Source to Sea River Clean Up Vol. 7

I have come back from my exile to inform you that the river is getting cleaned again!

For the seventh (though not seventh year in a row), I am organizing a clean up of the bank of the Connecticut River at its confluence with the Park River. Since I moved to Tariffville, you might have thought I was going to start cleaning some other river, but you would be wrong. This spot doesn't get its due attention, but it is where two mighty river meet.. I think it deserves a good annual cleaning. The clean up will take place Saturday, September 26 from 10am to 1pm. If you come by car, your best option for parking is either on Charter Oak Ave or Van Dyke Ave. From there, you can walk down the paved access road and up the levee. I'll have some gloves on hand. I advise wearing pants and closed shoes. Also, bring water and perhaps a snack. I'll be bringing gloves and bags via bicycle, so I can't carry a whole case of water or pizzas. Give me a call if you have any questions at 860 729 9603 or email me. This clean up is part of the larger Source to Sea Clean Up, which is happening all up and down the Connecticut River Friday & Saturday.

If Hartford is too far away for you or you just don't like it but still want to clean the river, here are other locations: http://www.ctriver.org/projects/source-to-sea-cleanup/.

Here's a map illustrating approximately where the access road is and where you should park: http://g.co/maps/f9erq

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Source to sea river cleanup vol 5 (or 6)

I can't remember how long I've been doing this. I think the first time was 2008, but I skipped it in 2012. So, it might be the fifth or sixth installment of the beat bike blog's annual river cleanup (as part of the Source to Sea event) at the confluence of the Park and Connecticut Rivers in Hartford. Saturday, September 27 10am-1pm. If you drive there's parking at the intersection of Van Dyke and Charter Oak Aves. Otherwise, ride your bike up to the top of the levee and start cleaning. I think we're going to be join by Hartford Steam Boiler, Trinity College (as per usual (they do a great job)) and students from the nearby CREC school. It should be fun. Wear long pants.

Regarding the 'cross race at Riverside Park this weekend, I'm a little confused as to why they're calling it Hartford's first 'cross race. Do they mean first this year? We may not have great regularity in our races, but we've had a lot of them. There were the ones back in the mid-aughts, the one I did in 2009 and the one last year that ERACE did (which they're doing again in November). Just because you didn't go to any of those races doesn't mean they did happen. I bring this up only because Hartford, unlike the other cities in our state that claim they're more bike-y places than us (actually, I'm just talking about New Haven) haven't ever had a 'cross race.


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Stop leaf blowing trails

Riding on leaves can be difficult. They're slippery and unpredictable. I was riding with Salem the other day and he was cruising through the leaves like a cool guy and I was carefully picking my way down hills.

But just because I can't ride like a cool guy on leaves, doesn't mean I want to get rid of them. In preparation for this cool blog post, I read this. They're talking about erosion control if you rake leaves and I was wondering if they had ever actually been in the woods before. Leaves are the first barrier against rain carrying away your trail's soil. All over the woods where you see leaves, there's minimal erosion. Where leaves are gone and there's bare soil, lots of erosion. People get rid of leaves because riding on them is hard, but apparently have cooked up this trail maintenance theory to lie to themselves. One thing the Reservoir has going for it is that no one has started carrying in leaf blowers. Sadly, I was riding Nassaghegon this week and to my dismay, I found a bunch of leaf blown trails. I always that it was pretty remote out there, but I guess I was wrong.

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Ride it. Love it. Respect it. Pick up the Trash.

Just saw an announcement of a trail cleanup day along the East Hartford section of the Hockanum River Trail this Saturday, June 1st.  9AM-noon.  Meeting behind the East Hartford Town Hall on Main Street.  It seems they are also having a competition as to who can make the best Gorp.  I'm going to skip the trail mix challenge and try to weird out the AMC hikers with my trash bag toting bike trailer.

Huge fan of this trail and if you don't know about it yet, you're totally missing out.  As one astute fellow and very occasional Beat Bike Blogger notes, the East Hartford section near Main Street is "like road bike single track."  Also pretty nice for walking and running.  Hidden gem.  The Hockanum Trail (and associated linear park) is much longer than you would expect.  Hopscotching its way along the Hockanum River valley all the way through Manchester.  

June is a busy month.  Just check out the Real Hartford list of fun stuff to do.  Didn't purposefully post over Brendan's most entertaining video of a bicycle towing a load of tin cans.  He likes river cleanups, so will likely approve.

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Weekend Weekend!

I did lots of things this weekend and now I'm going to tell you about them.

The parts of cyclocross that are exciting on a bike generally do not photograph well.

On Saturday morning, I went out to Mansfield for the Mansfield Hollow Cyclocross race. I love that race. They're so friendly and they've got free seasonally appropriate food and drink. Every year the course changes a little bit. It was harder this year than last, but hard in a fun way. I had a good start again, faded a bit, but ended up finishing 9th. I should probably start running a 12-28 in the back instead of a 12-15. Or perhaps a 39t chainring. 42:12-25 is too tall for me.

Then I got home and put on pants instead of tights so that I could help plant trees on my street. Since I was late, Johanna and I only planted one tree. Usually, I try to plant more. Also, have you realized that you can't spell street without "tree"? I just did. That's why street trees are important or something.

Looking south from Heublein Tower at what I would ride my bike on the next day.

Also, it was the Avon Land Trust's fall hike (my dad is their treasurer), which corresponds with the Heublein Tower "Tower Toot". So, Johanna and I went up there and tooted. We love the Tower Toot. Since you probably haven't done it before, you should go next year. You can see these guys.

