A Town of Four Bridges

Living on the east side of the river, as I do, and living in a town without a bike accessible bridge, as again I do, I make frequent use of Hartford's selection of river crossing. Like yesterday, after crossing early in the day on Middletown's Arrigoni Bridge,

Arrigoni Bridge as seen by Peter Waite

I rode north, returning to my own shore via the Charter Oak Bridge. It was covered in glass. This often is the case with this bridge, such as when I was returning from a three day tour and covered over 250 miles without incident until I ripped open a tire on this span, and while I did not suffer such a fate yesterday, I caused me to muse how different the four crossing in Hartford are. They aren't just means to cross the river; they are personalities, each a unique experience.

Starting at the south, the aforementioned Charter Oak. A bit like Texas: big, tall, and a little wild west. If you seek glass shards, damaged handrails on the pedestrian stairs, and close encounters of the high speed motor scooter kind, this is your bridge. Just be sure to slow down for the perpetual puddle of water before beginning the ramp descent on the west side. Of course, this is the closest bridge to my house.

Working our way north, we have the crowning jewel of bicycle river crossings, the Founder Bridge. This isn't just a sidewalk or lane; we're talking promenade here. Lighting, statues, even a park ranger: Brendan sums this one up best, "I don't like it; it's too nice." No doubt, this is your best chance for a rare walking-yuppie sighting, as long as you don't scare them off.

Ah Bulkeley, you've always been there for us, providing a crossing for the motorless all these years, but now we've left you for better and wider lanes. If you always liked the idea of riding singletrack, but could never get into the whole dirt, rocks, sticks, and poisen ivy thing, this would make a good substitute, just remember to duck you head for the 91S/84E interchange and get ready with the binders for the 90 degree kink lest you have an intimate experience with a car accellerating to highway speeds.

Now last, and the most recent new experience for me, the train trestle out of Riverside Park, this one, like the old Riverside Amusement Park (now 6 Flags), is for the thrill seeker. Not quite "Stand by Me" exciting, it still has a not-ready-for-public-consumption feel to it. This probably has something to do with the fact that is probably isn't a legal crossing. But really, how can you pass on the allure of rubber tires on wood planks. Crossing this bridge reinforces just how good it is to be alive, assuming you don't fall to your death.

Don't get your feet wet.
Read more!

(semi)urban mountain biking

So, I want to do this compendium of urban mountain biking in and around Hartford. I don't really have anything coherent yet, but I found something new (to me) to in East Hartford: the Hockanum River Hiking Trail. It's got an orange blaze and is maybe a half a mile long. It loops you back to the rest of the Hockanum River system's boardwalk. Parts of it are very cool, but it was very leaf-covered and hard to track today. It passes a really cool looking dam.

Oh yeah, I saw this crazy truck in front of City Hall today. I guess the dam picture didn't come out that great. Read more!

Vote

Chances are, there's an election for you today. Read more!

New places & The Hartford Alley Cat V

I tend to fall in routines. I eat at a lot of different restaurants, but I almost always order the same thing at each respective place. The same thing happens with bike rides, I ride in different places, but once I establish a route/loop of trails, I keep riding the same thing. Or, I get lazy and don't even try and find a new place to ride. That's a character flaw and I'm trying to fix it. My Friday Afternoon Club of Italian Snails or "Le Lumache" has shown me a bunch of cool stuff. In fact, this past Friday was sort of a quid pro quo of me revealing some cool trails in Keney and I was shown a crazy bridge and reshown the Hockanum River Trails in East Hartford.

I'm also trying to fix it in the self-motivated sense, too. On Wednesday, armed with my fenders, I rode up my local hill and discovered a cool promontory/chill spot as well as further adding to the mystery of the MDC stuff on Cedar Hill. Why is everything on Cedar Hill/Mountain so mysterious?




On Thursday, I picked up my straightened 'cross bike from Central Wheel and set off into the reservoir and points north. This is where I'm most guilty of becoming a man of steady habits, but lately I've found some new things and started connecting more interesting loops. This ride led me down a trail that I'd never been on before and I found a water crossing, which are quite elusive at the Reservoir. There are those two rocky ones on the trail off the blue trail in the northwest corner, but they've both got boards to ride on. This is an honest to goodness creek to ride. The only thing marring the discovery was slipping down a rock a few hundred yards before the creek and smacking my knee. I only found a cool little trail at Penwood that cuts out some pavement riding, but is also open to bikes. It may not actually be that cool, but the carpet of yellow leaves made it really cool last week.


