Skiing across the country

Re: the poll. Road bikes, huh? I like going for road rides and all, but if you look at the tag cloud thing, mountain biking is the biggest tag. Does this mean I should write about road bikes more or that y'all are reading this blog as self-flagellation?


Anyway, mountain biking in the snow is great, but it has a rather narrow window unless you own a Pugsley or Fatback, so last year I started cross country skiing. While I have access to equipment, downhill skiing is far too expensive, and I know that you can hike up a hill with a snowboard and ride back down for free, but I don't own a snowboard. I'm really bad at cross country skiing, but improving. I didn't fall the last couple of times I did it and yesterday was going pretty well until right near the end. I attempted this more difficult trail that traverses a pretty steep hill and ends with two switch backs. I figured that because I could ride it on a fixed gear 'cross bike, somehow that meant that I could ski it because somehow that translates. Nope. I did a pretty awesome face plant, though.

So, you should try cross country skiing!

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Merry Multi-Modal Holiday

I headed back to Urbana-Champaign, Illiniois for the holiday break and managed to put together a rather slap dash multi-modal itinerary. To satisfy my yearning for a long cross country train trip, I booked a one way outbound Hartford to Champaign trip on Amtrak for a reasonable $142 just days before departure. I didn’t have a fixed return date due to some personal complications so I left the return leg open to be determined once I got settled in Illinois. The trip could last three days or all week, and there was a possibility of getting a ride back. Lots of balls were in the air from a planning perspective.

Due to my continuing car free status the first sub-leg of my journey was a five mile bike ride to Union Station in Hartford on a chilly Christmas Eve morning. The train left at an uncomfortable 6:50AM and the earliest bus in from East Hartford wouldn’t get me to the station in time. I loaded up the sturdy rear newspaper rack on my 3-spd Huffy (unloaded a sprightly 47 lbs) with a large duffel and a backpack secured by bungees. I locked the Huff right in front of the station at a bike rack, tucked my helmet into a plastic bag tied to the frame, and had plenty of time to figure out catching the train.

My Amtrak route was circuitous, heading to Washington D.C. and then Chicago before a final jot down to Champaign. I was impressed with the Hartford to DC leg on the Northeast Regional from a future usefulness perspective. Driving to DC is a royal pain due to the East Coast congestion and potential weather issues this time of year. The car trip is a good six hours and can be eight or more with regular amounts of traffic congestion or construction. With this in mind the six and a half hour Amtrak journey is damn competitive compared to a solitary car trip. Six and a half hours of time spent on a laptop, reading, or chatting with new acquaintances beats six to eight hours of stressful and dangerous driving. As an added bonus the DC train station is right downtown and very convenient for visiting the Capitol. I took advantage of that location to walk around DC and see the sights during my 3 ½ hour layover, something one can’t experience with a flight layover.

The next leg of the journey was the most imposing, seventeen hours from DC to Chicago on the Capitol Limited. What does one do on a train for seventeen solid hours, and why does it take that long? I found that the key to successful long distance train travel is to relax. I was on vacation anyway and would be spending a lot of time reading. A train ride is just another venue for reading interspersed with relaxed gazing at rolling landscapes. One gets to know other passengers on the train, especially when traveling solo. Train travelers are a diverse and interesting bunch and more liable to chat than your standard airplane seat partner. I’m generally not a chatty traveler (a bit shy), but found myself having some educating multi-cultural discussions with my seat partner and another traveler in the lounge car. Another bonus relative to car travel is that one can “walk” the train. Tired of sitting? Take a walk. Grab a bite to eat at the cafe car. Do jumping jacks or yoga if it pleases you.

The only part that I didn’t like about the train ride was the overnight portion. Sleeping in the coach seats was marginal, sort of like a poorly designed business class seat for international air travel. I’m a champion sleeper, but still woke up several times during the night to change positions with sore spots and portions of my body tingling. This could be managed with strategic pillow placement, but I definitely haven’t mastered train sleeping. Despite the rough night I was pleasantly surprised by the post apocalyptic industrial landscape on the south side of Lake Michigan coming into Chicago. The factories, refineries, chemical plants, and power plants - some clearly abandoned and collapsing - flank the lake for miles and could be the backdrop to a Mad Maxx movie. I anxiously awaited the dune buggies that would hijack the train and steal all the diesel.

