Hartford Alleycat?

It's been a while since we've had one of these. I believe this is still planned for Sunday. Who's riding?

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Failed Jamaican food delivery

At work yesterday, a bunch of Jamaican food appeared and it was very good. There was extra, so I took some rice and stewed chicken home in a couple of empty lunch containers I had at my desk. Since the sun inexplicably came out when I was riding home, I decided to extend my commute down to the ferry landing. I cut through Mill Wood Park and Quarry Park. I slipped and fell on some brownstone extra-slick rock, but was mostly unscathed. It started raining again, but not too heavily.

I've often like to think that I could be a messenger or food delivery guy (the bike kind), but I doubt it: the rice container exploded all over my pannier. It was gross. The chicken survived, though.

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Bike to Work Week, brought to you by the fender industry

I unwittingly got an early start on Bike to Work Week with a full-day Sunday work call in South Green. The weather was very accommodating, with the day's heavy rains backing off during the 8 o'clock and 5 o'clock hours for relatively dry commutes. Monday was less rainy, but dreary nonetheless. It's still nice to get out though, and the plants are looking especially lush and green these days, so throw on your rain gear and have at it. There's plenty to do.

Tomorrow, the Ride of Silence makes its solemn way from Elizabeth Park. Meet at the Pond House on the West Hartford side of the park at 7 PM.

Thursday, elementary school kids will attend a 169^th birthday party for Albert A. Pope, founder of Pope Manufacturing and Columbia Bicycle, with cake and prizes at lunchtime at the Pope Park Recreation Center, Hartford.

This Friday brings us Bike to Work Day of Bike to Work Week of Bike Month, designating Friday as the Bike-to-Workiest Day of all. Several area rides will funnel the masses to a 7 AM rally at West Hartford's Blue Back Square and subsequently an even bigger rally at the capitol taking place from 7:30 to 8:30 AM. The rally is said to be peaking at 8:15, making that moment the Bike-to-Workiest moment of the entire freaking year! Strange and powerful things have been known to occur at such a moment, so you'd be foolish to pass it up. Also, there will be coffee and bagels.

Bike Walk Connecticut's Events Page has all the details on this week's festivities. Read more!

Found Things

*** Special Bulletin: I hope everyone is out earning their bike commuting merit badge this week. It's National Bike to Work Week and there is a Bike Rally at the State Capitol building on Friday morning. Put up some flyers at work and cajole your friends. The more the merrier. And now back to your regularly scheduled programming... ***

I don't know about you, but I absolutely love found things. In the last couple of weeks I've beenlucky enough to find several things worthy of a little blogosphere mention. For those that aren't finders, it's pretty simple. Free, not stolen, and bonus points when unexpected. An example would be fresh ramps (wild greens) found on a hike.

My first find was one of necessity. The bottom bracket of my trusty tank had given out. I picked up a handful of bearings at the local shop, Bicycles East, and thought it would be a simple repack. To my dismay the BB was entirely shredded and I wasn't about to buy a new one. Aftermoping for a while about not having a nearby bike co-op (http://www.thebikeproject.org/)had an idea - DUMPSTER DIVE. It worked perfectly. I found a kid's bike in the local transferstation salvage yard, stripped the BB, and was good to go. The Huffy rolls once more.

Once you 'learn' to dumpster dive, you don't stop. What an amazing source of found things. This quickly brings us to the second found thing. A friend asked me to keep an eye out for a used child trailer to convert into a flatbed cargo hauler. That same day while passing by the previously bounteous salvage pile, I happened across just that item. Score! I tied the trailerhitch to my basket and dragged it home. All it's missing is a proper hitch, but Doug can figurethat out.
The last find is not really a thing, but I'll explain. I've found some folks in the Hartfordarea who like the same offbeat riding that I do. The Detour de Connecticut that Salem organized was a perfect example. Longish mileage, notracing, exploring new places, and very mixed terrain. Late in the 113 mile trek, I distinctly recalla short uphill segment that appeared to be a creek bed. At the end of the all day ride I was justabout bonked, but used my last couple calories to sustain my perma-smile. More please. I'd liketo find more.

