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

Read more!

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.



Read more!

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.

Read more!

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:

Read more!

lunch break

I'm not hardcore enough to ride my bike during my lunch break. However, I am hardcore enough to take a walk during my lunch break. I did that today and wandered through Bushnell Park. Imagine my glee when I discovered that the Soldiers and Sailors' Arch was open! I took some pictures of the view from up, the giant koi in the smelly pond, and some nice blooming cherry trees.

Enjoy!












Read more!

bridges and mud. and mud.

Bridges and mud and gin and juice. Well, as my esteemed blogging collogue mentioned; last Tuesday night was all about the bridges. Unknown to us before the ride, it was also gonna be about mud, river mud! We prolly ended up on a dozen bridges, including the nice metal pedestrian bridge over the Hock in East Hartford.


The pedestrian bridge over i91 from the back of a Market Street Parking lot to Riverside Park is like pedaling in prison. The only thing missing was razor wire, but as you can see, Joel doesn’t seem to mind. None of us did, it’s BRIDGE NIGHT! And we were laaaaid back.


We had a nice break on a dike with a great view of the city, but noisy due to the interstate. This was the first spot Josh whipped out his musical camera tripod. I took the above soon afterwards on the next bridge. T’was much more peaceful and quiet there.


We rode another dike in East Hartford and wound our way back to the riverfront to cross on the Bulkley Bridge (i84), which is super loud and hectic due to all the traffic. Not fun. And we realized getting back down to the river to bike along the water to Charter Oak Landing wouldn’t be quick and easy. We pedaled up to Constitution Plaza, crossed a bridge over Columbus Bulevard and then carried our bikes down the stairs to the river, under the Founder’s Bridge. After a rest we decided to head north, just to see the flooding. The river walk dips down under the Bulkley Bridge and the path we were on would soon be under water. We sped up, racing to the edge of the water on the sidewalk…soon realizing…well before hitting the water in the dark…there was slick river mud! Like ice, but oozey. Fun!





Josh ain’t the only blogger with rare shots of a lost sneaker in the mud! (no, it doesn’t belong to us.) (and no, I am not sure how we all managed not to loose a sneaker too.)


We turned around muddier for the visit and headed south along the river, criss-crossing sides of the dike and flood wall and arrived at Charter Oak Landing. Here’s a massive amount of trees and random stuff that floats and is really big; all collected on the lower dock area. Oh yeah, there’s Josh too!



Our next bridge was the Charter Oak Bridge. We all had issues getting to the beginning of the ramp. My short-cut wasn’t shorter. It actually wasn’t a good idea at all. Joel had a chain issue as soon as he hit the path and Josh dropped something...i think. But we all persevered. I still like the view of the city from this bridge, but its super noisy.



Here’s a trilogy of GREAT ideas:

Carry our bikes down the stairs, down lots of stairs
Assume the East Hartford Riverfront is not under water
Assume any leftover mud will be pedalable. (don’t play scrabble with me if you don’t think that’s a word)

All went as well as one might expect. Joel bravely lead the way and took one for the team as the slick mud took him down. Soon we were actually pedaling on slick mud that was under water. It was treacherous and energy draining. Joel wisely (insert juvenile verbal attacks on his manhood here) bailed and fled for higher ground; but Josh and I somehow pushed on through deepening mud on the sidewalk until the path ahead was completely submerged. We didn’t want to leave the river. We talked of a boat, perhaps building a raft, but the upstream paddle didn’t appeal to us. We had to retrace our steps and find a way around, eventually passing through a school parking lot and regaining river access, and Joel, at the boat launch parking area. Mud. We actually pedaled through water!


This is the best photo I have of the three of us. We’re crossing Founder’s Bridge; returning to the Beat; and really wanting to eat chicken tenders and sweet potato fries at kenny’s…and drink beer. The freakin’ barrel of gin and juice was long gone at this point.


The other half of this pair of gloves was also gone at this point. If you find it, holla at me! The only exciting thing I can remember after the last bridge and before Kenny’s was hearing Joel come down the stairs behind me. Then I immediately saw him in front of me and realized Josh just took the stairs on his folding bike. Yeah!


Read more!

Bridges!

