the Empire State Passenger Association, a fine public transport advocacy group that works to bring rail service up to par? Check it out at http://www.trainweb.org/espa/ — and think seriously about joining.)

Now, traveling with a bike shouldn’t be a problem – after all, the thing weighs only 25 pounds or so, and though it’s bigger than a bread basket, it’s not much bigger than some bags that are wheeled through the train station or airport every day. But the transportation system, such as it is, can’t seem to handle a bike.

I chewed on this fact several times during my summer tour. The first time was when I made an abortive stop at the Fort Edward Amtrak station, which I’ve already described. The second was at the Schenectady station, a “full service” hub where, like the proverbial glass, the vessel is only half-full.

What I chewed on was Amtrak’s schizoid attitude toward bicycles. There’s a limitation that applies to all routes: you can take a bike aboard only those trains that have a baggage car, which knocks you out of half the schedule. But on east-west routes in this region, you must box the bike, while on the north-south Adirondack line, you can check the bike unboxed – apparently a special service for the New York-Montreal traveler, who’s more likely to be a cyclist. Compare this to Canada’s VIA Rail, which allows unboxed bikes as checked baggage on every train with a baggage car – slightly better, more predictable service. Neither Amtrak nor Via provides free bike service; the former charges $5 for checking the bike, plus $10 for the box (unless you provide your own and truck it to the station).

You can circumvent the problems by traveling with a folding bike, which is legal on all trains and is not treated as checked baggage; on Amtrak, your folder slips into the oversized luggage area at one end of the passenger car. (I’ve got a Dahon folder that I used for part of my tour; more about this later, in regard to the New England leg.) This is similar to the European system – only across the pond, they allow full-sized bikes to be brought aboard passenger cars and stashed securely in a special area. No reason Amtrak couldn’t do the same, except for the fact that their leadership and political sponsors suffer from what I call hardening of the arterials, a transport syndrome that closes off the blood supply to creativity and innovation.

Well, I’ve said a lot about travel considerations and the ups-and-downs of intermodality. But what about the actual train ride to Rochester? Truth is, it was wonderfully non-eventful. I bought a bike box at the Schenectady station, then packed my beloved Miyata and checked it at the desk, and then proceeded to kill a few hours checking out, first, an new Irish pub near the station, and second, the modestly gentrified old section of town only a few blocks away. Think Corn Hill, but with more limestone than brick. I finally arrived in Rochester around 11:00 p.m. Seems like it should take a much shorter time to get from there to here; indeed, if we had modern high-speed rail service, the straight shot from Schenectady to Rochester would take an hour and a quarter, and I’d have got home by 8:00. And it would have taken me about ten minutes to deboard, unboxed bike in hand, and get to my front door.

I know: Dream on.

Jason’s note: I’ve asked my friend and veteran cyclist Jack Bradigan Spula to contribute to RocBike.com. This is Part 11 of Jack’s essay about his recent trip through the northeast. Here are the previous installments:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 |Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10

I spoke too soon (see installment 10). Someone or a force of nature removed my edits from the USMC insignia on the River Trail. So I’m issuing a call to peace vandals. Your help is needed. And your paint.

But enough for now on the fine arts. Let’s transport ourselves to Route 50 between Saratoga Springs and Scotia, a 21-mile stretch that leads to Schenectady’s north portal at the Mohawk River.

To tell the truth, I missed some of the sights along this route, mostly because I was in a hurry to catch a mid-day train in Schenectady. This is a city that used to be a real destination, at least before General Electric pulled its own plug and largely abandoned the area.

Even though two major east-west rail passenger services and a north-south one go through the heart of downtown, Schenectady is still much too quiet. It does have a beautiful historic district, though, with pretty good vital signs. (So why did I have to go there? Basically, the vicissitudes, or follies, of modern American rail travel. I was hoping to board the Amtrak Adirondack at the Fort Edward station, but it turns out that this station doesn’t provide checked baggage service, which is required if you’re going to bring a standard bike aboard. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I’d have to go farther south and catch the Empire or Lake Shore Limited.)

It was my own fault that I had to hurry. If I’d been a responsible bicycle tourist and got up at dawn in my cheap motel room near Saratoga, then passed up my habitual sit-down breakfast with bottomless coffee mug and morning paper, I would have had loads of time to cruise and lollygag the whole way to Schenectady. But no, as usual, I took my sweet time waking up and so had to pump like crazy to get to the station.

Whatever your daily biorhythms, you’ll find that Route 50 has good features. It passes by Saratoga Springs State Park, where woodlands and campgrounds surround the venerable spa where generations came to “take the waters.” And there’s the entrance to the Performing Arts Center, summer home to the Philadelphia Orchestra and New York City Ballet. The orchestra is there only in August, so I came too early to hear a performance. But I thought back to concerts there years – decades – ago, and heard in my mind’s ear snatches of the LPs that were my daily bread when I was a kid, back during the reign of conductor Eugene Ormandy. The Philly had such a big, rich sound, just what appealed to a kid who thought music began with Schubert and ended with Brahms.

The musical qualities of Route 50, though, are less appealing. Though the paved shoulder is accommodating, the roadway gets louder and more crowded as you go south, especially once you’ve passed through the charming old-style village of Ballston Spa.

One incident from this leg of the ride stands out in memory. Near Ballston I approached one of those acute-angled intersections that inspire drivers to do jackrabbit starts, and make bicyclists hit the brakes. A young woman in a sporty sedan zipped up to the stop sign, obviously intent on ignoring it; she looked over her left shoulder at me as I neared the intersection doing maybe 25 mph (or faster, since I was on a gentle downhill, and as I said, pressed for time). The two of us made eye contact, but that didn’t stop the woman from gunning it just as I got close. I had to brake really hard – as I hard as I could, given my hand-position on the brake hoods. The woman, of course, blasted down the road with no apparent regrets.