Friday was the day of crazy bidges and Hockin' numb, but its evening also brought an alley cat: The Hartford Alley Cat V. Sean organized it and dressed as the blue Teletubby. I think there were about 14 entrants. It was a night race, so I attached a bulbous headlight to my normally sleek Nishiki. We left from the Warehouse parking lot on Bartholomew. What was cool about the start was that there was no manifest, it just directed us to go to Evergreen Street. I had a hard time opening the envelope because I was wearing gloves, so I didn't get out of the parking lot as fast as I would have liked. I made up time on the way and caught in the driveway at the same time as the guy who left first. We race up the stairs and were given the actual manifest. It was very cool that we had no time to plan. The stops were Elizabeth Park Rose Garden, a house on Oakwood, TJ and Ken's house and Bushnell Park. Here's my route. The house on Oakwood had some physical challenges: big shot of grain alcohol, 5 pushups and then bob for an apple. Bobbing for the apples was great. What a great way to cool down. TJ claimed that I had to eat a stick of butter and I was instantly crestfallen, but he was just kidding. At Bushnell Park, we had to shotgun a beer. I came in first, followed by Aaron, Peter Barr, Marshall (who has incredible leather tooling skills), Dave (often called poseur Dave, but I think that's not the nicest name, there also may have been someone who finished in front of him) and then more people, but I didn't know most of their names. I ran into my old friend Linda, though, which was cool. She's living in Whitney House now. I got a cool & tight tshirt, but the real prize was this incredibly awesome Bailey Works bag. Oh man, you can fit like six watermelons in there. Or, six rotten watermelons and not have to worry about them leaking on you because the lining is some kind of space age roof tar.



I think the 666 spoke card is what gave me the edge.

Read more!

Halloween En Masse

Turnout for the October Critical Mass ride was light compared to last year, but we still had a decent-sized group ready to go at Bushnell Park this past Friday night. We headed south through Frog Hollow, down Affleck Street and past the Zion Hill Cemetery, then cut through the Trinity College campus and further south to Cedar Hill Cemetery. Cedar Hill is a beautiful place to walk or ride during the daylight, but it was pitch black at this hour. The only sources of light beyond the stone and iron entry gate were the dim glow of the mausoleum building and a few recently placed votive candles burning at one of the headstones. It was surreal and fun to ride guided by nothing more than the few feet of pavement illuminated by my headlight and the blinking red LEDs on the bikes up ahead a ways. I was also riding without my glasses, so it bordered on sensory deprivation-- disorienting as hell, but kinda cool.


We stopped for a quick break and bike adjustment by the mausoleum and then just outside the gate when Nick had the first and second of three fantastically loud catastrophic tire blowouts (that's the first flat tire hat-trick I can recall on a CM ride). The good-natured collective pit crew came to the rescue with tube repairs and a duct tape wrap for a front tire that had its sidewall ripped free from the wire bead. Dayum! The duct tape patch held for the remainder of the ride, so kudos to the master tapesmiths in our midst.

From there it was a straight shot up Maple to Main Street and downtown, stopping by City Hall to fix one more exploded tire (this time the rear). When we approached the Ancient Cemetery, our final graveyard of the evening, a Connecticut State Capitol Cop told us that there was a paid tour in the Cemetery, and that we weren't allowed in. This was kind of lame. This seemed well outside the normal jurisdiction for the State Capitol Police, whom I've hitherto only seen at the Capitol building, the Legislative Office Building, and the Dunkin Donuts at Capitol and Broad Street. Maybe it was a posse of Legislators slumming amongst the common ruck. At any rate, we shrugged and pedaled off and over the Founders Bridge to East Hartford instead, winding the evening down with a downtown loop back to Bushnell Park, where we happened upon one of the checkpoints for that evening's Alleycat race. which was going on at the same time. Does anyone have any pics or results from that, by the way?


A few people rocked costumes or face paint for the ride, including this bike-and-rider combo, which looked like a one-man Vegas Strip in the dark at Cedar Hill, plus Clark Kent and some weird Blue Man on a cargo bike.

Read more!

We're lucky that this didn't happen to us

Hartford is cooler than Seattle any day of the week. Read more!

Critical Mass This Friday: All Hallows Eve Eve

Tomorrow evening, join us for the Halloween edition of Hartford's monthly Critical Mass ride.

Meet up in Bushnell Park at the Carousel at 5:30 or so, you know the drill. Wear a costume, or dress up your bike (last year I dressed my 15-year old beater Trek as a Colnago-- red duct tape and paint pens can do wonders!)

Also tomorrow evening is the Hartford Alleycat
For those of you not on Facebook, It starts at 7:45 PM at The Warehouse, 45 Bartholomew Ave. in Hartford

P.S. That sweet bike zombie art is from Post Carbon Comics by Ken Avidor.

