Bread Cycle Works Fiesta This Saturday

Artist Ted Efremoff and company's Bread Cycle Works Project began this past march in a vacant lot on Broad Street. Join them this Saturday at the green at Billings Forge (563 Broad St. Hartford, CT) starting at 3 PM to share in the fruit of their collective labor. Here are a few pictures and memories I accumulated over the course of their community-focused, bicycle-powered journey from seed to feast. I wasn't around for the plowing and planting stages, but I did take part in the harvest, where my story begins.

Part one: Harvest M(ons)oon- July 10

The email had gone out a few days prior, scheduling the wheat harvest for 11:00 AM on Saturday. The sky looked threatening that morning, and it wasn't long after I arrived at 11:00 that the first few drops of rain began to fall. The next few minutes were a frenzied attempt to beat the rain. Sickles, scythes and my saw-chete (a machete with a serrated saw teeth on its back edge) were swished about with haste cutting, stacking and bagging as the rain increased its intensity to biblical. A couple of local guys came and pitched in, which was pretty awesome.

There were four cargo bikes on hand: The Bread Cycle Works plow trike with a trailer, a cycletruck-style conversion with a massive woven basket, a bakfiets-style conversion with a massive steel basket, and my Yuba Mundo with the trailer. We loaded as much as we could before the wheat got too wet, using trash bags and a shower curtain to protect as much as we could. We slogged up Broad Street, soaked to the skin, and arranged the wheat on drying racks in Ted's studio. We rode around the corner for coffee and lingered as our clothes slowly dried.


Part Two: Back For More- July 12

With rain forecast for Tuesday and beyond, Monday looked like the best day to harvest the remainder of the wheat. It was short notice and a weekday so extra hands were in short supply. I met up with Ted and Alex in the afternoon. I sharpened my dull Saw-chete to help facilitate cutting wheat and not accidentally damaging my own extremities.

As it happened, I did not cut myself with my clumsy blade-slinging, but by drawing my finger along a wheat stalk for a wheaten equivalent of a paper cut. The cut itself was minor, but I quickly demonstrated my God-given talent for bleeding. I disposed of the affected wheat (as bloodstained wheat is both nasty and non-vegan) and set aside my (t)rusty blade to tend to my wound. Unfortunately, my first aid kit was in the pannier I had left at home and nobody else had any band-aids, so I wiped my bloody hand with a baby wipe, tied it around my finger and headed for the nearest bodega for a box of bandages. Bodega #1 didn't have any, but bodega #2 not only had Band-Aids, they sold them individually! I was familiar with "Loosie" cigarette sales, but this was my first observation of the practice extended to first aid supplies-- freaking brilliant! I bought a loosie-depleted partial box for a dollar, figuring that it would be good to have a few extras on hand. No more were needed, but I was sufficiently amused for the afternoon.


Monday's harvest took a couple of hours with only three adults on hand, but we managed to get it all cut and hauled back to Billings Forge studio to scatter on the drying racks in preparation for the pedal-powered threshing and milling process. Passers-by stopped and asked about the project regularly.

Part Three: I'm Gonna Thresh You Sukkah- September 18

I wasn't able to attend the bike-powered thresh and milling session, but I did see the Sukkah (a Jewish feast booth) they built from the leftover hay when I was at the Farmers' Market. Here's a pic of the threshcycle setup courtesy of Ted:


Part Four: Eat!- October 2
Hope you can make it. Read more!

The Triumph in Failure--Wrong-Haul Truckin'

Several months back, I was invited to vend and do a bike demonstration at the Coventry Farmers' Market's "Green Up, Connecticut" day, which took place on the Sunday before Labor day. I happily accepted.

As the date approached, I scrambled to get my vending stuff together and a plan of action. I don't have a truck, so I was going to have to borrow or rent one. On the other hand, I thought, what if I rode my bike there? I realized that this would require the towing of my utility trailer, which would slow me down a bit. I checked a few online mapping sources and determined it was just shy of 22 miles from my house to the market site in the Nathan Hale State Forest. I hemmed and hawed about it for a while and finally decided, hey, it's Green Up Day, dagnabbit, what better way to represent than to be all uber-sustainable and make the trip under my own power, right?

I realize in retrospect this was wildly ambitious on my part, but it seemed entirely doable. I had towed the trailer with a load of DJ and audio equipment for a 10 mile loop last June during the Real Ride, so doubling the mileage while reducing the weight would allow for a steady trip. I loaded a new cargo bike and a folding bike swaddled in blankets. Over, under and around these I tucked a repair stand and some tools (for a bike maintenance demo) plus four tote bins full of helmets and accessories. Maybe I wasn't reducing the weight by all that much...