(Let’s pause for a note to all bikers who use classic drop handlebars: If your bars are equipped with “auxiliary brake levers,” an add-on that does have some advantage for kids riding on sidewalks, take them off and throw them away! The auxiliary levers don’t give much braking power, and if you apply them while riding at higher speeds, you may suddenly find yourself thrown over the bars – a classic “header” – because you’re too high in the saddle and thus have too high a center of gravity for your own good. Once you’ve gotten rid of the levers, learn how to hit the brakes from the hoods as well as from the drops, and keep your brakes properly adjusted.)

You may have experienced an intersection of this type. There may or may not be a stop or yield sign on the side road, but no matter: the motorist just floors it and tries to merge with the main flow of traffic without really stopping first, or even looking for oncoming traffic. And of course there’s a larger problem: Even in the best circumstances, too many motorists consider bicycles a marginal presence that should be segregated onto a path way off the pavement, preferably up in the woods or somewhere in the next county and truly invisible.

I am not exaggerating here; the existence of this attitude is one reason some biking advocates, notably the followers of writer-consultant John Forester, oppose the construction of bike lanes and segregated trails. These advocates fear that separate-and-unequal facilities will lead to bicyclists’ being thrown off the public roads altogether. Sometimes I think they’ve got a point.

Jason’s note: I’ve asked my friend and veteran cyclist Jack Bradigan Spula to contribute to RocBike.com. This is Part 10 of Jack’s essay about his recent trip through the northeast. Here are the previous installments:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 |Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 |

The transportation corridors between Lake George and Albany are among the most heavily used north of Westchester. And they have been since before the days of James Fennimore Cooper, whose romanticized and racialized imprint still lingers over land and water – as at Lake George’s reconstructed, indeed reinvented Fort William Henry. But here The Last of the Mohicans won’t grip your mind for long, not with the tourist glitz that is today’s commanding presence.

Yes, Lake George village, with all its lights, cameras, and action, is a nice place to visit briefly but a better place to leave, especially for a bicyclist. And luckily, the towns and villages south of the lake have capitalized on this by creating a 17-mile, largely paved bike path that goes through magnificent woodlands and open spaces.

This bike route, well-mapped and marked, connects the communities of Lake George, Glens Falls and Fort Edward. The route’s northern section, labeled the Warren County Bikeway, follows the “Old Military Road,” a shaded path below congested Route 9 that makes you think of the very old days when colonial armies went to and from the original Fort William Henry and points north, like Ticonderoga. But after a half dozen miles, and then a slight detour onto the roads, the bike route becomes the Feeder Canal Park Heritage Trail, which provides a trip through the industrial history of several towns beside the Hudson River.

The Feeder Canal itself, which is still watered, goes through various abandoned and semi-abandoned industrial sites and a stunning series of locks (reminiscent of the spectacularly engineered “17 Locks” of the old Genesee Valley Canal near Nunda, NY) and eventually joins the Old Champlain Canal and its accompanying towpath/trail. The Champlain Canal, though, has become a marsh – still attractive, and certainly more of a wildlife refuge than it used to be.

This interconnected canal system then leads you to the edge of Saratoga County, and before you know it – partly because the roadways, unlike the slow-paced, moribund canals, inspire you to make time – you find yourself in Saratoga Springs.

And only then do you understand you’ve made quite an economic journey, too. So few miles from the middle-class resort of Lake George, to the hard-luck town of Glens Falls, to the even harder-luck towns of Hudson Falls and Fort Edward, and then to affluence of Saratoga Springs, still banking on its Gilded Age legacy.

How to characterize these contrasting towns? Well, Saratoga Springs has the typical ooh-and-ah storefronts: designer clothing, you name it. And of course there are sidewalk cafes and restaurants, though the morning I was there, hardly any customers were around. But Fort Edward? Part of the reason I went there was to check out the Amtrak station; I was considering hopping a train to Schenectady and then catching a westbound train to Rochester for a couple days so I could finish some paid jobs. (In a future installment I’ll tell how I ended up biking all the way to Schenectady and catching the train there.)

Well, the Fort Edward station, a beautiful old building that’s being restored with grant money, is hardly ever open. You can board a train from the platform, but you can’t check baggage, etc., and so if you’re packing/boxing a bike you might as well forget it. But at least as you stand there admiring the architecture and pondering the history, you can reflect on what might have been and still may be.

And so it is with the village of Fort Edward, which, like the milltowns of the Mohawk Valley or eastern and southern New England, is a survivor. Maybe because I was born and raised in the rundown industrial city of Niagara Falls, I appreciate the classic milltown’s rugged poetry, written in limestone and brick and the good faith of people who refuse to let their hometowns die.

Postscript: Just before I jotted this stuff down, I went for a ride on the Rochester River Trail from downtown to Genesee Valley Park. A few things struck me. Why haven’t they opened the trail under the west side of the new Anthony-Douglass bridge yet? Why are cycling improvements always the last things to get done, even though they’re the simplest and cheapest?

Going further south: Why does the RPD continue to ignore illegal parking on Moore Road within GV Park? The few spaces provided there are supposed to be for park users, yet every time I pass through the area, I see that UR and Strong employees have hogged the spaces for free workday parking. UR parking staffers are aware of the situation, and so are the cops, so where’s the action? Ordinarily I don’t give a rat’s ass about parking — but here’s a situation where parkland is being abused and officialdom is looking the other way.

