Nalgenes are still pretty impressive

I know that everyone is switching to stainless steel water bottles and canteens now because plastic will kill you. Will gave me a stainless steel one and I find that it scratches and dents pretty easily, though I still thank him for the gift.

However, after an experience yesterday while hiking with Joel (not the one who writes for this blog, he was riding a bike) and Johanna at Peoples State Forest. I think that Nalgenes still have their place.

This bottle:

Fell off this cliff:


No damage! It even spectacularly bounced off a rock and went like 20 feet up in the air. That's actually a post cliff-fall picture of the water bottle. I'm totally impressed. Stainless would have definitely broken. Read more!

First road ride of the year

Today's weather was the best I've seen this year in Connecticut, so I put some new tires on my road bike, gave it a lube job, and headed out for Ferry Lane in East Windsor, where a friend of mine put a kestrel box last winter. He said there is already a pair of kestrels there, but I didn't see them. Ferry Lane is a two-rut road right now, very muddy. There is a good variety of habitats for birds. Redtail hawks soared overhead on thermals, and circled down to the treetops. The leaves aren't out on the trees or in the brush yet, so it's easier to see birds and easier to see trash. There were cardinals, bluejays, and chickadees in the brush and wet areas between the main road and the river. A Red-bellied woodpecker was climbing and zipping straight lines in the trees by the river.

I spent an hour walking down here with my binoculars, just enjoying the sun and the sights and sounds of birds.

Continuing down the east side of the River, I foolishly rode route 5 the whole way to East Hartford. Main St. would probably be less traffic, but I enjoyed going at a fast clip and working on steady circles with my pedals.

The outdoor exercise complex near the founder's bridge in East Hartford is a great place to get deez and enjoy some trees. Take a break from riding to do some push-ups and pull-ups. The monkey bars are fun!

I crossed the Charter Oak bridge, rode past lots of Southenders hanging around their cars and riding scooters on Wawarme, and rode to W. Hartford on Capital. Starving, I spent way too much money at the deli/salad bar area at Whole Foods, and then rode back to Windsor via troutbrook, 218, Wintonbury Ave, Filley, and 305.

Read more!

How it all went down

On Saturday, we had The Eel 2. I don't know why it has taken me this long to post the results. Turnout was slim, but those who didn't race missed the awesomest weather/day of the year to race this year. Honest!

1) Orion - he got the money
2) Ken - he got the wine
3) Alex - he got a firm handshake
4) Chris - he got some bald eagle eggs
5) Russ & Scott - they got respect

Ken, Chris, Russ, and Scott also got the secret bonus check point that was figuring out my license plate number.

Special thanks to Johanna, Joel, Josh, and Rich for (wo)manning the checkpoints.


Brendan wants to get drunken noodles. Read more!

They Call the Wind Moriah.....

Ok, I am ready for more snow IF i can trade the snow for a brief break from the wind. Franklin Avenue is a wind tunnel on the best of days and on the worst its a screaming nightmare. It seems like I have been pounding into the wind both ways for days and days (for some reason in this crazy state the wind changes directions mid day, nuts).

Anybody know of a headwind powered mechanical assist for bikes? Maybe a ram air intake hooked up to an electrical motor? Probably wouldn't be enough to actually overcome the wind, but any little bit would help and we could probably sell a ton! Read more!

We Need More Fresh New Content!

Kids today! They always want everything to be very new. In my day, we rode plodding three-speeds in which even the highest gear was essentially a climbing gear, and when we finally got somewhere, we just sipped mint juleps and read The Brothers Karamazov. Slowly. We were patient then, and easily amused.

But today's youth, with their YouTube, their rap music, their free internet pornography! They have such a short attention span and constantly crave some new stimulus. And since the Beat Bike Blog, like Wu Tang, is for the babies, we must endeavor to satisfy modern tastes. So, without further ado, I offer two recent photographs of mine, neither of which is especially good or at all relevant to the topic of bicycles or Hartford, but which may hopefully, in some small way, capture the elusive and frenetic zeitgeist of these crazy times.



Read more!

