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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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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Non-competitve cyclocross

I like my family and I like to ride my bike. Since the Mayor, pursuant to §2-391(D)2 of the Municipal Code, gave City employees like myself the day after Thanksgiving off, I spent lots of time involving both of those things. I rode at Case & Gay City as well as the Reservoir. I tried a new tire and decided that it was great. I also found a fancy Camelbak water bottle. Not quite as good as finding $15, but close.

I also did one of those slightly protracted expedition speed rides with walking and riding, and got shot at.

What did you do with your four days off? Did you drink the Sam Adams Cream Stout? It's very good!

Flat tire!

Moody view...

...from Kilkenney Rocks

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Rocks and rocks and manure

Thursday was Veterans' Day. To honor the Vets, CT-NEMBA sponsors a ride. I did it last year at Grayville and I did this year's at Millers Pond. Salem and I arrived early and rode west of the park and visited a big rock. NEMBA folks I know like Mark, Charlie and Al were and then lots of others whom I don't know. If you've never ridden Millers Pond, it's great, even though it's one of the most difficult places around. Everything is rideable, but half of the place involves artfully arranged giant rocks. The other half, which I believe is called the XC loop, is also fun, but not quite as difficult. I think the crazy rocky park may also be difficult because the two times I've been there, I've ridden them retrograde to way that most people ride it. Although, I'm sure it's difficult in both directions. I just get the sense that it might be slightly easier to ride down a lot of these rocks rather than up them. It seems to me if you want to get an "XC loop", ride the entire place, even though there'll be a little walking. It doesn't take that long (2 - 2 1/2 hours?).

Yesterday (Saturday), there was a cyclocross race in Ellington. It was a rather strange course on the side of a hill at a farm: lots of long straightaways. It made my course in Hartford seem twisty (when I got a couple of complaints that it had too many straightaways (it only had two and they weren't that long)). None the less, it was fun. I rode it on Johanna's bike with flat bars and I must say that it would seem I ride better with flat bars. I think I'm a more confident descender and I've got more leverage to climb. Also, the bike has the same gearing as when I rode D2R2 on it, which was helpful on the "climbs", as I think I was only person in my race to ride them. 5th place, though, wins you no socks.

Afterward, I visited my parents and did some fixed gear mountain biking to pass the time. I guess it's fun

Authentic cyclocross.

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Spiral

As much as I love Vermont, driving six or seven hours in one day is a lot of work. So, I stayed in Connecticut. There was a 'cross race in Avon on Saturday. The course was fun and the race had lots of people. The downside was that they started it 15 minutes early so I didn't get a chance to ride any more than 1/3 of a lap to warm up. I pulled a hamstring, which sort of sucks. It had a "death spiral" which is the course design gimmick de rigeur (it is fun, though) and three sets of triple barriers.

I did eh, having a crappy start and finish. Matt Lolli of Ghostship killed it on a singlespeed. 2nd place, damn! Johanna took some pictures of me not killing anything:

On Sunday, Salem and I wandered around the woods of Salmon River State Forest and Day Pond State Park. I found $15! Having never ridden there, I was impressed with the singletrack in the greater Colchester area. There aren't many people living around there, but they've sure built a lot of good trails.

I didn't take any mountain bike pictures. This is at the bottom of that viaduct on the Air Line Trail.

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If you were me...

Would you drive up to Vermont this weekend for the Circumburke? While only 26 miles, it sounds like an awesome back country race. I know some of those trails near Kingdom Trails that aren't maintained and they're pretty awesome. It's a lot of driving for only 26 miles of racing. Read more!

Weekend Weekend!

I did lots of things this weekend and now I'm going to tell you about them.

The parts of cyclocross that are exciting on a bike generally do not photograph well.

On Saturday morning, I went out to Mansfield for the Mansfield Hollow Cyclocross race. I love that race. They're so friendly and they've got free seasonally appropriate food and drink. Every year the course changes a little bit. It was harder this year than last, but hard in a fun way. I had a good start again, faded a bit, but ended up finishing 9th. I should probably start running a 12-28 in the back instead of a 12-15. Or perhaps a 39t chainring. 42:12-25 is too tall for me.