I saw great things on my ride, too: a wide selection of birds, including a great blue heron, and the oddly compelling phalanx of black (or European) alders along the northern stretch of Wilson Boulevard, coming visually alive in a reddening dusk. But the greatest sight was a paint-job. I noticed months ago that some jerk, maybe a ROTC type, had stenciled the Marine Corps emblem in two spots along the river trail, one near the UR Quad, the other almost at Ford Street. As an ex-Marine myself (heavy accent on the “ex”), I knew it was my duty to obliterate these guerrilla images, lest they corrupt the youth. So one night a few weeks ago, I took a can of gray spray paint and messed one of them up pretty bad. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough paint left in the can to cover the image entirely, so I said to myself that I’d have to re-arm and complete the mission later. But whaddya know? Some other anti-militarist came by and took care of it. Thank you, anonymous benefactor! This is the kind of rural pacification program that fits perfectly with the biking ethos.

Jason’s note: I’ve asked my friend and veteran cyclist Jack Bradigan Spula to contribute to RocBike.com. This is Part 9 of Jack’s essay about his recent trip through the northeast. Here are the previous installments:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 |Part 7 | Part 8 |

I’ve tossed a few thousand words into cyberspace about my summer bicycling trip – but, as a few friends have pointed out, I haven’t dealt with the primary question. Why did I get on my bike in the first place?

Sure, I could have taken the same route by car (or approximately the same route by bus or train) and done the whole 1,000 miles in a couple of days, or a leisurely week by motoring standards. And to tell the truth, I would have seen pretty much every high point along the way.

But in these facile determinations lie the answers to “Why Bike?”

First, long experience leads me to believe there’s unbreakable link between biking and the human biological clock. Not an original thought, but so true: Just as in music, it’s a matter of rhythm and tempo.

Whether by accident or technological limitation or whatever, the bicycle was designed to be a close extension of the human body. It’s not a cocoon like a modern automobile or truck. (Recall that early cars and trucks were pretty open-air.) It’s not just a multiplier of muscle power, it’s almost part of your arm-and-leg motion and your biological drive to cover distance. (Think long runs across the savannah.) And as such, it heightens your awareness of the terrain you cover, not just on fast downhill “runs,” but also in quiet moments as you roll past woods and fields and (let’s face it) strip malls and used car lots.

In a car, you’re mentally at your destination before you’ve earned the journey, and the distances are the psychological equivalent of stoop labor. On a bike, though, you may be thinking about a hard pull ahead – that monster hill or unplanned ten-mile detour – but fundamentally you’re right “there,” in the Zen sense that you cannot be anywhere but where you are, if only you’ll realize it. And because, if you’re lucky and realize this, your body has to go peaceably along with your mind.

Somewhere Thoreau asks the reader, What mode of travel is the fastest? His answer: walking, which he contrasts with the trains of his day. But Thoreau wasn’t posing a Zen koan; as with much of his work, he was making a stripped-down calculation. To be able to ride the train, he said, a person must work x number of hours to buy the ticket; but walking is practically free. So when you compare the hours of work required to support each mode of travel, then add these hours to those spent en route, you have to conclude that walking is fastest.

I don’t claim that biking is faster than walking, in this sense. But I think it’s competitive, and that it transmits similar wholistic messages and values back through our bodies and spirits. Biking may be an industrial-technological compromise. (It’s certainly not atavistic or romanticist – not in a world where, way off the First World radar screen, hundreds of millions of people either use bicycles as their primary transport or wish they could afford to.) But it’s still uses the same language as the one we feel in our gut, genetically speaking.

Jason’s note: I’ve asked my friend and veteran cyclist Jack Bradigan Spula to contribute to RocBike.com. This is Part 8 of Jack’s essay about his recent trip through the northeast. Here are the previous installments:

Hugging the west shore of Lake Champlain, the village (or maybe just hamlet) of Port Kent, NY, evokes better times. I paused at one old estate that overlooks the water, offering a spectacular view of Burlington in the distance. The building and grounds, laid out in a now seedy Victorian pattern, probably will fall into the hands of the condomeisters who’ve seized good chunks of the Vermont shoreline. Indeed, much of the New York side of the lake has given way to such development.

But when you hit Route 9 only a few miles from the lake, you pretty well leave the Orlando North ambience behind. There are workaday towns like Keeseville, and bits of curbside leftovers – including decaying motels, some of which have been converted to rooms-by-the-week, and all of which are visual essays on the first and second automobile epochs.

Some of the change from resort glitz to Adirondack hardscrabble comes from the effects of Interstate 87. When the “Northway” opened years ago, it became for most people the one and only north-south roadway between Albany and Plattsburgh. (It also entailed ripping off chunks of the Forest Preserve via a statewide ballot proposition, but that’s another story.) I would gladly live without I-87 and the rest of Interstate system, which like many other things done in the name of “national defense” has seriously damaged the continent. But at least I-87 siphoned off most of traffic that had clogged Route 9, leaving the latter to evolve (devolve?) into a road with a more human face.

In fact, I can honestly say that, excluding some short stretches on backcountry pavement, Route 9 was the finest bicycling road I found this summer.

Why? Well, the scenery is unexcelled, for one thing. The western fringe of the mountains don’t get so much respect as the High Peaks or the central and southwestern lake regions. But I challenge anyone to find places more beautiful than the abrupt hills and tumbling creeks and rivers of the upper Hudson River watershed.

Even the town of Lewis has its charms. Though dominated by a quarry/gravel pit, this working class Adirondack community is a good place to spend a night. I stayed at a private campground, at a tenting site that was far enough from the road for comfort. If you want a short burst of civilization, you can pedal down to a combo (not condo) gas station, pizza-and-sub joint and grocery that functions as the town’s commercial nexus. The good folks there made me a decent veggie sub, and I even found a bottle of Lake Placid brown ale (brewed in Plattsburgh; cf. Saranac beers and ales, brewed in Utica) to wash it down.