Read more!

More Cross Posting

With the help of digital photography and insomnia, I present to you a few of my pictures from Sunday's race. First of all, mad props to Brendan and everyone else who made this happen. The weather was fantastic, the course was sweet, the turnout was great. I was kinda bummed about not getting my ghettofabbed slimstyle dropbar 96er together in time for the race until I saw how ridiculously outclassed I would have been. I did see at least one racer rocking sneakers and platform pedals, so I wouldn't have been alone in that regard. The Riverside Park area has always been a great place to ride (except perhaps when flooded) and it was a strong setting for this inaugural race.

I started spectating in some of the more open and visible areas near the boathouse before shadowing the course on foot and hiking up to the top of the big climb. It wasn't long, however before I was drawn to the woods. This was my favorite part of the course. The ground had a nice mix of firm and muddy bits, and the racers would spread out a bit more. Here it felt much more like rider versus terrain than the frantic jockeying for position that took place elsewhere. This is not to say the riders slacked off in the woods by any means, there was just something more swift and quiet about it, like locomotives in a snowstorm.

Maybe it was just the lack of spectators in this section... Anyway, it was pretty freaking cool, especially the area around the bridge.



From there it was back along the river and back out into the open, where glory and swag awaited the victors.

Read more!

Cross pictures

I've got a couple of pictures now.

I've also got some by Luis Cotto on picasa. CCBA has them on facebook.

Here are some taken by Cedric De La Cruz of the men's 1/2/3 race:




Read more!

brrrrr..... ice bike one, friday, oct 30

two posts in a day, kickass!!!!!

brendan rocked it with the cross race and it looks like it will be a feature in the future as well with the huge turnout. making hartford more interesting is always a good thing and for the city to see people on bikes doing anything positive increases awareness and certainly moves the ball forward for all of us velocipeders. i saw a pretty good number of out of state plates at the event as well, nice.

the days are getting shorter and the nip is out in the air. maybe not as much as the picture would indicate.... but its getting colder for sure.

come join the ccba at jojo's coffee on pratt street this friday morning from 7-9 for our first icebike event of the season. this time breakfast is on you, but the chance to meet and greet others and make sure you are geared up and prepped out for the winter is priceless.

now if i could only find plans to build this thing....... Read more!

Hartford crossed

Hartford's motto is post nubila phoebus, which means "after the clouds, sun". I suppose that's true pretty much everywhere except those strange cities in the northwest. Luckily for the race yesterday, the cloud part was on Saturday and the sun part was Sunday. We had incredibly beautiful weather, but more than adequate mud to make things cyclocrossish. For those reasons, we had way more people than I anticipated. Like I was hoping for around 100-120, but 180 showed up. The C race had 53 entrants.

I took a break from the hectic registration table and enterred the C race. I had a really strong (for me) start and finally got a chance to ride the course. After the first lap, I think I may have been in the top 10. Then my deraileur caught a stick and messed everything up. So, I sadly DNF'd.

So, thanks to Melissa, Johanna, Art, Jonathan, Jason, Ben (x2), Sean, Chris, Craig, and everybody else who lent a hand. Also, to the sponsors: Ghostship, Central Wheel, Hooker Brewing and REI.

Oh, if anybody has good pictures, send them to me. I took a grand total of one. It's not even a good one. Read more!

Reminder! Hartford 'Cross!

In addition to my new kitty, Alina, something has been keeping me awake: Sunday's 'cross race. You may recall Eel 1, when people showed up and it was cool, and Eel 2, when not so many people showed up and it was still cool. Those were low-key and there wasn't much money or whatever to worry about. Sunday's race, on the other hand is a sanctioned event and there's money and there are people whom I don't know. I think I have my ducks in a row, but you never know.

People have been signing up with greater frequency this week. I just paid Riverfront Recapture $750 for use of the park. So, sign up! come watch! become a sponsor! let me get some sleep!

I hope the person who had their cool old Schwinn locked in front of City Hall is racing. And, a bike of that vintage shouldn't have been named "CrissCross", it should have been "Kris Kross". Read more!

No more bikes

Johanna and I got a new kitty, who's about eight weeks old. She's a Russian Blue and much cuter than a bike. I'm thinking that I should give up on bikes and just blog about cats. Any name suggestions?

Considering my performance at Mansfield Hollow last weekend, it may not be a bad idea.

Cyclocoffee!

Read more!

Reinstated

The weather is turning nasty and yesterday I got a really wet butt riding home. This was unacceptable.

