Its Bike Week of Bike Month!

its sooo nice outside! don't be a fool...ride a bike!

Wednesday, May 14: Bike to Dinner Lena's at 5:30pm.
2053 Park Street, Hartford, CT 06106

arrive early to drink beer at the tiki bar in back!
and be sure to harass rob about a bike rack!
Lena's / Sully's is the freakin' spot.
come meet fellow bicyclists.
what more could you want!?!?!?

BIKE to WORK. friday, may 16th, Old State House. 7am-9am
bike to work is this friday...not the last friday!
come enjoy a free breakfast and 100 of your newest friends.
its free! even i can afford that.


Friday, May 16: Happy Hour- Corner Pug at 5:30pm
Bicycles and Happy Hour! Celebrate if the weather is good! Drown your weather sorrows in beer if its not so good!
Corner Pug is on the corner of New Britiain Ave and New Park Ave.
they'll have a bike rack out for us!

ps! get famous! help the cause.
this an email forward from Adam Bulger, a writer at the advocate:

I'm a writer for the Advocate, working on a story about different ways of getting around the Hartford area without resorting to cars. I'm looking for comments from people who ride bikes instead of cars (I'd like to emphasize commuting to work, but this will not be the entirety of the article). This will be quick, non-intrusive questions, like why and when did you start riding bikes, what do you like/dislike about it, if you have any interesting stories or experiences or if you have any other observations. I'm happy to hear any criticism about how municipalities/drivers don't respect bike riders, so if you've got axes, grind away.

chillwill was nice enough to forward this on my behalf. If you'd like to respond via email, you can contact me at abulger@hartfordadvocate.com, or if you'd prefer speaking with me, my direct line is (860) 548-9300.

Thanks in advance for your help,
Adam

pps. if you ask nicely, he will also ask long intrusive questions. Read more!

Gross!

A nasty thing has happened on the past two days on the way to work. Yesterday, I watched a woman vomit while crossing Marshall Street and today I watched a different woman vomit on to the grass in front of the Hartford Children's Theater.

Is there a plague ravaging Asylum Hill?

Be careful, Joel.

----

Also, I came in third in the race on Sunday and received a giant container of HEED as a prize. It's funny, according to that website selling HEED, that jar I got costs $45. I have not had any HEED yet and I'm actually sort of frightened of it. Second place got $5 cash and first got $10. I'm unsure who made out the best in this deal.

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The Scruffy Peloton rides again!

The Mark Twain House to the Spigot, a 25 mile ride? yep, if you do it Brendan's way via Avon's Rails to Trails! Check the ROUTE.

Our group shrunk to four riders for last thursday's ride, Brendan, Johanna, Joel and ChillWill. The ride over the mountain through Talcott Notch wasn't bad. The twisty road by Avon Old Farms was fun and cars couldn't pass you due to the width of the road, so they had to go slow. No worries. No honking. The Rails to Trails path was mostly empty and flat and enabled lots of conversing, scheming and planning. I bunny hopped over a speed bump in some randomn parking lot off Hopmeadow. Yes! I am no longer a virgin thanks to pedal cages!


Ahhhh.....bridges and bikes! We should maybe rename this blog!

Some jack-ass in Porche hooked Johanna and missed her by a few feet on rt. 185. Jerk!!!

The wings from Wings and the pitchers at the Spigot were delightful after the ride.

i am looking forward to the next ride of the Scruffy Peloton. Read more!

Can't We All Just Roll Along?

From San Fran - the bike capital of America, I post this treat:

From Matt Smith's SF Weekly Piece about sharing the road:

"What I think is interesting is the threshold after which it becomes common knowledge that bicycling is safe, responsible, and comfortable transportation," says SPUR's transportation policy director, Dave Snyder. "There will be a point when enough people ride bikes that the idea that we're a bunch of freaks, and that we're better off without bicycles because it's dangerous, will be forgotten."

Dave Snyder, a long time bicycle guru, has come to Hartford before to discuss building great bicycle organizations.

Peace,
Ken K.
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bike racks

I know that this is something interests many of us:

I'm invited to a meeting next Wednesday to discuss where the City is going to use its grant money to put bicycle racks downtown. This money is only for public land/right of ways, so that presents a problem for State House Square. Apart from that, any suggestions on rack locations?

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Movie Night Tonight! Free! Critical Mass movies.

Critical Mass Movie Night at Alchemy/The Green Vibration
The CCBA Bike Everywhere Program and Alchemy Present:

Movie Night tonight at 7pm.

FREE! FREE! FREE! FREE! even i can afford it!

we're showing three short movies about Critical Mass.