There was a rather long seven hour layover in Chicago before the short trip down to Urbana-Champaign. I parked my bags in a locker at the station and went for a walk. There was four inches of fresh snow on the ground and Chicago wore it well. I hiked past the Field Museum and the Planetarium and found Northerly Island, which had been an airport until 2003 when Mayor Daley had the runway destroyed in the middle of the night to protect Chicago from terrorists. From there I strolled through the gentrified neighborhoods of the South Loop. I also had some time to walk around West of the Loop. I am under the impression that Chicago developers overbuilt downtown condo buildings and hope to find a reason to move to the city and take advantage of their short sales and foreclosures.

After arriving in Champaign-Urbana via the Illini I walked the two miles “home”. My Illinois visit ended up lasting the full week. On Thursday I planned my trip back to Connecticut since my potential carpool didn’t work out as hoped. What seemed to make the most sense was the short train trip up to Chicago on Sunday afternoon and a frequent flier miles trip from O’Hare to Bradley on Monday afternoon. My cousin Anne lives in Chicago and I used the intentional layover to spend some quality family time. On Monday morning after a leisurely bagel I hopped on at an El stop blocks away from Anne’s apartment and had a stress free trip to the airport.

The return six hour flight back to Connecticut was an entirely different animal than the composite thirty-six hour train trip. I lucked into a First Class upgrade on the short Chicago to Detroit leg and grabbed a couple of snacks that were exclusive to the forward cabin. On the Detroit to Hartford leg my seat mate pulled me into a discussion of my reading material, Pollan’s In Defense of Food. I got to ask her how she liked her David Sedaris book and we veered off into John Irving and J. D. Salinger. I’m now planning to check out Salinger’s Franny and Zooey on her recommendation.

The final leg of my return trip on the CT Transit Bradley Flyer made me a little nervous. I’m never quite sure where the stops are (usually poorly marked) and having the requisite change on hand is something I don’t do well. Those concerns aside, the Bradley Flyer was the best option for getting from the airport to Hartford’s downtown Union Station where my bike was parked. I was pleasantly surprised at the ease of the trip and the size of the crowd on the bus. While living in CU I wrote an article on the under utilized Airbus service, The Bus Less Traveled. The Bradley Flyer had fifteen passengers, many of whom were picked up along the service road lined with airport parking and hotels. I’m guessing most of the passengers were making minimum wage at these establishments and the Bradley Flyer bus route helped make ends meet.

My multi-modal trip behind me, I reflect on how many different ways there are to get from Point A to Point B. In my quest to find the “best” ways from A to B this was a productive trip. Experiences with the Hartford to DC train and the Bradley Flyer bus are new options that have bought their way into future trip plans. The Bradley Flyer is a key enabler for my car free lifestyle. Yeah for transit! Yeah for bikes!

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Bike Raquiem

The bike rack in the parking lot at the corner of Ann and Pearl Streets was a nice, albeit poorly installed, one. The "Wave" or "u-n" configuration is one of the more useful forms a bike rack can take, and it was even a nice shade of green. The half-assed and ham-fisted manner in which it had been bolted to the ground made it loose and wobbly, but it was large enough that I felt secure leaving the Yuba there for hours. It was also visible from the office of my employer for added peace of mind. Here it is this past autumn with the Yuba and some selfish asshat's obnoxiously-parked BMW:

For the past week or so, the rack was concealed by a giant mound of plowed snow. I locked my bike to a signpost across the street and grumbled at how inconsiderate it was to completely bury the only bike rack in a section of downtown that is disproportionally over-devoted to car parking. As the warmer weather melted the snow, however, it was revealed that the plow-hack had in fact destroyed the rack as well.

The person or persons responsible for plowing this lot should replace this bike rack at once. Failing to notice an 8 foot long bike rack, or any fixture on your customer's property is inexcusably unprofessional and incompetent.

Also, can the BMW drivers please give it a rest and park within the lines? The owner of this X3 is fully deserving of the term Masshole.

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Bat and kill

I don't know much about racing, but I definitely don't know anything about road racing. I have a road bike and it's about as old as me. It's nice and I enjoy riding it, but I'm not sure if it's what people consider a race bike. Actually, there's no question that it is not what people consider a race bike.

You may have heard about the Tour of the Battenkill. It's a race that everyone seems to like in the Northeast. It's got some dirt.

So, I've entered this race. Like most 'cross races, I will be on the cheapest bike and wearing wool. I'm not sure if that's actually allowed in a big fancy race like this.

I entered as a Cat 5, because I've never done a road race before and I think that's what you're supposed to do. Also, all the Cat 4 spots were taken.

Any advice? Cat 5 doesn't seem like it'll be that high pressure. The scenery sure looks nice.

