How to get i84 the hell outta hartford!?!?!?

Hartford Public Library, Tueday, april 15th. 6pm to 8pm. in the X room.

With the Connecticut Department of Transportation currently considering options for the I-84 highway viaduct that stretches through Hartford, come hear about the success that Milwaukee had in removing its highway and how Hartford can learn from this success. Speaker: John O. Norquist, former Mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and currently President & CEO of Congress for the New Urbanism.

above copied and pasted from the HPL website.

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Can I get a quote?

Yessss you can!

"Come hear about the success that Milwaukee had in removing its highway."

That's freakin' great! Its sounds like it was a tumor or something, prolly cuz it is. i84 twists and turns dangerously as it snakes through the city cutting it in half like a dirty, smoggy knife. I am all for rerouting the interstate through existing highways and removing the tumor that is the Aetna Viaduct. The area would now finally have a much-needed major East-West greenway corridor from East Hartford to Farmington. Ride to EMS or Westfarms from downtown Hartford almost all the way on a car-free greenway. Yes!

Even if I wasn't interested in the possibility of removing car induced tumors, I’d attend solely because I want to see the X room. The X room! Is it experimental? Revolutionary? I will report back. Read more!

Police Encounter

I had a visit from an old friend from Maine this weekend. Our play in the Hartbeat was a full weekend of one green (read: inexperienced) urban bicyclist showing a greener urban bicyclist "how it's done." She motored into town on Friday afternoon, and we pedaled down past Colt, over the Charter Oak Bridge, through floodwaters, and took an upland asphalt route to the Founder's Bridge.

After supper downtown, the fun with police began. It was raining. We bicycled up Asylum St., underneath the Amtrak rail bridge, and stopped at the light at the bottom of the hill. We held the left hand lane at the front of the lineup, waiting for the light to turn green, intending to ride up the hill and bear left onto Farmington Ave. The instant the light turned green, we heard honking behind us. We ignored it, headed up the hill, holding the lane, and with my friend riding out in front of me onto Farmington, I heard yelling behind us:
"You can't ride in the middle of the road like that!"
As I whipped around to deliver, "Yeah we CAN!" I realized it was a large Police SUV with a large Police inside.
"No you can't, I'll give you a ticket," he bellowed.
"Are you pulling me over, then?" I said as I stopped on the left edge of the lane.
"No, GO!" he yelled.
We continued on the short distance to the light at Broad St, and the police made a left while we continued down Farmington Ave.

I thought this was worth sharing since I have never had a police threaten to pull me over when I'm on my bicycle, and I grew up in a small town where a homicide is a once-in-a-decade event and they hand out OUI's to snowmobilers and tickets to senior citizens without governors on their scooters. Read more!

Presidents Day ride

Yeah, Presidents Day was a long time ago, but back then there was no Beat Bike Blog on which to post photos of my Hartford biking exploits. Also, next Monday is Patriots Day, which is another holiday that ends in "Day" and starts with "P," so good enough.

On Presidents Day, 2008, it was unseasonably warm so I went on a nice little jaunt around the Hartford waterfront (also Newington, Wethersfield, and West Hartford, but those locales didn't yield any nice pictures). I took these pictures (upon which you should click to see them in their full-sized glory):



That's Hartford from upriver, at a moment when God considered smiting it for sinfulness. He later reconsidered, noting that Springfield is even more sinful. I took the picture from an old railroad bridge over the Connecticut river. I would have gained access to that bridge via the network of bike trails at the north end of Riverfront Park, except the bike trails were swamped with mud and melting snow. Luckily, you can go around the ballfields there, along the high, manmade hills, and get to the bridge while avoiding the muck. The bridge looks like this:



Here is a panorama of Hartford from downriver, under the Charter Oak Bridge:



Here's the underside of the Charter Oak Bridge:



And, while I'm on the topic of bridges, here's the Bulkeley Bridge:



Lastly, here's a sign I passed in Hartford while riding around that day:

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test if i actually wrote a blog

if i wrote a blog
well, if i actually did write a blog on the irony of being a circulation manager and a bike commuter, i guess this would be a good start. but i don’t. i rekon this’d also be the spot for a blog on urban outdoorism! i do actually have an idea what that means. i would also spell chick it. missspellings sux.
joel and i had a great short paddle saturday afternoon from the east hartford riverfront, up and around the flooded hockunum and down to wethersfield cove. the wind wasn’t bad at all on the river and except for cold fingers, i felt great. joel pointed out a bunch of hawks, eagles, other raptors and some nests. i pointed out that the strange sewage smell from the water treatment plant kinda smelled like BBQ, which stragely it did.
taking out at a very cold and windy wethersfield cove was very much that; cold and windy. actually maybe fuckin’ cold and windy would be better. my white fingers had no feeling by the time my boat was securely strapped to the roof rack. burrr. t’was so much warmer paddling down the river.
well, there were no biking adventures this morning, just a regular ride in. rain sucks. its gonna rain manana tambien. arrgggg! Read more!

CCBA Annual Dinner 2008

Wednesday was the perfect evening for a great bike ride to Manchester from Hartford along the streets and bike paths. Josh, Breandan, Krash, Rick and Joel and I met at 5PM on the Founders Bridge and took off without the pre-party brews i accidently left at work in the lunchroom fridge! ARRGG!!! The notes posted on the CCBA website were long but worked well and soon we were navigating the streets of East Hartford and made it onto the bike path just in time for a flat.

The flat tire provided a great opportunity to enjoy a fine bottle of wine and find out who carries spares and tools and who doesn't! I also noticed the few bits of trash that were around were mostly glass bottles and plastic bottles, no cans! no cans at all! there was a lot of broken glass on the trail though. earliera woman riding the other way warned Rick about it and didn't make eye contact with anyone else...and Rick got the flat! was it a hex? a coincidence? we will never know!

Many rights and lefts later, we turned right onto Adams Street and soon took over the lane to make a left into the Adams Mill Resturant (i told you lots of rights and lefts!). We locked up our bikes to some farm machinery and walked inside to the dinner, well, to the bar for drinks i should say. To our dissappointed surprise, we seemed to be the only people who rode? huh? but that was fine, we drank, bid on silent auction items, mingled and enjoyed dinner and a few speakers.





The ride home was more fun. We made a quick stop at a gas station for sundries and then took off with blinking red lights and white headlights shinning the road ahead...until mine fell off. That was pretty much the end of my light shining, which was good, especially when we got to the dark bike path. Who wants to see all that ugly broken glass when you can just speed through it, hurtling through the darkness!?!? no worries though, no flats from glass; it was as if we were lifted! and flying high above the sharp, tube eating menaces! now, that one, dark, curve where we all sped off the path, noooo problem.



speedbumps. now that was a problem. this time Joel was hissing. we stopped just inside a parking complex and quickly had lights pointed towards a removed wheel. Such skill and teamwork was displayed that some dude in a nearby second floor apartment watched us intently and maybe even video taped us. wow. maybe its all on youtube!

Back in Hartford, i snagged the forgotten beers from the fridge and we chugged them while pondering about the recently burned-down Virgin Mary Shrine. Why ohh why?

A few sprinkles of rain encouraged us to get going and Krash lead us on a fun route through the southend and eventually down Washinhton Street. Josh took off down Park Street to go home. The rest of us ride till two of us split down Russ and two continued down Capital Ave; all with the intention of a quick afterhours at my house.

All in all a great night. thanks for ridin' all.

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