Join us in celebration of the Bike to Work Week (May 12th - 15th) sponsored by the Central Connecticut Bicycle Alliance

The movies being shown:

We Are Traffic (1999, 50 min.) chronicles the history of the Critical Mass bicycle movement, now a monthly ritual in over 100 different cities in 14 different countries since its genesis in San Francisco in 1992. The movie tracks this leaderless, grassroots movement, which has brought together complete strangers in an exuberant, commercial-free public space filled with creativity and unpredictability.


Return of the Scorcher (1992, 28 min.) discovers an inspired and evolving bicycle renaissance. Filled with inspiring scenes of bike use filmed in China, The Netherlands, Denmark and the USA, this is the movie that gave us the term "Critical Mass".


Still We Ride! (2005, 37 min.) This action-packed documentary is a glimpse into the shocking showdown between the monthly Critical Mass bike ride and New York City police in the months after the Republican National Convention in August 2004.


http://www. thegreenvibration. com/calendar/fridayfreefilmbike/

www. beatbikeblog. blogspot. com
riding in hartford
And here is the rest of it. Read more!

28-year old track bike virgin gets some

Ever been blown away by a track bike? My first ride on a track bike recently flipped my lid, kid.

I'm going to mix some metaphors here, because it's fun and sometimes humorous. If my Raleigh M-80 with a chain that needs lube, brake pads that need a deglazing, a broken shifter for the rear derailleur and some heavy hard-case semi-slick tires is a 93 Chevy Blazer, then my boy TJ's track bike is a hot knife. This thing transfers energy from your body to forward motion so cleanly that you'd think you were riding your bike in outerspace in a vacuum-sealed chamber. Well, maybe I just made up the vacuum chamber thing is a stretch I made for this post, but I did think of the hot knife when I was trying out TJ's bike.

So what happens when you get so nice and then go out riding with a courier on his off-hours? You get blown away, and you make sure the ride is just a short jaunt to sit down and continue to get nice in the neighborhood park.

Abstinence is not the answer, my mountain and roadie friends.





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More 5-Borough Pictures

OK, so technically it was the Four-Borough Bike Tour for me, because I broke from Team Hartbeat and joined with Team Brooknam (me, Chris, and Mike D.) to go meet up with our boy Ming, have some beers, and go to a Mexican joint. After that, I knew that rejoining the procession would result in my missing the 4:07 train to Waterbury, which would, in turn, result in my eventual death at the hands of my wife. So I headed back to Grand Central. Pictures and a little bit of text are after the jump.



I started the day in Bed-Stuy at my boy Chris's house. Here's his very fast bike getting ready to leave the house.




Riding with Chris to the rendezvous point at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge.
(Chris doesn't need to trouble himself with silly things like paying to participate in the ride or wearing a silly little blue vest. In the New York bike world, Chris always has the hook-up, and today was no different - he made a call just as we started the ride and someone met him at Canal Street with a VIP bracelet.)




The meet-up went off without a hitch. Bagels were eaten and coffee was drunk.




Will eloquently expressed what it feels like to meet up with people at 6:45 after a night on the town.




This guy had a folding bike that was way goofier than mine.




Will, Chris, and Dan cross the Brooklyn Bridge in the deadly "Flying V" formation. Hartford + Brooklyn + Ann Arbor = Bicycle Kung Fu.




We waited at Church and Vesey for a long while before getting started.




A deli near the start on the ride was mobbed. I bought Brendan a tallboy of Heineken, and a cop who was there congratulated me for starting so early in the morning.










The crew waits for the ride to get started.




Were there transvestites on tricycles? You bet!




Dag. There were a lot of people.




Eventually, we got moving.




But things slowed to a crawl at the entrance to Central Park, so Chris and I detoured around the park and made a pit stop on 3rd Ave.








Between the top of the park (where Chris and I rejoined the ride) and Astoria Park there were many fine views. That last pic is of some cool-looking project rooftops on the Queens side of the Queensborough Bridge.




In Astoria Park, we were joined by Mike D., Chris's friend and business partner, who is a sociopath and a hilarious person. I unfortunately failed to get a shot of his awesome Bilenky cargo bike.




