Eel X(treme)!

All zero of you readers probably thought that (a) the eel didn't happen or (b) I never came back.

Well, I'm here to tell you that it did and it was probably the best one since the first one.

There was nearly 20 people and all but two made it all the way through the ride in some fashion. No one did the 70 miles route the right way. Since even though I came up with the thing, I led a group astray through People's State Forest. Though in sacrificing some dirt, we rode the extremely fun road ("road") descent through the middle of the park. 

I think the route road extremely well, so no plans to change it for next year in an meaningful way and I think the date was perfect for "fall color". Maybe I'll charge $2 and get some kind of food option. Maybe not. I got a whole year to think about it. Read more!

Absence fonder grows heart?

I went to that great state of Vermont this weekend as I enjoy doing. I canoed, I plumbed, I mowed, I walked, I grilled, I attempted to get a marriage license and I made the best tomato sauce that I had made in a long time. I don't know what it was; maybe it had something to do with adding all of the sauce ingredients instead of using a single ingredient for a sauce, but it was awesome. I still have some left, which I am willing to sell for $25/jar (limit one jar).

However, I only went for one small bike ride. This was generally due to a lot of rain, but also due to doing other things. As you can imagine and have probably heard if you've read this blog for more like a few day, I like riding a bike in Vermont with an emphasis on Orleans and Caldonia counties. I don't really mind it, though. I am reminded that I like riding a bike and I want to go do it some more, but I have developed some peace. Read more!

Interesting new ways to make yourself tired

Hiking is fun and so is cycling. Generally, though, the hike a bike is not something the people seek out. It's good for character building, but you try to avoid routes where you spend an hour carrying your bike your shoulder. I did this once and was proud to say that I did, but I'm not jumping at the chance to do it again. Hiking is best done without a vestigial bicycle.

What I do recommend is riding to a hike and then locking up your bike. You get to spend maximum time outside and it discourages going too fast: you don't want to ride too hard so that you have energy to hike and you don't want to hike too far so that you can ride home. I did this yesterday wherein I rode over to Ragged Mountain, met some friends and went for a hike and then rode home. Originally, I was going to get a ride home, but apparently everyone thought I was super tough and didn't bring a bike rack. This probably doesn't work if you're planning to go hike Mount Adams or something starting from Connecticut in a day. It does work, though, if you want to go to Ragged Mountain or Heublein Tower or something more low key.

It's sort of the same principle as riding your bike to go fishing.

Ragged mountain is mostly not all that great for mountain biking. Would anyone want to ride on this? There are a couple of interesting sections of singletrack off in the unpopular part of the Reserve over by the powerlines. 

I was lying on this rock for a half hour yesterday looking at the trees and contemplating my trivial existence.

Read more!

Cyclocross for cars

I like cars. The reason I prefer bikes is that you generally can't drive cars in cool ways on public roads like you can ride bikes. Same goes for the woods. Sometimes, however, people put cones in big parking lots and you get to do this car cyclocross called autocross. I've wanted to try it for a long time, but, well, no one has been offering me use of a smaller car than the giant one I drive.

My dad likes cars and decided to sign himself and me up for the Fairfield County Sports Car Club's rookie autocross thing last weekend. It was awesome. It makes you better at driving. I highly recommend it. And since you can't do a thing with gopro'ing it, here's a video of me driving poorly.

Salem's totally going to say, "Stop copying me!"

Read more!

No bikes

Not a lot of bike talk lately. The snow is high and the roads are unpleasant.

So, the hearty have transitioned to skiing for recreation.

I've skied all over the place lately and it's really improved my mid-winter outlook on life.

There was some great snow last night that ameliorated the nasty crust. I went over to Cedar Mountain for a little while and I felt like one of those backcountry skiers who are so cool right now.

Last weekend I skied at Craftsbury Outdoors Center, which is such a cool place.

Johanna liked it, too. 

All the skate skiers zoomed past me, but I quashed my insecurities by reminding myself that I could also ski the snowshoe trails. 

Read more!

Gut Check

Before: My bike was oh-so-sleek.

It seems my heavy hoisting ways have caught up with me, in the form of a pair of inguinal hernias. This has been far more disconcerting than painful, as I find the notion of torn muscle and rogue bits of intestine conceptually bothersome. Fortunately, said breaches are small as these things go, and I have managed to go about my business and ride my bike as usual for the most part without making things worse. In the wearier/achier moments, I've taken to sitting as bolt upright as possible, maintaining tenuous contact with the aft end of my handgrips with my fingertips. This is not the best arrangement, control-wise, so I purchased a stem raiser.