Exuberance Can Lead To Mistakes

While the headline above is also applicable to romance and warfare, I am speaking, of course, of bicycling. In particular, I must urge that you take caution, my dear reader, lest your enthusiasm for cycling on a pleasant almost-spring evening like this one cause you to choose your route improvidently. To wit, I like riding down the steep embankment behind Sedgwick Middle School in West Hartford, starting from the parking lot at the corner of Wardwell and Sedgwick, then angling across the soccer fields and taking the dark, narrow cut-through to reach Lemay Street, near the corner of Boulevard. Until recently, this route has been impassable on two wheels owing to deep snow, which substance is easily traversed on the 65-degree decline, but becomes impossible when the terrain is flat. So tonight, finding myself obliged to head to the office after the boys were in bed to print something (I have a printer, but I'll be damned if I'm going to waste my ink cartridge on 300 pages of work stuff), and cognizant of the recent thaw and near complete absence of snow, I pointed the trusty Xootr to the afforementioned traverse. What I did not anticipate is that the soccer fields are so muddy and spongy that, while I am fully able to pedal and cause the bicycle's rear wheel to revolve in the proper fashion, I am too light and my tires too narrow for any traction to occur, causing me to pedal furiously without any forward progress until such unfortunate time as I fall over. The end result: A squishy walk across a dark field, and, naturally, damp, muddy feet:



Also, completely unrelatedly, two other things:

1. We held a race this past weekend, known as The Eel II. It was awesome. Some dude won, but I don't know his name, because I was just sitting in Elizabeth Park listening to This American Life and signing autographs for random cyclists.

2. I found this intriguing CD (pictured below) at the West Hartford library. Soon, I will remember to bring my library card with me so we can find out what treasures lie within.

Read more!

These Japanese Guys Know How to Ride

Read more!

Eel 2 spy photos revealed!

Unnamed sources close to The Eel have leaked these photos:


Just kidding! Anyway, the weather is supposed to be awesome tomorrow. Come down to Goodwin Park at 2. $5.

We'll be over by the pond house. Read more!

Awesome & not awesome

This is awesome. You can read the rest of the story here, but nothing holds a candle to the awesome picture. (Driver is ok).


It is not awesome that Brendan & Johanna's hero, Jill Homer, has had to quit the Iditarod Trail Invitational due to frostbite on her foot. She's still our hero, though. Also sad is that her roommate/boyfriend (she keeps her readers guessing), Geoff, is out of the footrace due to knee problems (and strangely not due to the horrible respiratory problem he's having). Maybe now Jill will set her sights on more sensible and warmer endeavors like winning the Leadville 100 or the Great Divide Race. Read more!

Before the snow

All weekend I was terrified about the over-hyped snow storm that showed up yesterday. Not so much because I was worried about whatever it is that makes snow storms scary and cause people to stock up on canned goods, but because it would threaten my ability to mountain bike. (Remember all those other posts about me either being self-centered or a weirdo? I wasn't lying.)

On Saturday, I only kind of wanted to go mountain biking. I could have also taken a hike. Johanna wanted to buy a cool car. At first we were going to go car hunting and then go for a hike. Johanna decided that she'd rather do some extensive research on cars instead, which paid off because she made a good offer. It subsequently was not accepted, but car dealerships are crooked anyway. So, while she did her extensive research, I hopped on the 'cross bike and went down to Rocky Hill for the reverse version of what I'd done earlier in the week. Nothing really exciting to report.

Riding back home on Fairfield, I spotted a pink purse in the road. I stopped and picked it up. There was a woman nearby in a parked car and I tapped on the window to ask if she dropped it. She shook her head and strangely reacted as if I had done the rudest possible thing. Very strange. Upon arrival in my apartment, I opened it up and found some IDs and a few bills, which I didn't count. I checked on 411.com and whitepages.com, which yielded nothing. I don't have a regular phone book, so I took the wallet with me to go the car dealership and to my parents, because they have a phone book. I found the owner, called her, and she was much relieved. She was concerned about the cash in the wallet, so I checked to see how much was left in there and it turned out to be a lot of money. She was now very, very relieved and I was glad to have found it for her. I told her my address and she came by later to pick it up.

The moral is that you should ride a bike so that you can return peoples' wallets (or shut their trunks and gas doors).

On Sunday, it was colder and snowed a tiny bit. I also had no encumbrances, so I went to the reservoir. Waiting for a colder day was a smart move on my part because judging by all the ruts (which you'll have to take my word for because there are no visible ruts in these pictures), it had been nasty the days before.

My bike is there to prove that I brought a bike with me.

Now, the snow has fallen and I'm walking everywhere because I'm deathly afraid of getting salt on my bikes.



Remember, The Eel 2 is Saturday! And fear not, it's on the road and the road won't be gross on Saturday!

This picture is scary, though.

ps. 3 posts in one day? our blog is awesome!

Read more!