Then I got home and put on pants instead of tights so that I could help plant trees on my street. Since I was late, Johanna and I only planted one tree. Usually, I try to plant more. Also, have you realized that you can't spell street without "tree"? I just did. That's why street trees are important or something.

Looking south from Heublein Tower at what I would ride my bike on the next day.

Also, it was the Avon Land Trust's fall hike (my dad is their treasurer), which corresponds with the Heublein Tower "Tower Toot". So, Johanna and I went up there and tooted. We love the Tower Toot. Since you probably haven't done it before, you should go next year. You can see these guys.

Then, we ate some Korean food from a stone pot.

On Sunday, it was the big river cleanup. The Snails and Trinity College were well represented. As it was the third anniversary of the beat bike blog's participation, I rode a bike and transported supplies with my indefatigable ortleib panniers and snake bike. Snake bike painter, Peter, waxed poetic about his days of racing on the snake bike.

Then I went mountain biking and figured out how to ride south of reservoir over to Mountain Rd. in Farmington and then back to rt. 4. It was cool finding trails I imagined to exist, but had never ridden on. I also broke in a 2.3" Hutchinson Bulldog because my beloved Panaracer Smoke wore out. I'm not particularly impressed with this new one. It was more of an experiment to see how well a 2.3 would fit in the back. It fits fine.

Then, Johanna and I went to Johanna's mom's house for dinner.

The end.

Oh yeah, on Friday I pixilated my coworkers by transporting a large box contain my new synthesizer home on my bike. The hardest part was getting it out of the building.

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Soda review

About a month ago, I got an email from someone named Victoria asking me if I wanted to review soda for the blog. Snow soda to be exact. Since this is a bike blog, I explained that I generally prefer drinking beer. None the less, it's hard to refuse a free case of anything, so I consented to review and a few days later a case of soda (12 pack?) arrived. It would seem by googling "snow soda", this type of free-case-of-soda-for-review model is major part of their advertising plan. Other companies have tried this with us and to date, I think I reviewed some kind of training dvd and I was sent some knock-off camelbaks. They weren't very good, so I decided that maybe reviewing them would be a disservice for the knock-off camelbaks. The training dvds were ok, though I still think I prefer riding outside in the winter to watching a dvd involving riding while I'm on rollers.

Anyway, snow makes three kinds of soda, Cola, Cranberry Pomraz and Lemon Lime, that they put in a tall can. The can is 12oz., but it's tall like a red bull can. The Cranberry Pomraz, despite having a weird name, is quite good. Not too sweet and it tastes like cranberry, pomegranate and raspberry. The cola isn't too good. It tastes slightly off and a little flat (kinda like Tab?). I understand they purposefully don't carbonate their sodas too much, but I think this cola needed more bubbles. The addition of rum didn't really help either. The lemon lime is ok, but could probably be just slightly more sour (or bitter)- maybe in the direction of that San Pellegrino Limonata stuff or Ting.

In the grand pantheon of sodas, I'd say the Snow ranks better than Jones. The Pomraz is better than all of the Boylan sodas, except for grape. It's not as good as Hosmer. It's not as good as the old recipe for Fresca. And, nothing is as good as Northern Neck Ginger Ale. So, if it's Sunday and you're out of Miller Lite, maybe you should grab a Pomrazz. Although, they do have more calories than a Miller Lite, so only grab one.

Ed. Note: Johanna also drank some of the soda, but she doesn't have a blog, so we'll never know what she thought.

Another soda related thing to which I would lend my seal approval are these Portland Design Works sodapop fenders. I put them on my Diamond Back and rode it around in the rains of last week. They work 90% as good as complicated fenders, but are 90% easier to install. They're supposed to be removable, but the way that the fender mounts to the rear "brake" bridge abridged that, so I can only easily take off the front one.

It rained so much I became blurry.

In other news, I found a new and steep way to get over Talcott Mountain. It's especially helpful if you need to get from Tapas in Bloomfield to the Pickin Patch in Avon.

don't fall in this well on the Avon Land Trust's Hazen Park trail.