In the morning, I loaded up and headed east over the Charter Oak Bridge (the only bike trailer-friendly Connecticut River crossing) into East Hartford. Moving into Manchester, I saw that their stretch of the East Coast Greenway has been freshly paved, a nice improvement over my last ride there in July. I was running a bit later than I would have liked, so I called ahead to give some friends a heads-up. Once the Greenway made it through most of Manchester, I was past any area of familiarity. I began to rely on my printed directions, a set of maps and cue sheets sourced from the Google and the ECG websites. This was where things began to go especially wrong. Maps lacked details, cue sheets had wrong turns, I ended up riding through the "Crossroads of Hell" where I-384 ends and routes 44 and 6 split from one another. That interchange is fairly awful in a car, let alone the unwieldy contraption I was pedaling about.


My online sources had estimated that the trip would take about 2 1/4 hours to complete, to which I added a bonus hour to account for the added weight. What I didn't adequately account for was the hills. There were an awful lot of them. Hill climbing plus trailer equals very, very, veeery slow. It became more and more apparent that I would not be making it to the Farmers' Market in time to vend, but I pressed on. I pressed on for two main reasons:
-I was hoping my friends from Four Fields Farm would still be there so I could off-load some of my cargo into their Hartford-bound truck.
-Making it to the market site was the only attainable goal remaining for the day. I needed some sort of success to show for so many hours' work.

I finally arrived hours later than intended, having missed the market entirely. I was disappointed, exhausted, embarrassed and annoyed. I made a few calls. None of my truck or wagon-owning friends were around, unsurprisingly on the holiday weekend. I called Schleppi, who agreed to drive out and relieve me of a carload of weight. I spread a blanket on the ground in the now-empty vending field and took a very satisfying nap. Schleppi arrived with nourishing snacks and a smattering of reminders of what a dumb idea this was. I was able to fit everything but the cargo bike in her car, which made for a much lighter tow. Hooray Schleppi!

I rode home a different way. The return directions (from the same sources) were flawless, save for one issue. The gates at the entrances to the Hop River Trail were purposely narrow to allow bicycles through while preventing motor vehicle access. Unfortunately, that also meant that the trailer was too wide to pass through as well. I managed to hand-pull it around one gate, but had to unload and carry it through the second. The trail is really nice, by the way-- probably my favorite rail-trail thus far. I definitely want to return- on a much nimbler machine.

I finally made it home, well after dark. The waning glow of my headlight helped me resolve to bite the bullet and splurge on a dynamo hub, so look for a wheel-building post in the near future. I slept very well that night. It was a day of toil and disappointment, but I learned a few things along the way:

-It's mighty hilly east of the river.
-I can do this, just not over that distance or terrain (more on this point in a forthcoming post)
-Next time I transport anything to Coventry, I need to use a truck. Read more!

Spitting Swap

Early this past Sunday, I took a rainy ride to the New England Muscle Bicycle Museum in Bloomfield for their last "Northeast Bike Swap Meet" as this under-the-radar display of awesomeness is pared down and sold off.

I rode the Yuba to help deter myself from loading up on too many bikes, and it kind of worked, though I did pass up on a heartbreakingly cheap old Schwinn tandem. I did pick up a couple of wheels, tires and cranks for bikes I'm working on, stuffing some of them into a nice Dahon bag to ride up front as I slogged home. Also, in the spirit of the trendy new minimalism, I picked up a unicycle. I got somewhat wet riding to Bloomfield (I brought a spare shirt) and thoroughly soaked coming home in time to get a flat right in front of my house. I was glad that didn't happen en route, as changing the rear tire by the side of the road in the rain would have sucked.

The museum is like a secret wonderland of 60's pop culture. My favorite was the red George Barris-branded bike with mags and a surfboard rack! There are some vintage motorcycles there as well, so I got to ogle and pine for an old Triumph again.

I don't know the full story of how much or how quickly they are winding things down, but you'd do well to have a visit if you get a chance.

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Brother Night

The past few days have been discouraging on a number of fronts, and my oft-chosen pick-me-up of a bike ride has been robbed of its comforting power by the oppressive heat and humidity. I put off a round of errands on the Yuba until the evening, hoping for better. My hopes of escaping some of the days discomfort were a limited success at best. A dinner invitation from a friend provided the welcome distraction of tasty food and a frosty beer. The heat finally broke somewhat as night fell and I headed homeward. After a few blocks, I realized I was beginning to feel better. The cooler night air and uncrowded streets were unraveling the knots of stress that had tethered me down for days. This was too good to pass up. I veered off course and arbitrarily decided to ride in five towns before returning home.