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Bikes Outside: Electro-Luxe

The first Bike Outside of 2011 is the bike of the future, at least according to some bike industry types. Electric assists are supposed to be the next big thing in cycling as baby boomers lose leg muscle and resolve to parasitic nanorobots activated by the musical stylings of Jethro Tull. I may have misheard a detail or two as the industry type/ E-bike apologist was explaining this (he was a tad dull) but that's really the gist of what he was saying.

I've never ridden an E-bike, though I do get asked about them periodically (usually by Baby Boomers, actually). I visited a shop that specializes in them during my Portland sojourn. The staff and customers were all very friendly, and really, really excited about electric bike power. I would have been unsurprised if one of the shop customers handed me an E-bike tract and attempted to convert me on the spot.

While I confess to desperately longing for an electric assist during my ill-fated journey to Coventry this past September, I'm normally not particularly drawn to them. That's neither here nor there, really. The important thing is that it got the owner of this particular bike out and about in the wake of Hartford's first decent snowfall of the winter. The owner of this step-through Schwinn seems to be a regular at the Behind The Rocks shopping center where I spotted it, as the security guard who rolled up to see what I was doing knew too much about the owner and the bike to have retained it all from a single conversation.

The front hub motor seems like the most popular setup in the E-bike universe. It kind of makes it look like the bike has a drum brake up front. (especially some of the larger ones). The few I've seen (including this one) have been equipped with rim brakes, but I feel like a hub that large ought to have a brake built into it as well. I'd like to build an electric motor hub into a 20" wheel (perhaps for a Cycle Truck or an unnecessarily ungainly folding bike) The giant hub-to-rim ratio with tiny spokes would end up looking like the front wheel of an old racing Norton, which I consider to be a good thing. I'm not holding my breath for people to beat a path to my door for custom e-bike wheels, but with MSRP's for bikes like this Schwinn in the $2,000-$3,000 range, I can see the appeal of retrofits and DIY conversions.

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2666

I bought beatbikeblog.com (hosted here) last week, so the beat bike blog will be around for at least another two years even if no one writes anything. Actually, I guess blogger never kicks you off.

But, anyway, I don't really have anything to write about, but I wanted to remind you that we'll be around for another year.

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Bikes Outside: Swede Ride

This morning's Bike Outside is my first since November due to an extraordinarily busy stretch at my job. Thanks to Schleppi for filling in some of the missed Mondays for me.


Today's handsome example sports a classic frame from Crescent of Sweden. It appears to be a late 60's-early 70's Crescent Stainless Mark (something or other) The differences between the Mark IX, XI and XX models were in the components, so the current parts offer no clue as to its original spec. Whatever it was, it's still a really gorgeous frame, and the Brooks saddle looks just right. For me, a set of polished old school high flange hub/ box-section wheels would set it off beautifully. The mismatched deep-V rear looks as incongruous as billet rims on a Volvo Amazon. I would be happy to own both this bike and an Amazon wagon, come to think of it.

This past week's Downtown glimpse was my first sighting of this particular bike. Did one of our usual messengers add another bike to his stable or could this belong to someone new in town?

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XMAS

There was supposedly an awesome mountain bike ride at Nathan Hale State Forest today, but I couldn't go. I was working on my car. It's a little sad when you work on your car and there's no awesome performance upgrade, but I do have heat again, it didn't take six weeks for to fix it and nothing broke along the way. Hooray!

Also, merry Christmas! (I don't discriminate holidayically, but it's Christmas eve, so that seems like that appropriate command.) and may your undertree be filled with awesome bike parts or awesome socks.


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Bicycle or Spaceship Part II

WARNING - Don’t park your spaceship in front of the Glastonbury Hilton Garden Inn. It may be removed from the premises by authorities for scientific investigation of alternative transportation.


I was having a grand time on the second day of an offsite work meeting being held in the Gideon Welles room at the Glastonbury Hilton. I didn’t see any spaceship parking and therefore unobtrusively parked fifty feet away from the entrance and locked to a signpost just off the sidewalk. A co-worker came into the meeting after lunch and in walking past my bike had found a terse missive taped to the jump seat. He had courteously plucked off the note and let the front desk clerk know that the spaceship parked in front of the hotel belonged to me, a hotel patron, and that I wouldn’t appreciate coming out to find my means of transportation missing.



Upon leaving the meeting I asked at the front desk, “Do you have any acceptable bike parking?” I was assisted by the head of maintenance who showed me a cozy spot at the base of an inside stairwell that would be hidden from aesthetically sensitive Hilton patrons. The suggested parking location was fine with me, but I was still a bit steamed that my property was threatened with destruction (cut lock) and confiscation because the general manager of the Glastonbury Hilton found a locked bicycle to be offensive to the Hilton brand image. Hilton’s anti-bike commuter policy reinforces the cultural norm of car centric transportation. If a supposedly “green” business doesn’t have designated bike parking, at least have enough sense not to hassle me about my choice of parking spot.