With a few minutes' labor, the part was installed and the bars had reached new heights of both altitude and dorkiness. The “Delta” brand name on the extension has a cool factor more in line with the eponymous bathroom faucets than jetliners or the home of Mississippi blues. The silver linings are: 1) the looping cable routing I had previously done to accommodate the Yuba's front rack meant the cables were plenty long as-is, and 2) said rack's vertical capacity just increased by a few more inches.

Tomorrow, I go under the knife, or laparoscope, more accurately. It's fairly routine, as surgeries go, and I should be just fine, if a bit sore for the first few days. I will be able to wrench on bikes sooner than I can resume riding them (reportedly in the 2-3 week range), so I hope to get caught up on a few project bikes, including something substantially lighter than the Yuba for my first days back in the saddle. I'm waiting on a few more parts for the oddest of these, which will combine elements of obsolete English utility with recumbent part oddity, old school BMX toughness and a dash of modern road bike. I'll fill you in on that soon enough. Read more!

The man who drank water from Dudleytown

Johanna and I hiked the Mohawk Trail this weekend. It's one of the CT blue blazed trails and it used to be the Appalachian Trail until the late 1970s. I recommend it. Quiet, pretty and the only blue blazed trail I know of with lean-tos and campsites. We had a good time. Saturday night, I got to sit by the fire drinking apple brandy, smoke my pipe and look at the stars.

The other thing about the Mohawk Trail is that is goes through Dudleytown- THE MOST HAUNTED PLACE IN AMERICA!!!!! Or, not, who knows? All the paranormal websites seem to give contradictory information. Most people say it's on the Mohawk Trail, but the Warrens say it's not in the Bonney Brook Valley at all and nowhere near Dark Entry Rd. It's hard to verify things in the world of superstition. Dark Entry Rd seems like a really nice neighborhood, though.

Anyway, we hiked through there and it's really quite pretty. The Bonney Brook has a beautiful series of cascades. There are also lots of no trespassing signs from the ominous sounding Dark Entry Forest, Inc.

And, as I was thirsty, I filtered some water from a Bonney Brook tributary and drank it. Hopefully, my demise isn't approaching anymore rapidly than it was before.

Read more!

Motet

There was a time when El Presidente de Chine used to write about these multi-modal adventures to Bridgeport, wherein he'd get driven to Middletown, take a bus to New Haven, ride to Bridgeport, take the train back to New Haven, ride to Middletown and get driven home. It was something like that. Sometimes, I ride to Avon, chop wood and then take a car home with the wood. One time, I rode downtown to work, skateboarded to the train station, took the train to Maryland and then was picked up by car. Yesterday, I used multi-modality by putting a canoe on a car, locking my bike up at the canoe's destination, driving up river, canoeing down river and then riding the bike up to where the car was left. It worked great. I've considered doing this to canoe by myself and keeping the bike in the canoe, so I can go as far as I please, but I can't figure out how to get a canoe on top of a car by myself without breaking a window on the car.

Besides, it can be lonely canoeing by yourself.

There are these things, but I'm unsure if they'd be usable in a hilly place like Connecticut.

Read more!

Snowboarding

One time when I was 14, I went snowboarding. My parents got me a snowboard rental, lesson and lift ticket for my birthday. It was pretty cool. My friends were all better than me, also owned their equipment and had parents who would pay for them to go do those things. Between the ages of 8 and 10, I also went skiing a few times with my dad. One time, my mom and dad went to Sugarbush and it scared the hell out of me. Those Vermont mountains are huge! Their blue squares are like 10x black diamonds in Connecticut. When I was 20 or 21, someone took me skiing again. It was fun, but the bindings on the rental skis were really loose and one of the skis kept falling off.

A couple of years ago, back when I had more money to waste on eBay, I bought a snowboard for $86.52. I  think that's a good deal, though Static Snowboards seem to be an unknown quantity. Last year, I bought some snowboard boots, but we got no snow. Also, lift tickets are wicked expensive. I thought maybe I could start hiking up stuff and then snowboarding back down, but using cross country skis to do that is way preferable. So, the snowboard has just been sitting in my basement. Well, that's not entirely true. I took it to Vermont back in January when it was really warm and slushy and I rode it down the hill in Claire's parents' backyard.