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In praise of the swamp thing

In which I become the tallest midget...

Yesterday was the Winsted Woods race. As you may have noticed, it rained a lot. When it rains a lot, people make a big deal out of tire choice. I suppose they probably have a point. Originally, I was going to run an IRC Serac, but I brought another wheel with a Maxxis Swamp Thing just in case. It was a good decision. The Swamp Thing is magical in nasty mud (terrible the rest of the time).

In terms of actual racing, I didn't do very well. I had a good start, but on the first unrideable climb (a tire can only do so much), I started running and my heart rate went through the roof. It took like a mile to recover. I went from second to fourth and never found third again. Although, judging by results, I was pretty close to catching third by the end. Too bad they shortened it to two laps. Three wouldn't have been a problem. I did two in 1:07, so it would have been three in 1:40. I think the officials just wanted to go home. Also, I hit all the jumps and the log thing, and didn't crash at all!

I'm not generally one to Monday morning quarterback by suckitude, but I chalk up some of my problems to warming up inadequately. It was raining, which was unpleasant, so I wasn't eager to go out on the course and since it was muddy, I didn't want to ride very far for fear of seizing up my bike before the actual race.

But, anyway, my 3rd place at Winding Trails and fourth yesterday narrowly made me the Connecticut State Champion (CAT 2 19-29)! I got a medal and everything (the medal was everything). Being the CAT 2 State Champion just means that it's finally time to relegate myself to the back of the pack in CAT 1.

I went for a pretty kick-ass ride to the blowhole on Friday and found some nice connective and fun trails in Dividend Park. And, I did some intense grocery shopping training on Saturday. I can fit $80 worth of Stop and Shop food on my bike, so I can fit like $200 worth of Whole Foods food.

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Pornos

If you rode eel #1 or participated in one of those many source to sea river cleanups, you've noticed a little ribbon of singletrack that runs from the Park-CT River confluence to the northern edge of Charer Oak Landing. Every time we have a cleanup, interesting things are discovered there: giant knife, half a canoe, etc. Now, it seems to be developing a library of pornography. I first noticed it a few weeks ago. I took the scenic route back to work today after lunching at home and it looks like there's more.

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Dented the rim on my favorite wheelset

I've been on some nice rides lately, but I seem to have developed some bloggers' block, because I don't know what to say other than that they were fun and involved bikes. There wasn't anything deep or philosophical and I didn't take any pictures. I suppose that sort of ride is the ideal kind, wherein it's only about riding your bike. Very zen (none were fixed, though!).

Very zen pipe smoking!

I went on Salem's ride. Although, I spent only about 5 miles of it with Salem. I rode from my house to the Manchester meeting point, but I was late and didn't catch up until Willimantic. Then in Willimantic, well Windham, the pace picked up and it was just Tim and me. In downtown Willimantic, I picked up some fine Williglass and got a flat and discovered that my spare had a hole in it. Fellow Beatblogger, Tony, had a patch kit, patches were flying around and soon I was on my way again (with a patched spare, too). It's a great ride and just as much fun the second time. Though, this time I rode it on my road bike with 25s instead of a 'cross bike with 35s. It would seem my memory of the amount of pavement was greatly exaggerated. The loose stuff was pretty slow going. I ended up not technically completing the whole thing, because I rode home after the Meshomasic, rather than ride all the way back to Manchester. It started raining again and I thought Johanna and I might be going to a play. I tried to take the ferry, but it wasn't running.

Pipe smoking and beer drinking. No better way to prepare for Salem's ride.

Yesterday, I rode with the group that used to ride on Wednesdays. It was a nice, long and fast ride around the Meshomasic. I was feeling good and riding pretty well. Sadly, I dented the rim on the front wheel of my favorite set (blue velocity arrowheat laced to xt hubs). Not terrible, but it's definitely a dent. Oh well.

Also, I broke a spoke last Friday. What am I doing to wheels!?