I wanted to point out that several of the upscale hotels in Champaign-Urbana with professional meeting facilities have significant designated bicycle parking. Champaign-Urbana has a remarkably high bicycle and pedestrian mode share and it keeps getting higher. Support from local businesses like convenient bike parking and the support of bicycle lanes in business districts makes a huge difference. Bicycle parking accommodations are inexpensive and can usually be installed in locations that are both convenient for cyclists and unobtrusive for business patrons. Bicycle commuters are loyal to local proprietors due to their limited range. I would consider the Glastonbury Hilton for future offsite work meetings due to its proximity to Pratt & Whitney headquarters (and my home) in East Hartford, but now I’ll think twice due to the veiled anti-bike sentiment and lack of bike parking.



To add insult to injury, I noticed on the third day of the offsite meeting that a patron of the hotel had parked their private helicopter in the Hilton’s front lawn. Seriously. I park my bike and get a nasty note. They muck up the lawn with a helicopter and get a free pass. Oh well, I guess I can take solace in the fact that the helicopter was probably only getting 2-3 mpg.


On a brighter note, while looking for bicycle parking at Hartford’s Union Station, I found this article on convenient places to park your bike in Hartford, Parking Bikes and Butts. The article linked to a map of bike parking in Hartford and turned me on to some excellent reading material. I’ll be taking my first long distance train trip and can’t wait. Yeah for bikes! Yeah for trains! Read more!

Pot kettle black

For some reason, the New York Times has jumped on the anti-bike lane and "cyclists break traffic rules all the time" bandwagon that is generally the realm of the Post. I don't know if someone on their editorial board had a bad experience with a bike a month ago or something, but it's an all of the sudden thing. See here, here and here.

Now I'm all for cyclists following traffic rules, but I think it's a good idea for everyone to follow traffic rules. And, that's the canard in this argument. There's no concerted effort to get everyone to follow rules, just cyclists. The argument implies that the only ones braking the rules are cyclists. If you think that's the case, you're an idiot.

What it really boils down to is that people in cars are jealous. They're stuck in traffic and someone who looks like they're having much more fun in commute has just cruised passed them. It's not because they feel like their safety is threatened. No one in a car feels threatened by a bike. So, they cry foul about some kind of vague "traffic law" thing... just as they pull into the parking lane to make an illegal right on red.

So, that's it. Not my greatest post ever.

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Moon zero xm

Winter is now here officially. There was also an eclipse and meteor shower and volcano thing.

So, I had a druid ceremony down in the meadows.


It was overcast, so I didn't get any of those crazy red moon pictures that I saw on the internet. Read more!

Epic deposit

Hard to ride on.

When you ride a bike, you try to strike a balance between the efficient way and the interesting way to get somewhere On Friday, I rode home from work via Manchester. That was all of the latter and none of the former. One Saturday, I rode to my Grandpa's house in Essex, mostly following rt 9 and rt 154, but Salem and I rode on the quieter and dirt-based roads. That was mostly the former. Yesterday, I rode to the bank in Bloomfield, but through the reservoir to get them and then returned on the regular roads. That was a combination of both.

Also, I saw a funny stolen license plate this morning. Lately, the stolen plates seem to come from Vermont and Maine. They stick out, because while they're New England states, they're aren't many people in them. I mean, Vermont is the 49th most populous state. Given the frequency I'm seeing VT license plates in Hartford, you'd think everyone had moved out. Anyway, I was behind this Cavalier with a Maine plate today and I was curious as to why there was white tape at the bottom. Why would you want to cover up "Vacationland"? Well, that wasn't what was covered. "Motorhome" covered.

Ed. note: People like our pictures in color. Now there's a new poll up.

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Falling water

It's the tail end of fall and it's cold and dark, but there's one sign of spring: the Connecticut River is flooded. There are even ducks. I attempted a lunch time ride up to Windsor along the riverfront, but was thwarted by the high water.



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How to go PRO

As you may or may not know, I'm trying to get better at racing. Former beat bike blogger Salem was PRO for a number of years and I've enrolled in his training camp. His methods are unorthodox:

photo credit to Damian.

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On a ride

I almost had a deeply philosophical ride last night, but it started raining and I lost my train of thought. On Saturday, I almost had a deeply philosophical ride, but I kept clipping out of my right pedal because my cleats are worn out and I lost my train of thought. On Friday, I didn't ride a bike. On Thursday, Damian, Salem and I rode to Bowl-o-Rama.