This is as good a place as any to talk about accommodations. The cyclotourist has to be prepared for anything. I always pack a one-person shelter, of which there are many good designs on the market today; a super lightweight sleeping bag; and a small foam pad. Actually, for this trip I got a backpacker air mattress, only because it compresses into a much smaller bundle than good old closed-cell foam. But of course you’ve got to use some time and lung-power to inflate an air mattress, and it takes a little while to deflate and fold them up in the morning, too. Plus, air mattresses are a bit heavier than foam. So I think in the future I’ll go back to foam – I’ve found the accordion-style mats are cheap and ridiculously easy to deploy and pack up.

So where are you going to pitch your tent? Personally, after this trip, and after many past trips, I’m swearing off the public campgrounds. I dig the communal thing, the notion of the commons, etc., but the noise and congestion at these facilities have turned them into something quite unlike the wilderness experience. For example, one night early in this summer’s odyssey, I camped at Selkirk Shores State Park, a beautiful spot northeast of Oswego, right on Lake Ontario. Some large group of yahoos (in the Swiftian, not the search-engine sense) was set up across a field from me; they hooted and hollered till 1:00 a.m., and – until I asked them to cease and desist, they even made late-night forays in a truck to fetch firewood from a well-thinned stand of mixed hardwoods behind my tent.

Now, I don’t blame this hideous conditions on human nature; I think they stem from state indifference. Albany doesn’t see fit to keep park staff on site after 8 p.m. or so on weekdays; patrolling is left to the state troopers, who drive through every few hours. So there’s no pressure on the yahoos. I don’t want a police presence, though. I want the kind of supervision that a good ranger can offer – with a bit of friendly education.

But the beauty of the Adirondacks is that you can camp anywhere on state forest land for nothing, and without harassment. (As I remember the law, you can camp on one spot for three consecutive days without a permit. But be advised: this does not apply to Wildlife Management Areas and state parklands, only to designated state forest – not just the Forest Preserve of the Adirondacks and Catskills, but also the many state forests that dot the Southern Tier and other regions.)

Also, it’s a sign of the times that campgrounds with services, public or private, are damned expensive these days. The place I stayed at in Lewis cost $16 per night; state campground sites go for a little under $15; and one place in Vermont that I scoped out and rejected (it was essentially a sandy parking lot for RVs) went for $25! At that price you can get an inexpensive motel, a.k.a. dive. More about that option next time.

Jason’s note: I’ve asked my friend and veteran cyclist Jack Bradigan Spula to contribute to RocBike.com. Here’s the seventh part of Jack’s essay about his recent trip through the northeast. You can also read:

Despite a viewshed that most chambers of commerce would kill for (and probably have killed for, by the usual market mechanisms), the area just east of Burlington is standard Americana. As you approach the suburbs and the postglacial slopes above Lake Champlain grow steeper, you depend physically and psychologically on the gravitational pull to get you quickly through the overdeveloped mess. I happened to hit this zone at rush hour, and believe me, it was no lark. But despite its being Vermont’s version of metropolis, Burlington is really a small town, and you can hold your nose and get through the worst its roadways have to offer. And as I’ve said before, the city center is very bike- and pedestrian-friendly. (City Hall, in fact, runs a pedestrian rights/responsibilities program, with appropriate signage, etc.)

But even the heart of Burlington must cope with the Open Road’s ubiquitous monstrosities. Motorcycles, for example. I can tell you, after a couple thousand miles this summer on roads large and small, various post-adolescent noisemakers have driven me to distraction. These goddamn testosterone-fueled Guymobiles – crotch rockets and choppers, ATVs, and various road-legal “customized” trucks and sedans with aftermarket “tuned” pipes instead of mufflers – were always nuisances, but these days they’ve proliferated so much that, for bystanders, they’re like something prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

Okay, maybe I shouldn’t make jokes with contexts like that. But some combination of irony and outrage is necessary. I get depressed thinking about how America long ago forfeited the public highways to hyper-individualized modes of destruction. Look at the typical New York or New England town center, with woodframe homes and commercial buildings lined up close to the road, often within 20 feet, sometimes only at arm’s length. Loud, stinking motor traffic has squeezed the value – monetary and quality-of-life – right out of these old structures. The roadway is now the enemy, and building codes with ample setback requirements are the norm. I mean, who in their right mind wants to live next to thundering herd of pollution generators? But the setbacks and other accommodations to what’s deceptively packaged as “modern life” are forms of alienation, literal distancing from the “commons.” And they’re just what the bicyclist and pedestrian can counteract simply by doing their thing.

Well, it might seem that I’m digressing, avoiding the actual experience of my trip – but not so. The bicyclist’s mindscape is part and parcel of the journey; under pedal power, your body drives your thoughts to destinations not attainable by other means. You’re simply much more embedded in your impressions and reactions..

One last thought for this installment, this time from my home base. Last night, when the temperature and humidity were coming down after a near-90-degree afternoon, I got one of my frequent itches to walk up through Highland Park. But when I stepped into the arboretum at the high end of Meigs Street, I saw mountain bike tracks where they don’t belong – and bikes are legally prohibited anywhere in Highland and other county parks. Then sure enough, I saw the biker himself. Not one to be silent in the face of assaults on this beautiful park, even non-motorized ones, I motioned to him (he was plugged into a “personal audio device”) but he blew me off, then did a 20-mph schuss down a steep hill across from the reservoir. Then he pedaled back around to harass me for spoiling his idyllic experience!