I had already started in Hartford and made my way to West Hartford. I meandered southward through the side streets of Elmwood into Newington, turning off to visit the Iwo Jima Memorial and a bit of New Britain. From there it was south and then eastward through Newington Center to Wethersfield, where I followed Ridge Road back up to the Hartford line, taking Fairfield Ave and a scenic cut through the Trinity College campus before returning home. It was after midnight by then, and I was tired and contented.

The flashing LED headlight on my bike exists as a visibility beacon for others rather than actually enabling me to navigate well in the dark, so my route was limited to more well-lit thoroughfares. I did see a number of places that I would like to explore sometime during daylight hours. I would like to get a brighter headlight one of these days. They can cost hundreds of dollars, but I think I could legitimately write off such a purchase as a mental health care expenditure.

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Real Ride Hartford (and West Hartford) Bicycle Parade

Preface: There were photographers with actual camera mounts for their madly expensive gear, so if you want to see "professional-looking" photos, I'm sure those will be online somewhere in a few days.

Saturday evening's bicycle parade made me very proud, happy, and relieved that I live in Hartford. More on that later. We began at Real Art Ways on Arbor Street. Here, people had the chance to tart up their bikes with lights and random art supplies provided by Anne Cubberly. There was a fish bicycle
(perhaps a reference to the quote often falsely attributed to Gloria Steinem?), cat bike, horse bike, clock bike, and demon bike. Those stuck out the most in my memory. Others were piled with lights and glowing orbs. One gal had a plastic flower on the front of her bicycle -- it dispensed bubbles! I did not get the chance to talk to her, but I see a mobile bubble dispenser as part of my future. At least two riders had awesome camera mounts which I am sure enabled them to take focused, high resolution, non-blurry photos that they are not going to be ashamed of showing to the public. There was at least one tandem and it was rigged with a souped up vuvuzela. That I can not describe each and every bike says something about the turnout. There was at least four times as many people there than I expected would show -- some coming down from Boston for the event.


The parade turned right onto Arbor Street, then right up Capitol Avenue. We turned left down Flower Street, crossed the railroad tracks, and then turned right onto Farmington/Asylum. The ride stopped at ArtSpace (555 Asylum Street) so that we could meet up with people who were attending the Art for AIDS fundraiser. It would have made more sense to stop in the back lot instead of on the incline of the street, but it also would have made sense for the stops to last ten minutes or more to allow for a drink/bathroom break. We did not go inside ArtSpace or Billings Forge, so the purpose for stopping at each place was unclear. In the future, more work could go into allowing for people at each venue and on bicycles to mingle, if that's the point. I'm not saying it wasn't fun. I thought it was a blast. But the stops could have been a bit longer. Anyway, I know that the original plan was for this ride to take an hour. I think the route planners forgot that it was going to be a slow ride, made perhaps even slower by the presence of a DJ being hauled on a trailer behind a bicycle. You just can't take corners fast on that kind of rig and who wants to rush along a trailer full of awesome?

From ArtSpace we continued into and through Bushnell Park, but only a sliver of it to cut behind the Legislative Office Building and Armory. We looped back onto Capitol Avenue and then Broad Street so we could stop at Billings Forge. Since an artist briefly spoke to the group, this stop seemed more meaningful. There was some kind of solstice event supposedly going on at Billings Forge. When we rode through, it seemed like only a few people were outside of the venue/compound.


Here is where dynamics got weird. And by dynamics, I mean that almost everyone in the parade was white and we were about to head further into Frog Hollow -- an area I am convinced was virgin territory for a number of the cyclists. Disclosure: I am perhaps being overly sensitive about this because I live here and am very familiar with the area and people. Before heading back on Broad Street and down Park, I overheard a couple people making remarks about how they hoped the musical selections for the area were "appropriate." This was followed by several Speedy Gonzalesesque cheers. Very not okay. Very WTF. Guess this reminded me that I can not stereotype all artists or bicyclists as being open-minded or aligned with progressive values. Maybe instead of a bubble machine, I could rig my bike with a flamethrower in order to more productively deal with racially and ethnically bizarre comments.


Riding up Park Street made me proud to live in Hartford. It was around 9-9:30pm, I'd guess, and the sidewalks were busy. People were outside cheering us. Really cheering us. There is this great vibe that emanates from the area and makes it hard not to smile, honk, wave, and holler back. A strong contingent of kids joined us for a ways, riding their BMX, department store, and low-rider bikes on sidewalks and in the streets. The photo at the beginning of this blog post is of two of them. I yelled for them to join in, and two or three stuck with us for the rest of the ride. These kids made the event seem more like a parade and less like a regular old ride. Another funny indication that some riders had no idea where they were: I overheard one woman getting nervous about the presence of a police cruiser coming down Park Street. Really? Really?! I got stopped by a cop on Park once for looking suspicious while pushing a wheelbarrow filled with shovels and pitchforks. He wanted to know why I had these tools, so of course I told him something like they were for stabbing someone to death and then burying her. My memory on that conversation blurs a bit. Maybe I said they were for farming. I don't recall. A little traffic on the street is nothing they aren't used to. Hell, just a couple weeks ago, in the lead up to the Puerto Rican Day Parade, the street was used to showcase everyone's decorated rides, causing far more severe traffic jams, and the police involvement was kept to a respectful minimum. The government that governs best governs least.