I had a feeling that some place must be inexpensive to go snowboarding. I looked up Otis Ridge in Mass and it was cheap during the week, but closed Monday and Tuesday. I looked up Mowhawk and found that you can ski there during the week for four hours for $20 and it's open all week. That's only $5/hour. That's an awesome deal in the world of skiing. Sundown is never cheap, must be its proximity to the Farmington Valley.

Sunday night, I watched this. Monday, I rode up the lift without falling and rode down a green circle and sort of remembered how to connect turns. Then, I went down a couple of bigger green circles. Satisfied with that, I decided to go down the terrifying black diamonds of Connecticut's largest ski area. So, apparently I'm like 35 years late in discovering that snowboarding is fun. I couldn't figure out how to ride moguls and there's definitely a distinct lack of going uphill.

Perhaps I'll try this again next year.

Read more!

I love Connecticut

A week ago, a terrible thing happened in Newtown. The limited intelligence of the beat bike blog can offer no answers as to the circumstance, but it got me thinking about my small state. I've lived here for all 29 years of my life and over that time I've developed some connections throughout a lot of the state. That's the nice thing about living in one place for a long. However, when terrible things happen, they don't feel remote, because you are connected.

In the last week of stunned, depressed confusion, I've been thinking about Connecticut. Most tragedies like this happen elsewhere and I can fall back on this notion that we don't do that here. Although, I live in a city with a gun violence problem. It's getting better, but we've still had 21 homicides (I don't know what the weapon was for those) and 119 shooting victims. Not that there's a ranking of tragedies, but shooting up an elementary school was not a level of evil contemplated by many. It is still beyond my comprehension as to how someone could muster the hate to kill a room of six and seven year olds.

And, not being a teacher, I also wonder how someone musters up the courage (not to mention the incredible bravery shown the day of the attack) to teacher a room of six and seven year olds. It seems really difficult. I can only handle one or two kids at a time. Who knows, maybe someday I'll be able to be a little league coach, but two hours a week is probably my maximum with a group of kids.

So, I wondered how this came out of Connecticut. I like it here and despite what people say about chilly Yankees, I think people are friendly. Excessive small talk is for people who don't have the fortitude to deal with silence. I went to do some thinking; this is how: Johanna and I got a Christmas tree and wandered around the Canton Land Trust trails on Ratlum Mountain (or maybe it's Breezy Hill). I attempted to walk to my parents' house, but dad got concerned and picked me up with his car at the Farmington line. I rode around Middlefield and Middletown and discovered Middlefield has an awesome skatepark. (I also rode passed CJTS, which is a dark spot in our state's recent history) I went for a hike in the greater Rockland (yes, that is a Mapquest link, because Google didn't seem to recognize Rockland, CT as a place) area and discovered lots of awesome trails on and around the Mattabesett. I went to Home Depot and ran into a classmate and former coworker of mine. Johanna and I went to El Sarape. Between the geology and Mexican food, my faith was renewed in Connecticut. I probably could have used more human interaction, but I had two take home exams this week, so when I wasn't standing in the woods, I was holed up in my living room writing about Dillon's Rule.

I think all communities probably have evil lurking at their margins, but their good can be measured in their responses. I was impressed that a vigil materialized in Bushnell Park Friday evening. Politicians in our state, and elsewhere for that matter, seem to want to address this with meaningful legislation (Where you aware that you can buy weapons that look like they're from Doom (my violent video game knowledge stops in the 90's) right off the internet?). Regular people seem even to want to address this with action beyond hand wringing. The outpouring of emotion that I've seen makes me think that as a community we're not callous to tragedy. And, unlike other times when this has happened, people don't seemed resigned to mass shootings as an acceptable way of life. They really appear to be demanding of changes to gun laws and our mental health system.

When I was riding passed CJTS, where the Connecticut Valley Hospital used to be (it's a wicked depressing place on top of that hill), I was thinking about the decline of public mental health facilities. I live right near Cedarcrest and that's gone now, too. Obviously, publicly run mental health institutions don't have a great history, but I don't think their demise has done anything other than put the mental health infrastructure in prisons. Therefore, for people without means, access to mental health services may mean that you have to commit a crime to get them. I know of two people with children in their 20's with mental health problems that have led to serious criminal or antisocial behavior. The problem is that once these 20 year olds are off their parents' insurance, their access to mental health services disappear. Middle class people cannot afford to get services for their children in these circumstances and there's no public service to pick up the slack except the prison system. One of these kids (I say kids, but they're like the same age as me) has been in and out jail and the other may be soon. It's only once the criminal justice system intervenes that access to mental health services seems to start. Why do we have to wait until a crime has been committed? That's really stupid public policy.