You run into these barbarians every day, I know, but that doesn’t make the experience any less maddening. They think they’re harmless, even while they’re literally carving up the park with their knobbies and disturbing the atmosphere that draws so many walkers to the quiet paths. Much of the blame for these intrusions rests with the parks administration and higher up in the junta, though. The Monroe County Parks office is located right next to Highland Park, just off South Avenue; yet there are no patrols, docents, or even proper signs regarding permitted use. I think we need to get rid of two groups: the rogue mountain bikers and other park abusers, on one hand; and the King-Doyle-Brooks generation of politicians, on the other. Enough of budget cuts and looking the other way on a range of violations.

Next time: I rediscover the Lake Champlain Valley, north to south.

Jason’s note: I’ve asked my friend and veteran cyclist Jack Bradigan Spula to contribute to RocBike.com. Here’s the sixth part of Jack’s essay about his recent trip through the northeast. You can also read:

Route 2 across northern Vermont is a major highway, but thankfully not as major (read: horrifically trafficated) as the Interstate it shadows. I caught the old road a bit west of Montpelier, a little more west than planned, actually, since a construction detour took me the long way around. It seems there was a bridge being rebuilt somewhere along Route 100. I asked a cop at the detour barrier if there was any way to walk (or wade) around the construction site; I was thinking back a decade or so, when Rochester bicyclists enjoyed a break from traffic on Clover Street because of a bridge project near Calkins Road. In that case, you could just carry your bike through a piddling stream and then cruise unmolested for a while. But no such luck in Vermont. I talked to a cop who was monitoring traffic at the Route 100 detour; he told me there was no way to bypass the construction, and lacking any firsthand info, I took his word for it and followed the traffic northeast. Thinking back on this, I wish I’d made a secondary detour through the nearby woods and followed Route 100 regardless. Maybe I would have ended up trespassing somewhere, but I surely would have found a way around the mess.

The detour did have one good result. In the little burg of Middlesex, just as I was about to turn onto Route 2, I stopped for a newspaper and a very large coffee at a country gas station – the type of facility that has become by default the nerve-center and business district for many rural communities. As I watched one of the proprietors barbequing some stuff destined for the warming/embalming rotisserie, a young man with a neo-hippie look strolled by. We got to talking. Turns out he was a Montrealer (originally from the Prairies) who was on a long tour of Vermont and New Hampshire; his steed was a 1980s Peugeot he said he’d retrieved from a trash pile and restored. We talked about touring tires, load distribution (his rig was piled high with panniers and assorted gear over the rear wheel but nothing up front – a recipe for wobbling and worse), road conditions, and more. Then up walked a true Vermont hippie (my kind of guy) who was originally from the UK and decades ago settled on a Green Mountain farm. He, too, had plenty of thoughts on biking, roads, the weather, and local politics. The three of us spent maybe half an hour discussing everything under the sun. Then the young guy and I rode west Route 2 as far as the next town, Waterbury – home to that lil’ ol’ backwoods ice cream shop, Unilever, better known by the label Ben & Jerry’s.

Back in the 1980s I’d toured the B&J factory and store here, imbibing much bushwa about “caring capitalism,” the company’s flavor of the month. Now with the explicit corporate transformation, I passed through town without swallowing so much as a microgram of saturated fat.

Strangely, though, as I stood in the shade on Waterbury’s main drag, I remembered that I’d failed in another pilgrimage. Long ago I promised myself that every time I visited Lake Placid, I’d pay my respects and the John Brown Farm, where the madly militant anti-slavery hero and his sons are buried. Yes, it seems like an oddity: Just how did Brown and his family end up in the North Country – specifically, the town of North Elba – after the disaster of Harpers Ferry? It was the aftermath of a plan to create an African-American colony/community in what was then considered a howling wilderness, a very marginal agricultural region that had been largely bypassed by westward migration.

The plan came to naught, of course – and to this day, given historical racism, the failures of transportation, and other factors, Lake Placid is one of whitest areas you’re likely to visit. But when you do visit, go to the Brown Farm; it’s just outside of town, and it’s now a public historical site with original buildings and educational displays. Just try to ignore the nearby Olympic ski-jump tower that looms before you, marring the mountain views.

Next time: Route 2 takes me slowly to the burbs of Burlington.

Jason’s note: I’ve asked my friend and veteran cyclist Jack Bradigan Spula to contribute to RocBike.com. Here’s the fifth part of Jack’s essay about his recent trip through the northeast. You can also read:

Before I continue with a Green Mountain travelogue, let me take a break to praise canoeing by bicycle. I mean, getting your canoe or kayak to water’s edge by bike, solely with human power and with minimal carbon emissions. It’s one of those little ironies: Too many HPVs (human-powered vehicles) get to the starting line aboard or atop a gas guzzler; think of the common ad image of mountain bikes on an SUV, as if they’re jewelry. But you can take another path. Last night, for example, I put my 18 ½ foot Mad River canoe on a second-hand kid trailer and attached the improvised rig to my faithful Dahon folding bike, then I headed over to Corn Hill Landing. It took no effort to get to the dock, then a few minutes to unload, get the boat in the water, fold the bike and trailer and stow them aboard, and set off for a three-mile paddle upstream to Brooks Landing (near the UR campus).

Once on the water I was in a different world; near the old railroad bridge a bit south of Ford Street, I saw, and followed, a beaver that was swimming placidly along – at least till he/she realized I wasn’t a big log and submerged with a loud slap of his/her tail. I’d seen muskrats thereabouts before, but a beaver sighting is a personal first. Anyway, there’s something cool about doing the whole canoe “expedition” without resort to horsepower. Try it, you’ll like it.