Two things that I do remember from my ruminating is:

1) We should do the bowels of Hartford ride later this week if the water is down.

2) I'd like to throw a secret Cedar Mountain mountain bike/cyclocross race/rally maybe within the next month or two. I think it'd be cool.

Would you like to participate in either one of those things? Let me know.

The power of water!

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AAA sucks

I used to have AAA. And for awhile, I'd totally recommend them. You get discounts on stuff, maps, triptics (triptychs? triptologies? diptychs? I can't remember what they're called) and free towing. A couple of times recently, I've been AAA reps on TV talking about roads not being designed for bikes and stupid things like that. I guess I didn't really pay it any mind and my membership had lapsed anyway.

This morning I received an email:

You are receiving this email because of your interest in topics related to biking and walking. We recently received an email from the Rails to Trails Conservancy regarding a proposal by AAA to eliminate transportation enhancement funding from the next surface transportation authorization. As many of you know, this source of funding has been responsible for the majority of multi use path construction in Connecticut and around the country and currently the state of CT has proposed a policy that will deliver more enhancement funding to trail projects. If you are interested in learning more about this topic, you can go to the Rails to Trails website: http://support.railstotrails.org/site/PageNavigator/AAA. Be sure to click on the link for more information to understand the issue.

CRCOG does not endorse the positions of either AAA or Rails to Trails Conservancy, but we wanted to share this information with you.

Sandy Fry

Principal Transportation Planner

Capitol Region Council of Governments

241 Main Street

Hartford, CT 06106

860-522-2217, X220

So, AAA is actively lobbying to keep anything that isn't a car out of SAFETEA-LU. Great. AAA wants us to regress back to 1950. Give a care and tell AAA that you don't like this. I mean bike stuff is such a small part of SAFETEA-LU that it's not really the money they're fighting over, but the concept of bikes being transportation. As much as I find preachy bike advocacy annoying, I'm doing some today.

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Riding under the city

The Park River is low right now. It's so low that there's a good four feet of dry pavement on the side of the conduit. Yesterday, I rode my bike in. After riding in a few hundred yards by myself with a dim light, it occurred to me that this subterranean expedition speed thing could end in the end of me.

Therefore, I'd to go back with my brighter light and a partner. Who's interested? Who needs kayaks!?

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Bikes Outside: Fuller Wheels

Alfred C. Fuller was hardcore. According to several online biographical statements, the founder of the Fuller Brush Company -- what was the Hartford factory location is now the CT Works Center -- did not play around. His philosophy for running a business can be summed up in his own words: "There was no loafing on the job, no fringe benefits that encouraged idleness." Thus, it is appropriate that the largest number of bicycles found on the University of Hartford campus were located around the building named after this man.

The Fuller Music Center houses the Hartt School, which is where some of the hardest working students on campus can be found. Besides working hard, they have a lot of schlepping to do, which might explain the number of bicycles.


It's also likely that students majoring in the performing arts have longer commutes to their classes, as the new Handel Performing Arts Center is located off of the main campus, down on the corner of Albany Avenue and Westbourne Parkway. Biking sure is better than waiting for a shuttle bus.

There was also a giant menorah on campus. No bikes were locked to it.
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Burbling anger

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you may recall that I got hit by a car about a year ago. It hurt, but thank heaven (seriously) nothing lasting happened to me. Also, the driver didn't drive off. He was sincerely apologetic. He contended that he didn't see me and obviously he didn't, because he hit me. But, he didn't seem like the kind of guy who have made a left turn and hit me if he had seen me. It was his fault. I did have lights, was operating my bike on the correct side of the road and had the right of way. Perhaps Christmas night last year taught him a lesson that you truly need to pay attention when you're driving, because you can kill people. So anyway, I bear no ill will towards the guy.

It seemed like the driver in this instance must be a minority, because attempted hit and runs or full on hit and runs seem to be the trend in the Hartford area (or Aspen, CO where the DA even seems to support cyclist hit and runs). Hit someone on a bike? Get the fuck out of there! Don't own the fact that you just killed or maimed someone's brother, father, friend or whatever. You've got a car and you're not the freak on a bike. Bike misfits rank below dogs, because I assume that people who kill dogs with their cars still might make some effort to call on the number on the collar.

This must be the moral zeitgeist. There must be plenty of people who haven't yet hit a cyclist, but if they do, they're driving off even if they've killed them.

I know that hit and runs happen with car-car accidents, too, but they seem a little rarer simply because car-car accidents often render both cars inoperable. Read more!