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Thug Lite

Dear Wannabe Thug,

You oughta stop listening to your friends now. They were egging you on to race me after I almost clipped your ass this evening. See, that's what happens when you ride out in front of someone thinking, "oh, she'll stop." No. No, they won't. Seeing that I didn't care, they were yelling, "race! race! race!" so you struggled on your too-tiny bicycle that looked like you outgrew it five years ago.

Here's what's sad. You were winded, huffin' & puffin', and still couldn't keep up. I was in a medium gear, riding uphill (not my favorite), my heart and respiration rate were normal, I was wearing three-inch heels, AND I have about fifteen years on you.

Go home to your mama!

-Schleppi Read more!

Wound update

My gross wound from this weekend is getting better, but walking to work is actually pretty nice. Time to collect my thoughts, look at flowering trees, say "good morning" to people, document things on see click fix. Also, I've ridden passed this bike balcony at least a hundred times without noticing it.

Rain was threatening this morning and I wanted to see if I could pedal. I can, so it looks like I'm still on for Salem's ride on Saturday.

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Interesting weekend

On Friday, a ride of semi-epic proportions was planned and happened. Damian, Dario and I set off for Middlefield to meet Peter and Salem. From there, via Tyler Mill (a place I hope to some day ride with a mountain bike), we rode to New Haven. Nominally, it was to participate in that East Coast Greenway ride, but we snails of the Group W bench (not to be confused with the eponymous "clothing store" in New Haven) aren't really joiners. We were the only ones in wool, so we let them leave without us.

Eventually, we caught back up and ate snacks. I've never ridden the Farmington Canal Trail south of Farmington, because I wasn't really sure where it was and wasn't excited by the prospect of riding rt 10 in Southington until I found it. The state park section with the canal next to trail is really nice.

Dario got an awful double flat on a pot hole near Peck Ln, which requires everyone's assistance in fixing. A few miles north, Peter and Salem left for home, by Farmington, Dario and Damian left me. Then, I was all by my lonesome. I rode up to 189 and came home over the abandoned road over the Tariffville Gorge, swung by Critical Mass for some unknown reason on continued on home.

No complaints, it was a nice ride

On Saturday, I was going to go help my dad work on his car. I opted to take the scenic route through the Reservoir to get some bonus mountain biking in on the way there. That was stupid, apparently, because I ended up in the emergency room. Riding over one of those logs on the fence line trails, I bobbled, didn't click out in time and keeled over. Not particularly spectacular, but I fell on a sharp stick and tore a hole in my leg. 18 stitches!! The doctor and med student at the ER put me back together well.

I'm not allowed to ride my bike for the rest of the week, so I'm walking instead. Yesterday, I walked around People's state forest. It was nice.

And then, they killed Osama bin Laden!

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Pasta on the move: Spring edition

The tulips bloom for my puttanesca.

The Spring floods still haven't abated for us. Look at this forlorn snail as he dares to cross the Scheldt.

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Planning is hard

It looks like about 40 emails have been exchanged and few of them make any sense. To wit:

Brendan Mahoney to Damian, salemm, dario.delpuppo, lamosca

show details Apr 26 (1 day ago)

Jeez. I try to make my life easy because I'm unfamiliar with new haven and you get all offended. Fine, let's meet near the Meriden/Middletown line on 66.

Sent from my celluar telephone

- Hide quoted text -

On Apr 26, 2011, at 6:21 PM, "Damian" wrote:

I'm going to paint my tongue chartreuse and have someone else pedal my recumbent.

It sounds like you know interesting ways to get down New Haven way, so I'm leaning towards that.

-Damian

It goes on like that for 35 more emails. Anyway, the East Coast Greenway is having a ride from New Haven to Simsbury. We Snails support the greenway, so we're going. Some people are taking a bus down from Simsbury. We're going to ride. Damian, maybe Dario, and I are leaving from my house at 8:15 this Friday. We're meeting Salem and Peter a little bit south of rt 66 around 10:15 to ride together to New Haven. We'll then ride with the group from New Haven to Simsbury for activism's sake. Then, we come home. All told it's right about 100 miles.