Back to the Green Mountains. I’d enjoyed small but urbane Burlington, but I was ready for a change of pace, and the mountains of Central Vermont certainly provided that. For one thing, the steep, long inclines slowed me down; I had to walk up some stretches. But of course, even while you’re huffing and puffing, the Vermont scenery is priceless. The epitome came quite literally at Lincoln Gap, where you go up forever and ever, sometimes into the clouds, then descend like mad. It took me hours to get to the high point, where the famed Long Trail crosses the seasonal road. But my descent was slow, too. Turns out the road on the downside is too steep to ride safely (or maybe I was just chicken, though I enjoy a 45-50 mph schuss as much as the next biker), so I ended up walking for a couple miles before the slope got a bit less than lethal. This bit of walking, with 50 or more pounds of bike and gear beside me, straining to pull me along, was the toughest thing I came up against anywhere on the trip.

But maybe I just spoke too soon. Because some of the road conditions in Vermont (as later in other parts of New England) were atrocious. Route 100, a wonderfully old-fashioned two-laner that runs north and south, paralleling the Green Mountains’ spinal column of high peaks and threading its way through traditional rural communities, is a tourist’s delight. But there’s lots of traffic, including heavy trucks and construction vehicles, and there’s very little bikeable area at the edge of the pavement – basically, the road lacks a real shoulder, so you’re squeezed into a narrow strip near the sideline, and the sideline, if it’s visible, often runs atop shattered asphalt.

Then there are the bridges! Normally – that is, as found on the back roads – a tight two-lane bridge is a pleasure, or at least not a problem. But some of the bridges along Route 100 are downright scary; a biker has to watch for pavement hazards while the traffic presses him/her toward a safety railing that hardly exists. The railings I saw were not more than two feet high, and it took no reflection at all to realize that if I got sideswiped, I’d be knocked over the edge. And in these wondrous boulder-strewn mountains, that type of maneuver would involve not a plunge into a deep, cool river but a 10-meter swan dive onto a pile of rocks.

Overall, though, I loved the Green Mountains – and next time I’ll write about good stuff that happened as I completed the Vermont circuit and wound up back in Burlington.

Jason’s note: I’ve asked my friend and veteran cyclist Jack Bradigan Spula to contribute to RocBike.com. Here’s the fourth part of Jack’s essay about his recent trip through the northeast. You can also read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

The hour-long ride across Lake Champlain was perfect: long distance views, smooth water, the city of Burlington glowing in the afternoon sun. And then there was the look backward, with a stunning panorama of the High Peaks, which during most of my Vermont visits have been obscured by fog or rain – but this time were as clear in detail as an etching.

A classic college town defined by the ever-expanding University of Vermont and a very progressive local government, Burlington is a great place to visit – and you’d want to live there, too. Several blocks of a downtown arterial have been turned into a pedestrian mall, similar to what’s found in Ithaca, except in Burlington there are more sidewalk cafes, clubs, and crowds. And the “City Market,” an immense co-op that actually functions as a downtown supermarket (though, to judge by my several visits at different times of day, not with as inclusive a shopper demographic as we’d want). The city is also well-equipped with bike shops, high-end and otherwise; I dropped in at one to get a new frame pump to replace the inefficient one I’d been carrying (don’t’ leave home without a good pump, a spare tube, a tool kit, and just as important, some basic maintenance and repair skills), plus a replacement rear tire that I hoped would make the tube and tools unnecessary.

Also like Ithaca, Burlington has long had something that most American cities can only dream of: something like actual democracy, where some power has been taken from the usual business interests and vested in the majority. The current mayor, Bob Kiss, is a member of the Progressive Party, the support structure for former Burlington mayor Bernie Sanders, now an independent socialist US Senator. The Burlington Progressives also have four members on the city council, counterweighted by some Democrats and Republicans. I don’t want to romanticize Burlington and the “People’s Republic of Vermont,” nor will I ignore the damage that standard capitalistic growth patterns are doing to this and other parts of the state. (Cf. the Route 7 corridor south of Burlington, a late example of standard-issue suburbanization.) But some good stuff is happening in Burlington and all of Vermont that we New Yorkers should envy – and emulate.

Burlington’s got a great interlocking system of bike trials, which run along the lakeshore, by rail yards, through old industrial zones, and out into the burbs and countryside.

You can make a whole vacation of exploring this system and stopping along the way at parks, pubs, etc. Don’t look for an Erie Canal or Genesee Valley Greenway type of extended touring trail, however. I checked the maps, and I also consulted with knowledgeable staff at a non-motorized transportation advocacy group called Local Motion, which has an trailside office at the harbor, and I couldn’t find any long distance off-road routes anywhere in Vermont.

Of course, Vermont has many scenic highways and back roads. But they look a little different from behind the handlebars than through a windshield. More about that in the next installment, where I’ll cover my circuit through the highs and lows of Central Vermont and the Green Mountains.

Jason’s note: I’ve asked my friend and veteran cyclist Jack Bradigan Spula to contribute to RocBike.com. Here’s the third part of Jack’s essay about his recent trip through the northeast. You can also read Part 1 and Part 2.

I’m seriously behind in chronicling my big bike trip of 2007 – the last installment ended in the Adirondacks, and since then I’ve hit the shores of Lake Champlain, Burlington (VT), the high points (and low) of the Green Mountains, the Mass. Berkshires, the Pioneer Valley, NE Connecticut, much of Rhode Island, and the budding bicycle magnets of Brooklyn and Manhattan. So let me take these one at a time.