I hope this ride was educational for non-local or non-bike-commuters, as the amount of broken glass in the bike lanes and streets is something that a large number of people are now aware of and could complain about. There are some immediate infrastructure differences between Hartford and West Hartford. The moment we crossed into the suburb, the pavement became smooth. The only real debris there was roadkill. While a less comfortable ride, I felt safer in Hartford. Cars seemed to give us more space and props in the city. The horns were cheering us, not expressing impatience with us and then zooming past at 50 miles per hour. During the week, I experience plenty of impatient, distracted drivers whizzing past me in the city, but on Saturday night, they all seemed chill.


And then we crossed into West Hartford. The pavement became so smooth and we could hear the sound of our tires against it, which is to say that nearly all of the observer encouragement ceased. While passing one of those restaurants with outdoor patios (I know which one, but I'm not going to give them free publicity) on Park Road, we actually received polite golf claps (not to be confused with booty claps. we received no booty claps that I am aware of). There were a few cheers, but the ratio of noise to people was sorely disappointing. C'mon! Live a little! It's okay to break with decorum, particularly on a beautiful Saturday night in the summer.

Around this area, someone asked, "What are you doing?" to which I responded, "Riding a bicycle!" Duh! "But what for?" "To ride. Because it's fun." Someone else jumped in to give a convoluted explanation of what we are doing. My policy? When people ask stupid questions, keep the answers short so that they can understand. If we were riding for "something" we would have had signs or shirts announcing that probably.


We turned onto South Quaker, then left onto Boulevard. Here, the street got very dark and even quieter. Up in the Center, we did some zigzagging and I did not bother paying attention to all of the road names. Some of the people dining outdoors on LaSalle Road were more supportive. We looped around, returning to Main Street and then cut through Blue Back Square. Again, a decent number of people outside, but too, too quiet. We took Farmington Avenue down to Sisson Avenue, Capitol Avenue, and then Arbor or Orange (depending on whether or not the cyclist felt like following directions), back to the Real Art Ways parking lot. The only part of the ride where there were impatient motorists seemed to be on Farmington Avenue, in West Hartford Center, and Blue Back Square. But for the few jerks behind steering wheels, there were a number of patient motorists who waited calmly while everyone passed.


Despite the amount of broken glass and potholes, I do not think anyone popped a tire. I only saw one person fall, and it was one of those "can't get my foot out of the clip" incidents -- toppling over, more than a violent collision. She said she was okay. I heard something pop or snap on another rider's bike but don't know what happened. Some shit fell off my bike when I hit one of the many potholes, but the lost items were not integral to the operation of the machine, and I basically knew they were not going to stay on because I rushed the decoration process.

It was heartening to see so many females and even a few children riding, which of course begs the question -- why am I not seeing this many women on the road normally?


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Bikes Outside: Bicicletas Fuera

This past weekend was a great one for Bikes Outside. Nothing short of the last Discover Hartford Tour put as many bikes on the street as this year's Puerto Rican Day. This year, Hartford's parade was moved from its longtime route down Park Street, A.K.A. "New England's Hispanic Main Street" to Main Street, which is just "Hartford's regular old Main Street." One of the nice things about this change of scene was that the added street width meant the parade floats kept to the right of the double yellow line as they headed north. This turned the southbound side into a handy bike-cruising lane. It was here that I made a few passes on the Mundo while Real Hartford's staff photographer snapped away from the cargo platform.

The Boricua bike representing was strong all weekend, with some classic cruisers and lowriders, vintage road bikes and three speeds, and a huge amount of BMX bikes, with Mongoose as the prevailing brand of choice. My favorites

included an early 1960's Royce Union 3-Speed and a 1970's Itoh 10-speed in a somewhat darker shade of the eye-assaulting apple green livery of my own bike.

Aside from a Sunday afternoon
downpour, the weekend was blessed with decent riding weather. The heavy traffic meant that pedaling was by far the fastest way to get around town, though you had to keep a sharp eye out for some of the
more rowdy car and motorcycle drivers engaging in smoky burnouts and other motorized jackassery. It would be a hoot to ride around, or in, the parade next year, but I saw that the loud paint color on the Mundo was not enough. Next year I will need a sound system, or at least a loud horn.

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