If you want to do the ride with me. Email me.

If you want to do it with a bus. Here's more information. It costs $10 if you don't take the bus.

It's pretty cool that the East Coast Greenway's annual meeting is in Simsbury. I guess Connecticut is more bike friendly than certain surveys have indicated.

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Watrouswellburbia

I took a solo wander yesterday down through Portland, across the ailing Arrigoni Bridge to Middletown, then up to Hartford. Much of this was retracing my old tracks, but I'm always impressed how easy it is, with a bike and little time constraint, to find something previously untraveled. Yesterday, that something was Watrous Park in Cromwell.

The park is a mix of playing fields, pavilions, a skate park, and lots of woods with some trails. That last part of the list was of the most interest to me as I worked my way north. From those trails, I connected to a gas line cut, which brought me to open fields with a solid road meandering this way and that. Eventually, all this delivered me to Brook St, over a mile north of where I entered the park, yippee!

I was travelling picture free yesterday,

but a pro lens man has a bunch of the park.

Click here.

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Earth day irony

I have a relative who likes to go to parties. Trying to party at Spring Weekend, she got her car towed and I was the only one who could retrieve it. So yesterday, instead of riding an epic century out to the wilds of western Massachusetts, I had to ride to Mansfield to get an SUV. However, this did afford me an opportunity to ride the length of the Hopbrook trail and test my Manchester intuition (it's getting better).


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Giant

I live in the end of Hartford with giant grinders. I try to follow suit by putting giant tires on my bike. A little more than a year ago I bought this lot of a couple dozen (or maybe more) tires. There were a lot of downhill tires, which aren't much use to me because the front fork of my Stumpjumper is the only place with clearance for them. None the less, I really enjoy putting a giant tire on there. For awhile, I had a super tacky 2.5" Maxxis High Roller. It was pretty good, but I knew I could do better. A couple months ago while wasting time on eBay, I spotted 2.8" Bontrager Big Earls at a good price. So, I bought them. I finally took it out yesterday and it's quite the experience. And, it has surprisingly low rolling resistance. However, I think I've met my match in terms of tire width with rim brakes (or at least V-brakes), because under heavy braking, the left arm hits the outside knobbies. Read more!

Bugs

I've never been to Seattle, but I'm supposing that we're having Seattlesque weather right now. Undeterred at quitting time yesterday, I rode off for the Reservoir with a rain coat, some fenders, plenty of racks and an awesome pannier. Winding my way through West Hartford, I happened upon some secret dirt jumps in an undisclosed location. While only a couple feet tall, the doubles seem pretty well constructed. If you're nice to me, perhaps I'll take you there.

Then I rode the Resvervoir, which was probably a mistake because it was much wetter than I anticipated. Saturday's storm was no joke. While I regrettably added a couple of ruts, I did unblock a creek that some doofus had put a clog-bridge in, thereby flooding this whole low spot. So my trail impact probably zeroed out.

Clam sauce on the move, with fancy bucatini. Perhaps my best clam sauce to date.

And, perhaps my finest beer-battered cod to date!

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Diversity

While Salem was attempting to visit Hartford in the most difficult way possible yesterday, I decided to go out to Farmington to race on what I'm assuming were the only passable trails in the state: Winding Trails. I grew up near Winding Trails and that's probably why I'm a bad mountain biker. The Farmington River valley probably has 20-25 (30?) miles of trails from rt 4 in Farmington to rt 44 in Avon, it's twisty, but there aren't any rocks or climbs. My parents wouldn't let me ride up to the Reservoir until like ninth grade because they thought the roads were too busy. Sometimes we'd climb up this cliff at the top of Stonefield in Farmington and but through a friend's dad's yard on Deercliff, but that was really complicated. Going downhill into the river valley was way easier.

So, anyway. Winding Trails is a popular mountain bike race. Every year it seems to get a slightly better course and this year, due to construction at Walton Pond and the world's biggest sand castle, the course was slightly shorter but featured a lot more singletrack. It was great.