After leaving Lake Placid, I headed down Route 86 through rocky Wilmington Notch, where I had an unusually clear view of Whiteface Mountain. I say unusual because in recent years, if the fog doesn’t obscure the summit, the particulate pollution does. Only we oldtimers recall how long the vistas used to be in these mountains, before the monster smokestacks of the Midwest and eastern Great Lakes sent so much stuff in our direction. Acid rain has infamously struck the Adirondacks, but acid deposition, via particulates, comes in any weather – and the fine particles produce a haze that limits the view. Still, the mountains are compelling. Whenever I pass through the High Peaks region, I get nostalgic. So many backpacking trips with friends and family. So many bracing climbs in all seasons and conditions, so many rainy but wonderful trudges up and down Algonquin, Marcy, Cascade, etc.

All along Route 86 between Placid and Jay, I saw bikers/triathletes in training – dozens of them. Lake Placid is of course a major athletic training center with state-of-the-art facilities, but still I was surprised to see so many pedalers on the road. Jay itself is a quiet hamlet; I took a half-mile side trip to see a covered bridge that’s being reconstructed. (Yes, NY State has a good share of this type of bridge, which through the miracle of marketing has become so closely associated with New England.)

I have to admit that for most of the ride between Jay and the west side of Lake Champlain, I was fixated on getting to the ferry at Port Kent that goes across to Burlington, Vermont. I also had to watch the road surface a good deal, since it wasn’t as smooth and inviting as it had been. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing worth seeing on that route. Indeed, the edge of the plateau offers scenery with two personalities: over your shoulder there are the mountains receding, darkening as the sun sets; and before you is more open country leading to the expanse of the lake, which since the 1990s has officially been the “sixth Great Lake.” It’s much smaller than the Big Five, of course. By the way: Why is it that Lake Superior is considered the largest of the five? Though this ranking business inevitably involves arbitrary standards and judgments, it’s obvious that Superior, which I dearly love, is much smaller than Michigan-Huron, which has a level connector (the Straits of Mackinac) and by rights should be considered a single lake.

Anyway, Champlain is easily crossed by bike – and I don’t mean pedal-boat. All you need to do is get the Port Kent-Burlington ferry, a traditional and long-successful operation that costs only $4.70 for a walk-on plus a buck for your bike. A lesson for any community that longs for such service. (In a future installment I’ll discuss the equally pleasurable fast ferry service between Providence and Newport, RI – bike-friendly and cheap.)

Jason’s note: I’ve asked my friend and veteran cyclist Jack Bradigan Spula to contribute to RocBike.com. Here’s the second part of Jack’s essay about his recent trip through the northeast. You can also read Part 1.

NY Route 458 gets two thumbs-up as portal to the northern Adirondacks. I say this for two reasons: Rt. 458 is less traveled and woodsier than either Rt. 56 or 30, it goes through the unspoiled hamlet of St. Regis Falls (a perfect rest stop with a general store/deli), and it has lots of hills and thrills.

Of course, it’s the hills that in a sense exile many of the truckers and – let’s face it, bicyclists, too – to the lowlands and heavy traffic. But it turns out Route 458 is not a corridor of solitude. There’s some local traffic, even an occasional logging truck, and of course the wildlife here has an audible voice (amazing in the modern world!). And then there are the fitness enthusiasts.

All through the northern Adirondacks I ran into triathletes in training and other high-powered cyclists on fancy machines; most of them are connected to the top-drawer training facilities in Lake Placid, which since the 1908 Winter Olympics has become a year-round athletic venue to rival Aspen, et al. But not everyone on the roads is an Ironman champion.

Case in point: On Rt. 458 I ran into a cyclist named John who happened to be doing a training ride; he’d driven his car down from a town near the St. Lawrence and was cranking out some miles uphill and down, all to prepare for more challenging hills like the infamous stretch of Route 73 between Placid and Keene – a gloriously frightening descent or heart-pounding upgrade, depending on which direction you’re going.

Anyway, John, a North Country college professor who said he had a son studying at RIT, proved to be a great conversationalist as he and I rode along together, mostly side-by-side on the otherwise mostly vehicle-free highway. We covered plenty of bike topics – strangely, though he didn’t hesitate to hit the road alone, he didn’t have a full tool kit, nor did he know how to change a flat – and shared anecdotes about the blackboard, now whiteboard, jungle of academia. (When I stopped at a public library to check my email, as is my custom on the road, I got some bad news about a case I was following: Norman Finkelstein, one of the best and most committed scholars working on the question of Israel/Palestine, was finally denied tenure at DePaul Univ. in Chicago; the denial follows heavy-handed intervention by the egregious Alan Dershowitz of Harvard. It’s a complicated story that I’ll pursue in another venue. But the take-home message is this: Readers should check out Finkelstein’s website, normanfinkelstein.com, and send their messages of outrage to DePaul administrators.)

John was riding a Serrotta road bike; later, at the Lake Placid bike shop he recommended, I saw Serrottas on the sales floor priced up to $8,000. Talk about sticker shock. But the shop did have some good, and reasonably priced, Pearl Izumi cycling gloves; I bought a pair to replace my old Lake gloves, which lost their cushioning power a year ago or more. So with the new PI’s, at least my hands were able to proceed in style.

Speaking of attire, etc.: When the temperatures were in the 70s or 80s, I stuck to my usual road gear: cycling jersey or 50/50-blend long-sleeved tee, plus the mandatory padded cycling shorts. But when the weather turned blisteringly hot, I went back to my canoeing outfit, at least from the waist up: a loose-fitting, cotton-flannel long-sleeved shirt (probably a lightweight Chambray would be even better). When you’re in motion, the loose shirt billows up and acts something like A/C. True, the added air resistance cuts down your mechanical efficiency – but what the hey, touring is not a race.

Another concern: As a melanin-deprived person of Celtic descent, I’m a big believer in bathing in sunblock. But I know that sunblock/sunscreen can’t equal tight-woven fabric for UV protection. And exposing bare skin to the sun also increases solar absorption. Not to disparage fun in the sun, but we’d probably do better to emulate the traditional peoples of the desert in summer from 10 AM till 4 PM – and save the para-naturism for safer hours.

