OK, It's Confirmed: I'm Slow

This morning, my dear wife dropped me and my Xootr off in New Haven before heading off to Providence to visit friends, so I could attend a panel discussion at Yale Law School's Rebellious Lawyering Conference. (The panel was about the school-to-prison pipeline, and everyone should know about that, so read up.) Inspired by the panel (and free lunch, and coffee) I decided to do some work on the old New Haven-to-Hartford pipeline, so I pointed my trusty Xootr northward, and got to peddlin'.

I am happy to report that I made the trip unscathed, proceeding up Route 17 (Middletown Ave.) out of New Haven, then picking up Route 3 in Middletown and taking my usual back streets through Wethersfield. I am a little sad to report that, even discounting the 30 minutes I spent fixing a flat (why 30 minutes? Because my pump totally broke and I had to do some creative tinkering to make it work), the 20 minutes I spent eating a muffin and drinking coffee for strength, and several stops to take pictures, the 44-mile journey took me about four hours. If you're keeping score at home, that's what we call slow.

So I guess my dream of ever winning a race is not coming to fruition any time soon. Nevertheless, it's nice to have a healthy ride on a sunny day, and people I know who don't ride bikes and already thought I was some kind of superman for routinely making the 18-mile New Haven-to-Bridgeport trip will now look at me with even more awe (or pity, or confusion). Anyway, here are some pictures I took:




Both of these cool cars are at car repair/sales places on State Street in New Haven.


In North Branford, they want you to be on the lookout for bikes with weird cruiser handlebars and crazy frame geometry. I didn't see any.


Here's a pretty brook just off Route 17 in North Branford. While I was taking this picture, the air unceremoniously went out of my rear tire.


Sadly, I did not discover this gem before replacing my beloved '98 Corolla with a less beloved '01 Focus. The writing in the window says this is a '53 Asian Taxi.


It's a little hard to see, but on the inside of a window in Middletown, someone wrote, "The movement you need is on your shoulder," which, the internet informs me, is from the Beatles song Hey Jude. (I had kind of assumed it was a reference to this Jay-Z song, but oh well.)