Bike Love: What's Old is New

Why do new things please us, while old things seem so, you know, old? You get some new sneakers (or a new purse, or scarf, or ipod), and for a while, all you can do is catch glimpses of yourself in store windows and be like, "Damn, I look fly in these new kicks." But at some point, even if you keep them clean, the sneakers are just your regular sneakers, and you start thinking about the next new thing. It's the stuff that keeps our capitalist system going, and it's a crying shame. (I heard some guy on the radio the other day, a scientist, presumably, explaining this phenomenon in terms of neurons and stuff. It was complicated.)

One great way to get avoid this is to stop using something for a while, then go back to it. Today, I did that with my old friend, the Mercier Special Tour de France. Sure, loyal reader, you remember that old bike! Chillwill bequeathed it to be when he departed for warmer climes, and with some elbow grease and good old American ingenuity (and a hacksaw), I made it a wicked-awesome, three-speed coaster brake, do-anything bike. Well, it had been lying fallow for a while, partly because the trusty Xootr is so unrelentingly reliable (and foldy), and partly because I was having a little bit of seatpost slippage (so embarassing) and never got time to fix the problem. Then, like a gift from heaven, snows blanketed the region yesterday, shuttering everything and giving me some spare time to craft a shim (save your used hacksaw blades! They make great shims. Also, shivs.) and get the orange wonder back in fighting shape. And this morning, I joyfully took to the slushy roads on the finest mobile money can't buy. It's like having a brand new bike, and while I was riding it, I actually listened to my new ipod*.



*Actually, just new to me. Thanks to magical craigslist, I traded an Xbox 360, which my stepfather-in-law gave me as a gift when he got some other system and which I never used, for a used ipod touch, which is really really cool. Read more!

Civil Disobedience

As you may recall, I live on a corner, so I have sidewalks on two sides of my house. One of these sidewalks connects to the street and to another sidewalk, and is generally used by people in the neighborhood to walk places. The other dead-ends at my driveway and there is no sidewalk on the rest of the block, so it's pretty much useless if your goal is to avoid walking in the street (unless you're visiting me). After the last big snow, I didn't shovel the sidewalk to nowhere because, well, it goes nowhere. Naturally, some West Hartford busybody called the town to complain, the cops came to my house, and I had to devote about four hours to chipping away six inches of ice so some snitch could avoid twenty feet of street.

Well, it snowed yesterday, and I wasn't about to repeat my mistake - my feeling is that if the cops are going to be showing up at my house, I want it to be for something really cool. But I wanted to let that anonymous complainer know that while I may have suffered a defeat, I continue to hold my head high, stick to my principles, etc. Although I was tempted to spraypaint "fuck you" on the snow, elementary school kids walk by there and I do actually want to be a good neighbor. Instead, I figured that if this person really wants to stroll to my driveway so much, he or she would appreciate a longer stroll. Also, I want to see if someone really has the moxie to call the cops because I shoveled my sidewalk in a zig-zag rather than a straight line. So to the unknown West Hartfordite who demands unfettered access to my driveway, I say, "Your move."


(Click on the picture to see a larger version.) Read more!

OK, enough with the snow

Our loyal reader will no doubt recall my early winter enthusiasm for the snow. There were hill-bombing adventures, late-night reservoir jaunts, and lots of fun falls. And I should be thankful for the snow this morning, since it gave me a reprieve from packing lunches, ironing a shirt, preparing a hurried breakfast, and all the other tasks attendant on getting a family of four out the door on a Monday morning. But you know what? I had a lot of time in the car this weekend, with family social calls to Cromwell on Saturday and Stamford on Sunday, and I was looking forward to my two-and-a-half-mile jaunt to work on the bike. Also, March is the part of winter when snow becomes charmless. That is all. Read more!

Massive

I guess I should have remembered to take pictures of people instead of only my bike looking sad by the Arts Academy.

It's been the same three people who've shown up for Critical Mass in January & February. We're certainly not massive and we're not particularly critical either. In fact, our ride probably doesn't warrant the title of Critical Mass, we're more of just a bike ride. We're not really taking back the streets from anyone, but we've definitely covered far more distance than those big rides of last year. Read more!

Some Stuff

First, and most important to those who love donuts or doughnuts, Tastease Donuts has sold 500,000 donuts and on Friday, March 6 they're offering a free cup of coffee and donut to anyone who comes in between 7am and 11am. Tastease is at 70 New Park.

Second, it being the last Friday of the month, it's Critical Mass day. Come to the Bushnell Park Carousel at 5:30pm and we'll go ride somewhere.

Third, make sure to block out time on your calendar for The Eel on March 7. 2pm reg and 2:30 race. $5.

Fourth, I didn't go to Ice Bike to work this morning because I was running too late. I hope it was good.

That's it. Ride safe this weekend.