So, I originally had wanted to write about my cyclocross season. I had finally upgraded to a 3 and rode singlespeed all season. It was a lot of fun and maybe I'll tell you about it sometime. That's the kind of stuff that people want to read about on a bike blog.

Read more!

How to ride a long way without really noticing it

No one has written to the beat bike blog asking for advice about riding. Ever. It's not surprising, considering I don't really have any idea how to ride a bike. Yet, I feel like I should dispense some unasked advice anyway.

People often want to ride their bike a long way, but it seems like a difficult undertaking. Yesterday, I rode a pretty long way (95-100 miles), but it wasn't a big deal. I broke it into several different rides of various reasons throughout the day. I rode to Peter's house and then rode with Peter and Doug for awhile. Then I ate some pasta and drank some seltzer and went home via the ferry. I made a bunch of pesto and puttered around the house for awhile. Then, I rode to my parents' house to feed the cat and do some other puttering. I stopped at the grocery store and bought a few things and then came home around 6:30pm. While I was just under the minimum randonée average speed of 10.5mph, I still got things done and rode a long way.

Read more!

Too much time outside: get a cold

I had the slipping freewheel ride on Friday,the lunch with parents and Johanna ride yesterday, and the Ragged Mountain stroll today with Johanna. A combination of the snow on Friday and yesterday seems to have given me a cold. I guess I should have worn a jacket. Read more!

XMAS

There was supposedly an awesome mountain bike ride at Nathan Hale State Forest today, but I couldn't go. I was working on my car. It's a little sad when you work on your car and there's no awesome performance upgrade, but I do have heat again, it didn't take six weeks for to fix it and nothing broke along the way. Hooray!

Also, merry Christmas! (I don't discriminate holidayically, but it's Christmas eve, so that seems like that appropriate command.) and may your undertree be filled with awesome bike parts or awesome socks.


Read more!

I miss my car

At times, I've considered getting rid of my car. I don't drive it very much and I have pay for its upkeep, taxes & fees, attempt to fix it and wash it twice a year. Before the great C&O ride, I realized that the rear passenger brake pads were used up. So, I parked the car at my parents' house (where the car tools live) and ordered some pads. The pads arrived and things were difficult- requiring special tools to retract the piston in the caliper and then the caliper didn't retract because it seems to be hyper-extended and broken. It's been a big mess and I haven't had my car in about a month. While living without hasn't been particularly difficult, as in I can get around by bike and if I really need a car to go a long distance, I can borrow one or get a ride, I really miss my car. Driving is fun.

In other news, did anyone notice how hot it was yesterday? I did one of those trans-Talcott rides and thought I was going to die. I went through three water bottles and a big bottle of Gatorade and didn't feel normal until this morning. You'd think that about a gallon of liquid with be sufficient for a five hour ride.

Lincoln Town Truck, as seen in Glastonbury during Brendan & Johanna's sojourn to the state forest.

Read more!

Some stuff to do, if you're sick of your bike

Tomorrow is supposed to have nice weather, but since Sunday is also supposed to be nice, you should forgo your Saturday bike ride and check these things out instead.

Manny Mania at Heaven (New Ross, County Wexford Park)

Skateboards are cool and this a contest dedicated to the manual. As a member of Hartford's Skateboarding Task Force, I strongly encourage you to go. Competition starts at noon and goes to around 4.

------------------------------------------

And... Another installment of Catalogue!

CATALOGUE Reminder for this Saturday, June 26th @ 8: Russ Podgorsek

Grace, Grease, and Guidepoles

Saturday, June 26, 2010

8 o'clock

342 Oakwood Avenue

West Hartford, CT

(Please note that this show will NOT take place at Arbor Street, but rather at the above residence. Parking is on Oakwood and surrounding streets.)