Jason’s note: I’ve asked my friend and veteran cyclist Jack Bradigan Spula to contribute to RocBike.com. Here’s Jack’s first essay, about his recent trip through the northeast.

When I told friends I’d be posting regular road reports from this summer’s bicycle tour, I was making one of those fine resolutions fated not to be kept. But now I’m home – at least for a spell, while I get stuff together for another jaunt – so I can sketch out what I saw from the saddle the last two weeks.

After a conversation with Wayne County raconteur-naturalist and inveterate bicyclist Roland Micklem, I left from Peacework Farm (Arcadia/Newark) on June 24. A series of paved back roads took me to Route 104 and then lunch in Wolcott (not-quite-famously the birthplace of “Grandpa” Al Lewis, one-time TV “Munster,” and later, NY City radio personality and Green Party gubernatorial candidate). This lunch was in the grain for my bike trips: bursts of pedaling followed by long stops with the usual small-town “bottomless coffee cup” and a local newspaper.

From Wolcott I pushed on to Oswego. In the past I’ve taken Old Route 104 through this area, but this time I went for the new 104: more traffic passing but fewer hills, plus generally smoother pavement. Mostly I wanted to get to the North Country asap.
Oswego was quiet and refreshing that warm Sunday. Of course, SUNY was not in session, so this college town – which, alas, doubles as the capital of regional nuclear power – was in the doldrums. I stopped in the partly gentrified harbor for a sandwich and microbrew. By now you should have a clear idea of my mode of travel, alternating hair-shirt and bon-vivant.

Struggling to be more of a leisure destination than old milltown, Oswego is showing too many signs of sprawl these days. The big-box miasma stretches east of the city center over what I remember as an interesting greenspace that flanked a creek and led to farm fields and woodlots. Now there’s mostly traffic, and not of the nonpolluting kind.

From Oswego I made my way to Route 104 B and then to Route 3, which hugs the Lake Ontario shoreline till it veers through Watertown and heads toward the Central Adirondacks and, eventually, the west side of Lake Champlain. Route 3 has evolved over the last couple decades from a narrow, unpleasant bike route to a fairly nice alternative to the likes of Route 11, which along with I-81 (the latter off limits to human- or actual horse-powered vehicles), carries most of the heavy commercial traffic.
And speaking of horses: All through the North Country I came upon Amish farmers, who’ve relocated to several parts of rural New York because land is both expensive and unavailable in south central Pennsylvania. Indeed, Northern New York still has some of cheapest farmland you can find, and thus is a magnet for anyone who lives outside the mainstream. Here’s to appropriate technology: I enjoyed greeting the Amish families who, relying on their horsecarts and wagons, truly know how to share the road.

Route 3 took me through Henderson Harbor, where you look westward to beautiful islands and the oceanic expanse of Lake Ontario, north to Sackets Harbor. The latter is still a little overwhelmed with its War of 1812 past, in the sense that the town and its historical markers tiptoe around the truth – that the dirty little war almost 200 years ago was launched on shaky grounds (which is not to deny the British were guilty of various crimes, like the impressment of US citizens into the British Navy) and largely aimed at “neutralizing” indigenous peoples who thwarted westward imperial expansion.

But none of this neutralizes the visual appeal of Sackets Harbor, which now hosts a fine, eponymous brew-pub, even though it’s all too close to Fort Drum, home of the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division, a big player in ongoing imperial “conflicts.” (Disclosure: When I was in the Marine Corps Reserve, I used to train occasionally at what was then the modest, retro Camp Drum, a holdover that should have gone out with spats. It was a shithole, and though the layout and amenities have changed, the character of the place has not. It’s such a shame that Watertown and neighboring towns bring a little bit of, say, eastern North Carolina-style militarism into Northern New York.)

From Sacketts I pedaled due north toward the St. Lawrence River, and I soon found myself on a freshly-repaved Route 12 through the Thousand Islands. Long about Chippewa Bay, where there’s a scenic overlook more than worthy of the designation, you can see just how wonderful the region is, especially when you get a good distance from the powerboats and, ugh, jet-skis. I think the vistas around Chippewa Bay are as grand as any I’ve seen on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts – but you have to realize I’ve been accused of being a Great Lakes chauvinist.

The ride along Route 12 was as hot as it was beautiful, though. Ninety-eight degree air temperature on new asphalt: That’s got to translate to 115 degrees. But at least I had a stiff tailwind and thus cruised in style.

I thought I might continue up along the river, but frankly, once out of the Thousand Islands, the scenery didn’t turn me on so much, so I veered southeast toward Canton and Potsdam. Great riding country here, though I was fighting a powerful crosswind most of the way. On Route 56 just outside of Canton I saw a cooperative experiment in progress: local colleges and the state DEC have put up fencing of various types and diversion culverts so that migrating turtles and amphibians can get to the other side of the road without harm. I didn’t see any roadkill on the quarter-mile experimental stretch, so I suppose things are working.

Elsewhere on my trip, roadkill – everything from snakes to waterfowl to beaver – was extensive. (Lest you think I’m being a sanctimonious cyclist, here’s a confession: near Saranac Lake a young grouse that was sitting on the pavement shot up as I approached and hit my handlebar pack head on; the impact broke the bird’s neck and it died within half a minute as I stood there, helpless. The mother grouse cried out from the bushes at roadside. A couple days later, a second mother grouse mock-attacked me as I apparently went by her concealed brood. Quick karmic retribution, I guess.)

Well, I’ll continue the travelogue pretty soon, covering the itinerary through the Adirondacks and on to Vermont. So check in again…