Eventually, we reached the best Borough, Brooklyn. That was the cue for me, Mike, and Chris to leave the route and show up unannounced at Ming's house. Ming is a crazy shut-in who plays World of Warcraft, shoots nerf darts at his cats, and builds little models of giant fighting robots. He also tucks his belly in under his belt. He seemed completely unsurprised to see us, provided us with beers, and suggested we get food at the Mexican joint across the street, which we did, although I failed to make any photographic record of any of it. Something else I failed to photograph was the Honduran guy with whom I had a lengthy conversation on many topics while traveling from Bridgeport to Waterbury. He lamented the strict enforcement of DUI laws in this country (he has one charge in New York and one in Connecticut), drank six tallboys of Coors (he offered me one but I declined), and generally made the ride entertaining.
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While we were busy getting sun burned in New York, look what Jack Hale, Knox Parks' executive director, wrote in the Courant:

Courant.com

Greenway Journey Begins

Groundbreaking For First Leg Of City Trail Friday

By JACK N. HALE

May 4, 2008

The stone is starting to roll. After 10 years of effort by many, many people, the first leg of the South Branch Trail of Hartford's Park River Greenway is about to become a reality.

Who could have guessed that laying a trail across an unoccupied urban meadow could be so challenging?

There will be a groundbreaking for the project at 2:30 p.m. Friday at the corner of Nilan and Brookfield streets in southwest Hartford. The first stretch of paved trail will extend from that corner through meadow and forest to the corner of Brookfield Street and Flatbush Avenue. A loop from this segment closer to the river will be added later.

This first piece of greenway will be a recreational and environmental amenity. This part of the city has been reborn during the decade of planning for the trail. The old Charter Oak Terrace and Rice Heights public housing projects have given way to new single-family homes, the Breakthrough Magnet School, a completely redesigned A. I. Prince Tech, the Charter Oak shopping area, the Job Corps Academy and the new Hartford Housing Authority headquarters. The greenway will fill in the middle of this area and help make it a real neighborhood.

The trail also provides unmatched access to one of the better bird watching sites in the city. Because of the open water and the mixed meadow and forest, this marginal piece of property has become a stopover for migrating birds and habitat for wildlife including turkeys and foxes. The trail's proximity to four Hartford schools makes it an educational resource.

This new trail segment will be a wonderful first step; the trick will be to keep it from being the only step.

The trail is part of a comprehensive plan. Another section from Nilan Street to Newfield Avenue is ready to go as soon as funding (about $325,000) is available. It can link to West Hartford's Trout Brook Greenway, currently under construction in some areas.

To the north, the trail will connect to on-street bike lanes between Flatbush Avenue and Hamilton Street. From there, the system will connect to new trails through Pope Park to Capitol Avenue. Planners hope to link through Bushnell Park to the Connecticut River.

In the grand scheme, these trails will connect to the East Coast Greenway, a planned pedestrian/bicycle corridor that will run from Maine to Florida.

We cannot realistically execute this plan if each leg takes 10 years from concept to groundbreaking. This first leg was made possible by the dogged work of city, state and federal agencies, nonprofits such Knox Parks Foundation, Hartford Areas Rally Together, the Capital Region Council of Governments, Mutual Housing and neighborhood residents. The Eastern Connecticut Resource Conservation and Development Council and U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service both went above and beyond to keep the project on course. Sorting out ownership of the land was a challenge, as was procuring the funding.

Hartford has remarkable green corridors that will readily support trails for recreation and commuting. We must hope all the partners, as well as agencies such as the Department of Transportation, will see the value in an expanded trail system and help expedite it.

Jack N. Hale is the executive director of the Knox Parks Foundation.

Copyright © 2008, The Hartford Courant

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The 5 Boro Walk Your Bike Tour

The Beat was well rep’d this past weekend by a hardy group of current and former Hartford peoples converging in the rotten apple in what was prolly the most blogged event in the long, extinguished history of the Triple B. Woo-haa!

El Cinco Burros! There is far too much to think of organizing into a digestible meal of a post; so instead I shall cook up a stew free of high-fructose corn syrup and full of beer and pedaling…lots of pedaling. I suppose about now is a good time to explain that the 5 Boro Bike Tour is a 42mile car free ride with 30,000 of your closest friends though all five boroughs of NYC including riding on the FDR, the BQE, and crossing the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge. In case you can’t do the math, that’s over 60,000 bicycle wheels spinning and avoiding NYC potholes!

El Presidente de China has well educated y’all about the ride from the Beat to Dirty Water, so I’ll just curse him one last time for that one massive hill and mention again…shorter isn’t always better; like cock size for example. Otherwise, besides the evil hill, and Klan drive, the ride was pretty nice and scenic. Doing 30mph down a hill through the Waterbury ghetto is also worth a mention I reckon.