29 people started with me. I didn't get to the line at the first call, so I took a spot in the second row. To my annoyance, people later than me still tried to crowd in the front and to the side of me. For that reason, I started out the gate in like 15th or 20th, but everyone went to the left up the first little dirt road climb, which was weird because I thought that was the bad line. I went left and entered the singletrack in 9th or 10th. I beat a few more people in wider sections and got into 4th near the rails-to-trails with the three person lead group about 100 yards in front of me. I caught them on the way to the powerlines. I passed a sort of hipster-ish guy on an S-Works to get into third. The trail turned back on to singletrack and this guy in the Bike Barn kit rode off the front and I never saw him again. The second place guy from Rhode Island, or at least his jersey from was Rhode Island, tried to bridge the gap, but succeeded in getting about 200 yards ahead of me. I stayed in third by about 30 seconds for the rest of the race. The fourth place guy, who was not the hipster, but instead a guy in a bikereg kit, stayed about 30 seconds or so behind me the whole time. It was a fun race, even if all the action was in the first 1/3 of the first lap. And, for the first time in ages, I wasn't lapped by any of the 30-39 guys. It was close, they were closing near the finish.

Speaking of lapped riders, I have a bone to pick. I'm crappy racer, no doubt, but I'm respectful and pretty chill. So, when I came upon a guy that I'm lapping and he tells me to "pass at my own risk" or another who blocks my pass when I'm announcing it, I get pretty annoyed. The women I lapped were very nice (and I was totally impressed by the woman racing on a 'cross bike). I have to admit that it's pretty weird that people were being lapped in a three lap race, but just because your ego is being bruised, it doesn't mean that you have to try and wreck the races of others. It's Cat 2 and there weren't even socks to win!

In other racing news, alley cat(s) racing is tentatively returning to Hartford (or at least the Hartford line). There hasn't been one since that Halloween one a few years ago. It's being put on by Orion and his friend Matt. Orion won the alley that I put on a few springs ago. So, you should do this one in May:

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Low and Wet

Looks like I hexed myself with today's earlier post. I headed out to take the long route into Hartford via the east side boardwalk, but was thwarted at multiple turns.
I did get to where I was headed, but probably rode a sum total of 30 feet of boardwalk. Next time, flippers.
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High and Dry

This past Friday, with his hibernation completed, Peter came out of his den to join Brendan, Dario, and me for a Friday jaunt. With the elder statesman and his road bike along, the Snails avoided their typical magnetic attraction to water, even escaping the CT river valley completely with a foray over the Metacomet ridge.

We paused long enough from the business at hand to pose for this group photo,

high and dry above Tariffville Gorge.

Unfamiliar with these surroundings, we even broke into a strangely quick pace, sprinting for town line signs, as Peter tried to trick Brendan into sweating through his cotton T before the cool ride home. Despite his absence, Peter has lost none of his playful cruel cunning, although I believe Brendan did survive the test despite some mighty pink arms and hands at the end.

Almost entirely unrelated:

Brendan may stake claim to the world's best panniers,

But I doubt their up to transporting frame boxes.

My backpack, a frame box, two trash bags, a swatch of hi-vis orange and I

made a rainy trip to the post office this past week.

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Flood porn

The Connecticut River is high. NOAA is saying intense things (IN ALL CAPS and spelling "officials" wrong) like this:

THIS IS A SERIOUS FLOOD EPISODE. FOLLOW THE DIRECTION OF YOUR LOCAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT OFFICALS. IF ASKED TO EVACUATE...DO SO IMMEDIATELY. ALL FLOOD PROTECTION MEASURES MUST BE RUSHED TO COMPLETION IN FLOOD PRONE AREAS. TOWNS FROM WINDSOR LOCKS AND EAST WINDSOR SOUTH THROUGH HADDAM AND PORTLAND WILL EXPERIENCE SIGNIFICANT FLOODING OUTSIDE OF LEVEES AND FLOOD PROTECTION WALLS.

So, I rode down to the river yesterday evening and look around.

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