Last night, Will, Joel and I set out to cross a whole lot of bridges. We succeeded admirably, and managed in the process to (1) fall repeatedly in the mud, (2) drink a large quantity of gin and juice, and (3) take some pictures, which you can see after the jump.

I won't bother to describe our route in great detail, aside from noting that we crossed the Charter Oak Bridge, the Founders Bridge, the Bulkeley Bridge, the railroad bridge north of the Bulkeley Bridge, the pedestrian bridge over I-91, and sundry other overpasses. Will's post on the ride will surely include all the information anyone could hope for about three drunks criss-crossing the Connecticut river on a Tuesday night. (We discussed the relative merits of duelling blog posts and collaborative blog posts. We agreed that when it comes to singing, collaboration is best, when it comes to freestyle rapping, battling is best, and banjos and blog posts are in the middle.) Anyway, here are the pics, which you can click on to see a larger version:


Luckily, I brought a tripod, so tender moments like the one shown above could be recorded for posterity.



The walkway in Riverfront Park had a lot of river mud, which caused some sorry sucker who came before us to lose one sneaker.



I brought along a bottle of gin and juice, which we all enjoyed. In this photo, Joel has his mind on his money and his money on his mind.



This is the lovely view of Hartford from the railroad bridge. If you want to enjoy this view yourself, I recommend getting off your bike and standing still to do so. There are a lot of large holes in the wooden walkway, and it would be foolish to take your eyes off the walkway while riding there.
Read more!

Riding to Middletown in the Pouring Rain

You know how sometimes you take the bigger car so you can drop off the kids at school, and your wife takes the smaller car, but then she goes for drinks with coworkers and gets a ride home, leaving the smaller car in Middletown, and you need the smaller car the next day, and you're home in West Hartford and it's 9:30 at night and pouring rain and you can't go together with your wife in one car to get the other car because the kids are already sleeping? Don't you hate that?

Anyway, that's the situation I was in on Monday night, so I was forced by cruel circumstance to ride my bike 22 miles in the rain to Middletown. And it was pretty much awesome.

As I put on my technical wet weather cycling gear (cargo shorts, t-shirt, fleece pullover, raincoat, rain pants, sneakers, galoshes), my wife pointed out that I was crazy. She was right, but what could I do? Besides, it was wet but warm, and excercise helps eradicate that slight paunch I have developed since moving to Connecticut, about which she gently complains from time to time.

The route I took was basically completely un-scenic, but I realized something cool: The best way to make drab, ranch-house-after-ranch-house-after-ranch-house suburbs look alluring is to cover them in rain and darkness. Suddenly, instead of orderly streets with carbon copy lawns and architectural uniformity, you get shadowy alleys, cones of soft yellow light, random construction vehicles that loom up suddenly out of the darkness, and a pleasant rainy blurriness that makes the whole scene look like a slightly grainy exterior shot meant to establish mood before cutting to the drama taking place inside an unassuming house in some sort of artsy movie about suburban ennui. Also, there were lots of noisy frogs, and an opossum that was completely frozen in its tracks by my headlight, which made me consider leaping off the bike and trying to catch it, except what the hell would I do with an opossum?

I didn't take any pictures because it was dark and very rainy, but here is a picture of the paper I wrote my route on, which got very very soaked because I put it in my pocket but didn't zip that pocket up (click for a larger shot, if you care).

Read more!

thursday & sunday

There isn't very much photographic evidence of the ride we took on Thursday except for Joel's gigantic steak sandwich. Joel was extremely proud of this sandwich. Joel also had a 30 pack of Miller Lite. At one point, he put the sandwich on top of the case of beer. Johanna really liked that, in that it spoke to some kind of completion or wholeness in the world, or at least marriage of two of the greatest things. I agree and I don't even eat steak.



On Sunday, I participated in a mountain bike race. Since I was much less drunk than I was on Friday, I didn't do as poorly as I did in foot down, slow racing, or track standing. It's surprising how important balance is to riding a bicycle.

Look at me ride on this dirt road! I'm awesome!



It doesn't even count as a fire road, it's just a dirt road. Mountain biking in photos in so boring unless people are flying off of cliffs. Read more!