In this exciting photo one can barely see the bikes of Chill Will and El Prez de Cheeenay with all the action going on riding the train to Bridgeport. Though no accommodations for bikes, this train was all good. On the train from B-Port to NYC we had them in the middle doorway of the car which was a pain depending which door opened. The idea of spending a few days in the city with my bike and living out of my messenger bag made me as happy as the lack of Metro-North in Hartford pisses me off. Amtrack sucks. Go fuck yourself with your overpriced tickets!!!!

Upon arriving at Grand Central we were greeted by Shoupy, the Shoup Shoupsta! I am not sure if he rode there from Ann Arbor, but he very well might have. El Prez decided against the formal motorcade and instead bombed the crap outta Broadway; speeding through the traffic, checking cabs and leading us quickly and dodge-ily to the Brooklyn Bridge. We soon split, to meet up later; as I was going with Shoup to Park Slope to his friend Megan’s apartment, who was hooking us up with a spot to crash. Thanks again Megan, good lookin’ on the couch…very comfy! And puffin' on the rooftop was sweeeet!


Shoupy and I met up with el Prez much later in Bed-Stuy at a party with some of el Prez’s administration, lots of bikers, assorted hipsters, and three fireman with large iron tools suitable for hunting wild boar. We drank, talked and tried not to inhale burning particle board before retiring early as we were to assemble the Beat Crew at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge at 6:45AM the next morning. Shoupy and I arrived at 7:15AM the next morning! Our crew of about a dozen soon took off for lower Manhattan.


Lots of people. This was the first taste of the 5 Boro Walk Your Bike Tour. As the day progressed the sun burned away all the clouds…and a few faces too I imagine. The day turned out wonderful.





Real men wear leg warmers. Later, in a bizarre twist, Shoupy removed his shorts and finished the tour in bike shoes, leg warmers, a hand-carved wooden cod piece from Turkey and his tour vest. Sexy? Yes, of course! But somewhat disturbing to the elderly and those younger than them.


A media circus surrounded El Presidente de China through most of Queens and was quite a spectacular sight. I was harassed for my crate of bootlegged bananas that I was selling 3 for $10 or one for free.


Welcome to Brooklyn! Woo-haa! I had a freakin’ good time chillin’ here the night before as well as the ride through on the tour. The only sucky thing was walking my bike for 45minutes in a bicycle traffic jam on the Bronx-Queens Expressway where four lanes became one. This was where the ride officially became the 5 Boro Walk Your Bike Tour. The car traffic jam on the other side was moving more quickly! The trike next to me had a louder stereo system than the cars! It was total fuckin' bizzaro world!!!

Eventually we were able to pedal again and riding on the highway along the water with a cool breeze felt great. Crossing on the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge is always super cool. Guinness and grinders at the irish pub was even better.


Taking pictures of groups of three on a ferry always has funny results. See above!


And again if you need further proof!



Much, much later, after learning the 7:20 train didn’t exist and I’d be taking a 9:07train back to CT, I decided to scoot on down to the west-side to watch the sun set over Dirty Jersey on the Hudson. I soon found myself pedaling unexpectedly through Times Square. Sunset, libations and a chance to rest and relax on the riverfront was a wonderful way to finish my visit to NYC.

On the train ride back from Bridgeport to Dirty Water I had to again store my bike in the middle doorway of the car, but this time the conductor made everyone get out the end doors and never opened the middle doors. Thanks dude! Metro-North is pretty good. Amtrack, not so good.



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Five-Borough Ride Prequel: Hartbeat to Dirty Water to Crooklyn

As our three non-contributing readers know, this blog and the lives of its contributors are all about bikes bikes bikes. That means we like to go to other cities to go on organized bike rides, we like to ride around our own city in a disorganized fashion, and we like to use bikes instead of cars whenever possible. (I would also like to use a bike instead of a can opener whenever possible, but that is a harder proposition.)

To that end, Will and I traveled to New York for the 5-Borough (or Boro, as the organizers like to say) Bike Tour in the most fitting way: We rode to Waterbury and took Metro-North to New York from there. After the jump, the harrowing, heartwarming, inspiring tale of our trip.


The first question you may ask, dear reader, is this: "Why Waterbury? Why not just take the train from Hartford? I mean, you do call it the Beat Bike Blog, not the Dirty Water Bike Blog, right?" To that, I say, firstly, "That was three questions, not one." And, secondly, "Stupid stupid Amtrak." You see, despite the fact that Hartford is bigger and better and has way more insurance companies than Waterbury, it must suffer with a second-rate train company. That second rate company charges $47 for a one-way trip to New York, while Metro-North charges $12.50. And does that extra $34.50 get you something extra, like say, bike accommodations on the train? Of course not. On the contrary, bikes can only go on Amtrak trains in boxes, and it's really hard to ride to the station while carrying a bike box. Stupid Amtrak.