On Sunday, I went for a hike.

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Fixed gear mountain biking: not cool?

63xc.com is a cool website, even if it's defunct. It went dormant right around when everyone started riding fixed gear things, which I think is 2008. Even mountain bikers started riding fixed gears, and with the advent of the tomi cog, it's pretty easy to do with your existing singlespeed. Things have cooled off and cycling factions seem to be a little bit less dogmatic.

Cog cat!

I bought a tomi cog myself a few months ago for my Mono Cog. I haven't been riding it that much lately because I find myself liking to shift in the woods and the bottom bracket is in rough shape. So, I figured making it fixed would make me want to ride it more.

Riding swoopy, flowy stuff is fun. Even rock gardens aren't too bad, but logs are cumbersome. I don't know. There's really no higher meaning to be found in your legs moving all the time. I mean, people only ride fixed off road to get noticed, right?

Or, perhaps I was just having a off day last night.

And, take a moment to remember Jure Robic, a man more hardcore than a million fixed gears or thousand D2R2's.

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I miss my car

At times, I've considered getting rid of my car. I don't drive it very much and I have pay for its upkeep, taxes & fees, attempt to fix it and wash it twice a year. Before the great C&O ride, I realized that the rear passenger brake pads were used up. So, I parked the car at my parents' house (where the car tools live) and ordered some pads. The pads arrived and things were difficult- requiring special tools to retract the piston in the caliper and then the caliper didn't retract because it seems to be hyper-extended and broken. It's been a big mess and I haven't had my car in about a month. While living without hasn't been particularly difficult, as in I can get around by bike and if I really need a car to go a long distance, I can borrow one or get a ride, I really miss my car. Driving is fun.

In other news, did anyone notice how hot it was yesterday? I did one of those trans-Talcott rides and thought I was going to die. I went through three water bottles and a big bottle of Gatorade and didn't feel normal until this morning. You'd think that about a gallon of liquid with be sufficient for a five hour ride.

Lincoln Town Truck, as seen in Glastonbury during Brendan & Johanna's sojourn to the state forest.

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Pubic Herd

The MDC's public hearing on the future of recreation on their (our) lands was last night. Unsurprisingly, everyone who spoke was in favor of keeping the trails open. It's clearly a hot button political that has attracted numerous Democratic candidates (and people who are already elected): Blumenthal, Glassman, Slifka, Rep. Baram (D-15), Rep. Fleischmann (D-18), Syd Schulman, and Malloy, Wyman and Cotto in absentia. There are obvious a lot of voters in the West Hartford and reservoir-abutting towns. They talked about the imperativeness of keeping public lands open to the public and the necessity of amending the statement's municipal recreation liability statute. The public, myself included, talked about the same thing. I also delivered Hartford's keep-the-trails-open resolution to the commissioners (which I think is a pretty kick ass resolution).

A few people assailed trial lawyers, though not as much as one would have thought. That surprised me, because I figured there would be Republican candidates there to take that position. I mean, Linda McMahon's office is right in West Hartford, mere yards away. I guess she doesn't either hates public land, the woods, mountain bikers or all three. There was one sort of crazy, Republican throw-the-bums-out member of the public, who spoke after me. For reasons I don't understand, he singled me out as a lawyer who was to blame that the CGS hadn't been amended after Conway v. Wilson. Since, I'm not a lawyer and didn't represent myself as such and also didn't talk about that case at all, I'll assume that he's just out of his mind.

While I was waiting to speak, I emailed my state rep, Hector Robles, and asked him to cosponsor Rep. Baram's proposed bill (though, yet to be written). He consented, which was nice.

So, I guess mountain biking and democracy go well together. I'm cautiously optimistic about all this now.

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Pubic Hearing

Lots of emails have been flying around email distribution lists that involve trails and land lately, so you've probably already heard about it like eighteen times, but... The MDC public hearing on the future of recreation on our rate-tax-payer-funded land is tonight at 5:30pm at the West Hartford town hall. Come, sign-up, speak and hopefully the commissioners will listen to us and maintain status quo.