Then, we ate some Korean food from a stone pot.

On Sunday, it was the big river cleanup. The Snails and Trinity College were well represented. As it was the third anniversary of the beat bike blog's participation, I rode a bike and transported supplies with my indefatigable ortleib panniers and snake bike. Snake bike painter, Peter, waxed poetic about his days of racing on the snake bike.

Then I went mountain biking and figured out how to ride south of reservoir over to Mountain Rd. in Farmington and then back to rt. 4. It was cool finding trails I imagined to exist, but had never ridden on. I also broke in a 2.3" Hutchinson Bulldog because my beloved Panaracer Smoke wore out. I'm not particularly impressed with this new one. It was more of an experiment to see how well a 2.3 would fit in the back. It fits fine.

Then, Johanna and I went to Johanna's mom's house for dinner.

The end.

Oh yeah, on Friday I pixilated my coworkers by transporting a large box contain my new synthesizer home on my bike. The hardest part was getting it out of the building.

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Good Things Come in Tens

Tomorrow, 10/10/10, please consider grabbing your bike and taking part in 350 for Hartford's 375th. This 350.org Global Work Party event will begin at noon at Hartford City Hall (enter at the rear of the building) with a one hour bike maintenance and repair demo/workshop. From there, the group will ride to clean up some of the bike paths and bike lanes in Hartford that need some attention; Sandpit of Death, anyone?

Finally, all attendees can rest their bones and fill their gullets at Kenney's. See the first link for details. Read more!

Clean the river

Do you care about the world? If you do, come down to the CT River tomorrow at 10am and help us clean up. We meet, as we have for the last two years, at the confluence of the Park and Connecticut Rivers. It's a tradition now!

Email me if you have any questions. Wear good shoes and pants. I'll provide bags and gloves.

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Cleaning stuff again

So, I have unilaterally decided that the beat bike blog is going to participate in the CT River Watershed Council's Source to Sea Cleanup again this year. The little section of the river we cleaned really looked nice afterward. Also, I think we did the real foundational work last year, so the cleanup will hopefully be easier this year.

I was also thinking that it'd be really cool to follow it up with a 100k tour of the river's banks from Windsor to Middletown on both sides of the river- sort of a giant, non-competitive one lap Eel (isn't it cool how I linked to a non-beat bike blog Eel post?). 100k is a tall order right after all that cleaning up, so maybe we'll do it on the Sunday.

So, come Oct 3 at 11am to the confluence of the Connecticut and Park Rivers to do some cleaning.

Editor's note: the dates are now fixed. Read more!

Spring Cleaning

This guy is pretty cool. Perhaps we can put people back to work manually sweeping the streets. Should would reduce carbon emissions.

So after a treacherous and nerve-wracking commute all fall on the discarded refuse of deciduous trees and all winter on the sands and salt poured all over the road by public works it is finally spring. I witnessed one of the most welcome signs to this effect today as a lumbering mechanical beast crawled down my street whisking away all of the sticks, rocks, sand, and leaves that had been forced into the bike lane (aka the shoulder) over the past few months. Despite my ambivalence, at times disdain, for vehicles powered by internal combustion engines I love to see street sweepers plodding down the road leaving it neat, clean, bare, and safer for bicyclists.

How nice it is to be able to maneuver around a suddenly stopped car or allow a large truck or bus to pass without venturing into the land of the unknown, without fear of slipping out on the loose traction of sand or leaves or risking a puncture. I always wonder what kind of cache of nails, glass, or razor sharp metal objects are laying under the soft surface of sand waiting to pierce my soft and temperamental tires. Now the bike commuter can again turn all of their attention to their persistent foes the automobile and the pothole. We can yield the lane (if we so choose) without fear of danger or harsh repercussions. We can zip past stalled traffic and around turning vehicles, in the process flaunting our efficiency and maneuverability to delayed drivers.

Hopefully returning the majority of the street to automobilists will reduce some of the hostilities we have experienced through the winter as cars rebelled against our brazen challenge for equal treatment. More than likely, however, this will be a temporary truce and things will slowly return to the daily clash of car vs. bike. In the meantime, however, I will enjoy my clean roads and newly-restored travel lane while I scan the horizon for voids in the pavement and glance over my shoulder alert for approaching vehicles. Read more!

Riverside Improvements

We could eat lunch on this.

The few of you who read this blog probably think that we don't care about anything but bikes. It's not true. In fact, we're always trying to write about our other interests, like water skiing, painting cats, NASCAR, carpentry, and techno, but our editors shoot the stories down. This post has slipped by because our editors are out sick today:

Come one, come all on October 4th to the confluence of the Park and Connecticut Rivers and help clean it up. In conjunction with the Connecticut River Watershed Council, the Beat Bike Blog is sponsoring a cleanup day there from 11am to 2pm. We all hang out by the river and often ride our bikes there, so it's our duty to clean it up. It should be a great day. Bring rakes and shovels, if you've got them, and the Watershed Council is providing bags and gloves. RSVP to me, Brendan, if you can make it and/or if you want more details. I haven't totally figured out the parking situation, so it's probably easiest if you come by bike. I assume you can park on Van Dyke Ave and I'll put up signs to direct people to the right place. More details will emerge when I'm totally certain about things. 

A map of the general area is below. If you zoom in, you can see where the Park River comes out from underground, that's the area where we'll be.

View Larger Map

For more info on the whole cleanup project, visit: http://www.ctriver.org/cleanup/cleanup2008.html. As a side note, I think it's really cool that they've translated all the cleanup stuff into Spanish.

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