So we decided to ride to Waterbury.

Here is a tip I will give to anyone planning a ride anywhere, but especially to Waterbury from Hartford: Consult a map that shows elevations. I chose our route, and failed entirely to consider hills, resulting in a very direct 23.7 miles from my house in West Hartford that contained a truly insurmountable hill in Bristol. How insurmountable? It was the kind of hill where if you're riding on it and you lean back at all, you pop a wheelie. The kind of hill you could not drive up on an icy winter morning (if, like me, you drive a '98 Corolla). It was very fucking steep and Will was right to curse me for my foolish route. So we walked. It was shameful.

After that, the route was pretty much solid, except the one part where we climbed a steep hill on Route 69, turned off onto a little street, and missed a turn off that little street so that we ended up returning to Route 69 at the bottom of the hill we'd just climbed.

We rolled into Waterbury at 2:20, meaning we did the trip in a little over two hours. Given (a) the stupid, impossibly long hill, (b) the stupid little detour, and (c) the fact that I was riding a folding bike laden with supplies and Will was schlepping a mess bag with lots of unnecessary stuff like a sleeping bag inside, we deemed this a pretty good time. It was especially good because we arrived just in time to some old guy at the Waterbury train station scream at another old guy for a while, and then we still had enough time to go get pizza.

From there, we traveled to NYC in solid, utilitarian comfort, and even managed to buy a couple cups of coffee during our six-minute layover in Bridgeport (although I almost missed the train). The trip down the valley from the Dirty Water to Stratford goes along the Naugatuck river most of the way and is rather lovely, in a run-down, abandoned factory kind of way.

At Grand Central, we were met by Dan A.K.A. Shoupy, a former Beat resident who, amazingly, made the trip from Ann Arbor (which is in Michigan, which is really far away and totally not served bt Metro North). He had arrived the previous day, so he left his stuff at the rest in Brooknam and met us on his bike. We then proceeded downtown, over the Brooklyn Bridge, and into the promised land. Naturally, we went right to bed so we would be well-rested for the next day's festivities. We definitely did not go to a party in Bed-Stuy, and three New York firemen definitely did not appear at that party unexpectedly to investigate a barbecue pit in the back yard. (Something else that definitely didn't happen at the party we didn't go to is that some guy told me he was "trying really hard not to be a commodities trader." The funny thing is, I'm not even trying and I'm having more success than him at not being a commodities trader.) Below, some pictures from our voyage. (As always, click for a larger view.)

Will, in Bristol, takes a break and looks ambitiously toward Waterbury.



My highly specialized touring rig (a.k.a. my folder).



You stay classy, Wolcott!



So many funny captions are possible for this photo.


Woot! We reached the station!



Seeing the sights of Waterbury from a train platform: Here is the clock tower at the headquarters of the Waterbury Republican-American.



Two and a half hours of cushiony vinyl comfort for just $12.50.



A very appropriate sticker in the train bathroom as we pulled out of The Dirty Water.


Crossing into Brooklyn, making funny, clothing-related poses.

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Burros

It looks I'm the first one who gets to write about the 5boro thing that was yesterday. Here goes:

On the whole, it was fun. I'd never been before, so riding on the highway was a new and cool experience. Seeing 30,000 people with bicycles is also a very cool experience. I suppose I didn't actually get to see all 30,000 on bicycles at one tonight, but I did see a lot. The funny thing about that is that it's not really Utopian. It was like Disney World meets a traffic jam on the BQE. Well, I suppose it makes perfect sense that's it's like a traffic jam on the BQE, because it was actually on the BQE where the biggest traffic jam was. The Disney World part is because there was a lot of people standing in line wearing funny clothes waiting to ride something. I think I over-explained that simile sufficiently.

Here's the BQE with no traffic jam and lots of people on it:

Here's Johanna waiting in line ten minutes later:

Here's the high point of Staten Island, Danny Blaine's Food and Spirits:

The food had to be retrieved from a deli across the street, but the beer was awesome and the bartender even gave me a free one.

In an effort to add content to the compendium of bridge pictures, here are two bridges from a ride I took at Case Mountain on Friday:

While riding over the Verazano Narrows Bridge, a guy in front of me fell, and I believe that he broke his collarbone. I hope that he's ok, it looked terrible.

Also, despite facilitating all the complex logistical details concerning Marisa riding with us, in the end, she didn't come.

Oh yeah, and I looked like either crap or a dork:

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