I rode at the Reservoir this evening, it'd be a shame if they closed it.

In other news, I got a new phone/camera, so I can take pictures again.

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Summers and Governors

First day of summer! Yay! In its honor, we should go mountain biking. So, meet me at the Reservoir in the rt. 4 parking lot around 5:30. It's the longest day of the year, so we can ride late. I'm assuming that no one is going to read this and show up.

Also, I got an interesting email from Mary Glassman's campaign outlining the campaign's bike policy. I like Mary Glassman a lot, so I would expect nothing less than her being the only candidate proffering a bike policy. (Admitedly, I haven't been super impressed with her running mate's campaign so far and I worked for that guy in 2006). Here's a link to the policy.

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Saving the MDC Trails

MDC trail access advocates have launched a new site where you can learn more about efforts to fight threats to public access to the reservior trails and add your name to the list of supporters.

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Bad ride

I rode my bike a lot this week, but the quality has been sliding the last few days. Yesterday, it was the weather and today, well, it was the bike. Obviously, a talentless dolt blames his tool, but today, it was not going my way. The front derailer was pissed at me and I couldn't get traction in my rear tire to save my life. The pedals had no desire to hold on to my feet and somehow I bent the metal thing inside my shoe where the cleat attaches. And, I crashed twice. It wasn't like other not-great-rides, where I'm either off balance or I can't seem to find a metabolic rhythm (not that I'm remotely good enough or in shape enough to have any like a metabolic rhythm). This was different, the bike just didn't want to operate right.

My Stumpjumper has always been a moody bike. I think it feels like I've bought other bikes to replace and spurn it. It's so not the case, though, I've showered this thing with cool parts and treat it like a member of the family. Maybe it really misses that Judy XC it used to have that fell apart. Who knows?

Oh, and since I don't have a helmet cam, check out my first cell phone cam artistry:

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Consternation

I'm sure people assume that I'm always pro-bike path. I'm in favor of most bike paths- old railroad right of ways, separate bike lanes, places that have already been developed, etc. But, if the land is untouched or only touched by unpaved trail, but I think it's better of to stay that way than add pavement.

To that end, I received an email from the Town of Windsor yesterday asking us to lobby on behalf of a trail from the Bissel Bridge to Mead Rd in Windsor. At present, you can make this journey without too much muss or fuss, by either taking relatively quiet roads or using a few trails along the train tracks that are rather pleasant. The DEP owns the land they want to pave. Below is the area:

View Larger Map

At first, I thought they wanted to pave the trail from the Bissel bridge up to Loomis, which be a shame, because it's nice and quiet in there, but I guess they don't want to do that.

So, the questions, I guess is pave or don't pave. Am I just selfish? The C&O Canal isn't paved and people love using that.

Those Hockanum trails are unpaved except for complex bridges. I like that.

Don't I have the dorkiest cockpit set up ever there?

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Big lots!

Look! I put a giant tire on my bike and made it very heavy.

And outfitted it with some big cranks and a king cage.

Deluxe!

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Calling you back to action

If you read the Courant, check out Rick Green's column today. It takes a much dimmer view than the positive rumors I've been hearing lately about trail closure at the Reservoir. It also makes mention to public hearings, to which we all must go.

If you live in a member town, you have commissioners who are appointed by your city council. There are also commissioners who are appointed by the legislature and the government. While not elected, these commissioners are supposed to be accountable to us, so we need to let them know what we think. Here's a list of the commissioners. In checking the agendas, I don't see anything yet about any ordinance changes pertaining to mountain biking.

Maybe we should be like Salem and make plans to move to a libertarian state like New Hampshire.

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Sundry

Firstly, Johanna & I were riding to get some Mexican food from the West End last night. When we passed through Pope Park, we saw deer. That was pretty cool. They were just chillin in the, well, meadow. I guess that's what happens when don't mow the whole lawn.

This weekend is the Coyote Hill Race. I've always wanted to do it because the rumor is that it's a fun course. So, we'll see. I like fun and I'll be in Vermont anyway.

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