Oh, always carry a pump and patch kit, even if you're just riding on your lunch break. It prevents you from having to make a sad walk back from East Hartford.

Read more!

too many bicycles for the bus?!

(i haven't been able to get a good photo of a bus with bicycles in it. so here's a sign on Southard Street and Flemming Street. good to see!)

There are buses that run up and down the Keys along Rt. 1, and, like Hartford, they can carry two bicycles in a rack on the front. But, due to overwhelming popularity and many people being stranded or not allowed to bring thier bike due to lack of space; no bicycles are allowed at all. A recent article in the Key West Citizen highlighted this problem. Please check out the story.

I really appreciate and respect the Key West Transportation Director's offer to hear any new ideas or suggestions to fix the situation. Hopefully the bus will carry bicycles again soon; and lots of them.

It seems like things like this are becoming more and more common; which is good and bad. I never thought I'd have trouble fining bicycle parking. I hope Obama and our local politicians can expand bicycle infrastructure fast enough and smart enough to keep up with the demand. Its a great direction to be going as long as we don't all get stuck in a bottleneck! Read more!

A Rollerskating Jam called Saturday

Saturday, Saturday, it’s a Saturday.
5 whole days of work and one whole day to play

De La Soul knew what was up, but my pedicab shift on Saturday was the farthest thing from work and yet I got Paid in Full. The line between work and fun is completely blurred, perhaps even eradicated, on days like this.

I was craving sausage gravy and biscuits even before getting on the saddle and pulling out of Perfect Pedicab and onto Whitehead Street. A short ride across Old Town to my other job, a restaurant called Turtle Kraals, ensured I was well fed thanks to my employee discount. Thrifty and tastey, yeah, that’s how I’m rollin’. Luann, the morning bartender, asked me to take her visiting parents on a tour later and paid me in advance. Sweeet. I hooked her up with a deal and left feeling good; not even 11AM yet and I already made bike rent. ahhhh, a great way to start the day.


It was a super slow morning spent mostly at the South end of Duval on the Atlantic Ocean side of the island. This is a wonderful spot to chill, relax and wait for a fare. Lots of people walk the full mile and half or so all the way down Duval, to see the Southernmost Point buoy; and then feel all lazy about walking back. A ride in a pedicab, especially with cocktail in hand, is a wonderful way to get back to Mallory Square, Sloppy Joe's or wherever you want to be next back in Old Town. Some say Duval Street is the longest mainstreet in the world as it streaches from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean!


Jason and Mikeeee getting some needed rest. Friday was a looong night. The pictures in the background are by Bob. He spends the morning and afternoon painting as his artwork hangs behind him on the fence in the great gallery of the island shoreline. Dozens of people pass by every five minutes speaking in all sorts of accents and languages. The cool ocean breeze always compliments the contrasting rays of the strong tropical sun. There’s usually a few of us here reading, resting or entertaining ourselves and the tourists.


Jeff’s secret to success…the pig helmet cover!


So today is Thursday and I am trying to remember the details that made Saturday so amazing to finally finish this post. But I can’t remember the specific things, it was just a really great day. Sunny with a nice, cool breeze. Occassional white, fluffy clouds provided brief patches of wonderful shade. It began slow, but as it progressed, I got a lot of rides that were fun and tipped well. I had a great time bugging out and chillin’ with the other riders. Everything and everyone was just on the One.



Kapsis giving his sweetie Barbara a ride home. These two are waaay too cute and in love. He’s always blowing kisses from his pedicab to her as she works at a restaurant’s outdoor patio. The Ohio boys and I passed them enroute to happy hour. Yep, most places here do happy hour seven days a week. And the bars are open to four. But's that's a whole other post.


Happy Hour at Kelly’s. This certainly helped keep the great vibe going after work. Forget the fact it’s the original Pan-Am headquarters. Forget it’s owned by Maverick’s love intrest in Top Gun. Happy Hour is bangin'! $4 gets you a half dozen of some of the best wings on the island. $3 gets you a massive margarita. We had a lot of both.

Click read more to see the ridiculousness of getting a new printer home from New Town.






A bungee cord held it in place. I could steer holding just the box, but that was kinda scary and i didn't do it again. Ok, i did a few more times, and it was still scary! But, after living here since the first week week of January, I have only driven my van four times, three to go kayaking and once when I moved from Brian's couch to my apartment.



Read more!