I've been trying to wrestle the bottom bracket out of the Long Haul Trucker for months to no avail, well I've availed myself of a damaged wrench. So, I took it to the bike shop and paid $25 for two men (maybe three) to fight with it for a half an hour and get it out. I brought it back home and put the UN-54 in. The spindle wasn't as long as the old one, so I had to take the 28t inner ring off the triple. I never used that chainring anyway, so no loss. It looks a little sleeker now anyway with 48 & 38. A low gear of 38x30 is enough. I rode it to work this morning and my butt stayed dry.


UPDATE! I even took the thing off to the reservoir for some cumbersome "mountain biking" and it passed the test with flying colors. My partner was on a fixed gear; we were certainly a mötley crüe.

Read more!

Cool or exploitative?

So, I saw this video of a downhill event in the slums of Rio. The course looks cool, but I'm wondering if any of these residents were asked by Red Bull if they wanted a bike race through their homes. What do you think? It's a little more obtrusive than Danny MacAskill riding by and doing cool tricks. Do downhillers worry themselves about such things? Read more!

Vermonsters & leaves

So, in middle of an epic ride (kidding) my shifter broke on my Stumpjumper. It answered the question what the rattling was in the shifter/brake lever contraption. I thought that it was brake cable stop or something like that, because that brake lever had a little bit of play in it. But, nope, it was the shifter falling apart. So much for the reliability of XT (XT circa 1996). Anybody got one of these? I'd really appreciate it.

So, I did some hiking instead.


On Saturday, Johanna and I found the elusive summit of Mt. Hor. Actually, this preceeded my shifter braking. I broke it when we got back.


Sunday was the day of actual bikelessness. I think that if I give myself eight or nine hours, I can do all four (five?) peaks of the Franconia Ridge Trail. But, I only had time for three on Sunday. Hiking still makes my legs hurt and coming down the Mt. Flume trail is really difficult.

Fucking cycalists!

Read more!

A few items for consideration

1. >I don't want to get shot this weekend. Once again, I'm returning to Vermont. I don't usually go during hunting season. VMBA advised to wear orange or red and not ride where people are hunting a lot. VT Fish & Wildlife says that you can hunt within like ten feet of a road. Much of the land where I go in Glover is posted no hunting. However, the people who own it can hunt there and might do that. I plan to stay on roads, but some of those roads are pretty quiet and I've seen blinds near them. Any advice? Only ride at Kingdom Trails, where hunting isn't a concern?
2. Why wouldn't you want to say hi me? I'm a nice guy and look non-threatening on a bike. Last night, though, I had like a half dozen unreturned greetings at the Reservoir. I'm hurt. At the onset of the ride, there was a nice guy with whom I was leap frogging picking up blow down from the recent high winds. There weren't over the top or anything. Just "hey" to someone who's oncoming or someone whom I'm passing.
   
3. Chris is at Interbike in Providence. Cool, eh? He's also spreading the word about Hartford 'Cross. He better write up something cool for us.
   
4. Speaking of Hartford 'Cross. If you come day of with a usable part or tool for the Urban League, the $5 surcharge'll be waived.

I have no plans to run in the marathon.

Read more!

The course

Art and I went over to Riverside Park last night for some kibitzing about the course. I think we successfully incorporated both of our ideas quite well into a kick ass course. It's mostly flat, so it's going to be very fast. And, faithful to my description on bikereg, that levee is tall. It's also rideable, so we're thinking there might need to be something to make that more difficult. The other cool thing about this levee is that it creates the opportunity for some cool off-camber nasty stuff. Further, the course is going to have a fair amount of pavement. There's also a nice section that goes right along the river, though I doubt most racers will be thinking about the picturesqueness. I hope people like it.

Pictures are unrelated to post. Although, I would like you to note that this bottom picture illustrates how nice of a guy I am to trails. See, those planks there are always getting jiggled and jangled apart by the bikes that ride over them. Most people just keep going and leave them askew. If I go over them and separate them, I stop and put them back together. That's what I did here. The ring of pepperoni is not something that I would eat. Read more!

We cleaned

Thanks to everyone who came by on Saturday to help clean up the river. Isn't it impressive how there was a break in the rain that lasted the entire time we were cleaning? Also, I owe Kerri a tshirt. (Does anyone know who picked up the most trash?)

I suppose I should have taken a picture of Chris' cool cargo bike, but here are some other pictures:

UPDATE! Bianca got a picture of Chris' cargo bike.

UPDATE 2! Bianca also got a picture of the sex toy box that Kerri found (which was the most interesting piece of trash):
Read more!