Russ is a violist and composer. He is a graduate of the Hartt School of Music (CT) and the University of Dayton (OH) where he studied composition with David Macbride, Larry Alan Smith and Phillip Magnuson. He was recently commissioned by the Salisbury Symphony Orchestra (MD) to write his "MicroSymphony" and by the Sudbury Youth Orchestra (ON) for his "Lament and Lullaby" for string orchestra. He was also recently featured as composer-in-residence for the 2008 Simsbury Chamber Music Festival (CT) with performances of his music by the New World Trio and Les Inegales.

Russ will be performing a group of new compositions. There will be a stage. There will be players. There will be Russ, sometimes yelling, always serenading. Russ will confront us in the basement of 342 Oakwood, and if we are so inclined, we will listen from the yard outside, and watch via live feed (love those). We will celebrate the coming of another CATALOGUE. There will be S'mores. And Vodka.

CATALOGUE is a monthly event that showcases artists, musicians and other creative endeavors, and is hosted by Joe Saphire, Nick Rice, and Joel VanderKamp. The event is a collaboration between artist, curator, community and space. CATALOGUEs for May: Dawn Holder, as well as other previous shows, will be available on the 26th.

Contact us for directions or questions: CATA.info.LOGUE@gmail.com, and please pass this reminder along to those we might have missed.

Joe Saphire

Nick Rice

Joel VanderKamp

Read more!

Post-lawsuit Reservoir

I went on the CTNEMBA RAW @ MDC WH Res, or the Connecticut Chapter of the New England Mountain Bike Association's Ride After Work at the Metropolitan District Commission's West Hartford Reservoir. Living in the post-lawsuit mountain biking landscape, I was worried that I'd get there and have my bicycle confiscated. So, I rode my mean looking 29er. I met up with Don (from whom I bought my Kona, coincidentally) and Gary. Well, actually, they'd already left, so I rode to hopefully catch up. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of people riding in groups, so I kept asking each group I saw if they were the NEMBA group ride. Eventually, I caught them.

Nice slow pace and I was shown some cool new trails. Who knew that I'd keep finding new trails at the Reservoir. Also, lots of speculating about which gate was involved in the lawsuit.

Anyway, for the past few weeks there have been these strangely placed and confusing "trail closed" saw horses and they're still there. I don't know if they're related to the lawsuit, because they've been there since before the verdict was announced. Some are there because it looks like they're working on drainage stuff, but others don't make any sense.

After the ride, Johanna and I headed back into the woods for a five mile run. I slept well last night.

Not really any new updates on our beloved Reservoir. Hopefully status quo prevails. Read more!

I'm Conversating to the Folks that Have No Whatsoever Clue

We're not on bicycles in droves because we're afraid we will muss our hair or get raped in a dark alley.

I don't really believe that hype, but take a glance at the guesses made around the blogoverse about why females are outnumbered by males as daily bike commuters in the United States, and those two items come up again and again.

Help end the speculation. The Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals is gathering information about what prevents girls and women from biking altogether, or biking more frequently than we do. The survey runs through May 15 and only takes about ten minutes to complete. Even if you do use your bicycle as your primary method of transportation, you should take a few minutes to speak your mind, so that we're not continuously portrayed as shallow or easily scared, unless the results show that we are indeed both of those things.

Gentlemen should not participate in the survey. Read more!

Beer run

Sometimes when it snows, you decide not to ride your bike and instead stalk a herd of deer through the woods around Cedar Hill Cemetery on your way to the liquor store. Read more!

Climate change

When you ride a bike in the woods, you're acutely aware of temperature, precipitation and ground hardness- even if you're a crappy mountain biker like me. Well, even if you spend a lot of time outside, you become more aware of the weather. To that end, wearing heavy overclothes, I often say things like: "Last Wednesday, I did this ride in a t-shirt!" or "Good thing we can ride across this pond now." Actually, the latter I would never say, because I'm scared of falling through ice and think that I'm fat. Though, on Friday when Dario, Salem and I were doing some walking across ice, finding cell phones in snow banks and rubbing Manchester the wrong way. I was none too pleased about the walking across ice.



Yesterday, Salem and I did some mountain biking at Grayville. I did that NEMBA ride there a couple of months ago and thought that I'd never return, because it's pretty far from my house and the trail network is moderately confusing. Going back was great, because there are some awesome trails there.


The much ballyhooed snow fell (that guy has a Land Rover, what's his complaint about snow?), precluding mountain biking today. So, I went for a walk.

Read more!