The Rockiest of Hills

I heard about Quarry Park in a Courant article and somewhere else. This former hill, a rocky one, is where Rocky Hill got its name. The article describes the park in far more purplish prose than I would, both because I was looking for single track (not a newspaper column) and because it felt more like an abandoned quarry than a park, which isn't really that scenic. There's a little bit in the way of single track and it's a really quick ride through old Wethersfield from my house to get there. The single track is ok and there's about a mile of it, so I definitely wouldn't drive a great distance to get to it. In fact, I wouldn't drive at all. Maybe if you're passing by on a bike, stop in.

This house watches over the quarry.

The single track.

I thought this track that I made through the stone dust was cool.I rode home through Great Meadow in the sunset.

---

Also, and unrelated, Johanna tipped me off to this:

http://www.orleanscountycitizenadvocacy.org/ Check out the link on the lower left. It's my account of our ride of their century. Pretty cool, huh?

Read more!

Another boring post on consistency of the snow

While our brave blogging brother was getting ready to speak to truth to power on Saturday, I went mountain biking. I had to feed my parents' cat, so I was over the hill in Avon. I don't really have any fascinating insights, other than groomed cross country skiing/snow skating trails are a weird place to ride a bike. Or really, they're just generally a weird place to be.

I found that much of this Avon snow was compressed to the point of becoming sheets of ice. That's no fun without studs, as I was without them on Saturday. However, pine forests stay shady even in the winter, due to the whole evergreen thing, so the snow compacts into this cool styrofoam stuff instead of becoming ice.

some nice styrofoam snow

some more nice styrofoam snow

some wound-causing ice. (the bike is like that because I crashed)

Read more!

OK, It's Confirmed: I'm Slow

This morning, my dear wife dropped me and my Xootr off in New Haven before heading off to Providence to visit friends, so I could attend a panel discussion at Yale Law School's Rebellious Lawyering Conference. (The panel was about the school-to-prison pipeline, and everyone should know about that, so read up.) Inspired by the panel (and free lunch, and coffee) I decided to do some work on the old New Haven-to-Hartford pipeline, so I pointed my trusty Xootr northward, and got to peddlin'.

I am happy to report that I made the trip unscathed, proceeding up Route 17 (Middletown Ave.) out of New Haven, then picking up Route 3 in Middletown and taking my usual back streets through Wethersfield. I am a little sad to report that, even discounting the 30 minutes I spent fixing a flat (why 30 minutes? Because my pump totally broke and I had to do some creative tinkering to make it work), the 20 minutes I spent eating a muffin and drinking coffee for strength, and several stops to take pictures, the 44-mile journey took me about four hours. If you're keeping score at home, that's what we call slow.

So I guess my dream of ever winning a race is not coming to fruition any time soon. Nevertheless, it's nice to have a healthy ride on a sunny day, and people I know who don't ride bikes and already thought I was some kind of superman for routinely making the 18-mile New Haven-to-Bridgeport trip will now look at me with even more awe (or pity, or confusion). Anyway, here are some pictures I took:




Both of these cool cars are at car repair/sales places on State Street in New Haven.


In North Branford, they want you to be on the lookout for bikes with weird cruiser handlebars and crazy frame geometry. I didn't see any.


Here's a pretty brook just off Route 17 in North Branford. While I was taking this picture, the air unceremoniously went out of my rear tire.


Sadly, I did not discover this gem before replacing my beloved '98 Corolla with a less beloved '01 Focus. The writing in the window says this is a '53 Asian Taxi.


It's a little hard to see, but on the inside of a window in Middletown, someone wrote, "The movement you need is on your shoulder," which, the internet informs me, is from the Beatles song Hey Jude. (I had kind of assumed it was a reference to this Jay-Z song, but oh well.) Read more!

Urban Mountain Biking

With the exception of that Soil Saloon thing in San Francisco and Highbridge in New York, urban mountain biking is pretty lame. Hartford more or less falls into the latter lame category, or at least you'd tend to think so. There's, in my opinion, pretty good legit mountain biking right nearby, at least within a rideable distance or a short drive, so why waste your time within in the City?

But you know, The Eel #1 was pretty rad and to assume makes an ass out of u and me. So, after work I explored some marginal lands of the south end and found some awesome stuff that I already knew about and some new stuff. For one, I found a very nice man who lives in the woods. Out of respect for his privacy, I'm not going to say when he lives, but I will say that he built himself a very cool house and provides good directions if you find yourself in his neck of the woods. I'll let pictures speak for the rest.

These are spooky and abandoned.

So, wouldn't it be cool to get together a couple of people and ride all the trails together? Maybe I should set something up.

---

I think the 1st amendment is great and so is sexual liberation, but I get so fucking mad when I see this truck driving around downtown:

Read more!