Before I continue with a Green Mountain travelogue, let me take a break to praise canoeing by bicycle. I mean, getting your canoe or kayak to water’s edge by bike, solely with human power and with minimal carbon emissions. It’s one of those little ironies: Too many HPVs (human-powered vehicles) get to the starting line aboard or atop a gas guzzler; think of the common ad image of mountain bikes on an SUV, as if they’re jewelry. But you can take another path. Last night, for example, I put my 18 ½ foot Mad River canoe on a second-hand kid trailer and attached the improvised rig to my faithful Dahon folding bike, then I headed over to Corn Hill Landing. It took no effort to get to the dock, then a few minutes to unload, get the boat in the water, fold the bike and trailer and stow them aboard, and set off for a three-mile paddle upstream to Brooks Landing (near the UR campus). Once on the water I was in a different world; near the old railroad bridge a bit south of Ford Street, I saw, and followed, a beaver that was swimming placidly along – at least till he/she realized I wasn’t a big log and submerged with a loud slap of his/her tail. I’d seen muskrats thereabouts before, but a beaver sighting is a personal first. Anyway, there’s something cool about doing the whole canoe “expedition” without resort to horsepower. Try it, you’ll like it.

Back to the Green Mountains. I’d enjoyed small but urbane Burlington, but I was ready for a change of pace, and the mountains of Central Vermont certainly provided that. For one thing, the steep, long inclines slowed me down; I had to walk up some stretches. But of course, even while you’re huffing and puffing, the Vermont scenery is priceless. The epitome came quite literally at Lincoln Gap, where you go up forever and ever, sometimes into the clouds, then descend like mad. It took me hours to get to the high point, where the famed Long Trail crosses the seasonal road. But my descent was slow, too. Turns out the road on the downside is too steep to ride safely (or maybe I was just chicken, though I enjoy a 45-50 mph schuss as much as the next biker), so I ended up walking for a couple miles before the slope got a bit less than lethal. This bit of walking, with 50 or more pounds of bike and gear beside me, straining to pull me along, was the toughest thing I came up against anywhere on the trip.

But maybe I just spoke too soon. Because some of the road conditions in Vermont (as later in other parts of New England) were atrocious. Route 100, a wonderfully old-fashioned two-laner that runs north and south, paralleling the Green Mountains’ spinal column of high peaks and threading its way through traditional rural communities, is a tourist’s delight. But there’s lots of traffic, including heavy trucks and construction vehicles, and there’s very little bikeable area at the edge of the pavement – basically, the road lacks a real shoulder, so you’re squeezed into a narrow strip near the sideline, and the sideline, if it’s visible, often runs atop shattered asphalt.

Then there are the bridges! Normally – that is, as found on the back roads - a tight two-lane bridge is a pleasure, or at least not a problem. But some of the bridges along Route 100 are downright scary; a biker has to watch for pavement hazards while the traffic presses him/her toward a safety railing that hardly exists. The railings I saw were not more than two feet high, and it took no reflection at all to realize that if I got sideswiped, I’d be knocked over the edge. And in these wondrous boulder-strewn mountains, that type of maneuver would involve not a plunge into a deep, cool river but a 10-meter swan dive onto a pile of rocks.

Overall, though, I loved the Green Mountains - and next time I'll write about some good stuff that happened as I completed the round trip back to Burlington. 

Posted by jackbradiganspula at 15:33 EDT

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The hour-long ride across Lake Champlain was perfect: long distance views, smooth water, the city of Burlington glowing in the afternoon sun. And then there was the look backward, with a stunning panorama of the High Peaks, which during most of my Vermont visits have been obscured by fog or rain – but this time were as clear in detail as an etching.

A classic college town defined by the ever-expanding University of Vermont and a very progressive local government, Burlington is a great place to visit – and you’d want to live there, too. Several blocks of a downtown arterial have been turned into a pedestrian mall, similar to what’s found in Ithaca, except in Burlington there are more sidewalk cafes, clubs, and crowds. And the “City Market,” an immense co-op that actually functions as a downtown supermarket (though, to judge by my several visits at different times of day, not with as inclusive a shopper demographic as we’d want). The city is also well-equipped with bike shops, high-end and otherwise; I dropped in at one to get a new frame pump to replace the inefficient one I’d been carrying (don’t’ leave home without a good pump, a spare tube,  a tool kit, and just as important, some basic maintenance and repair skills), plus a replacement rear tire that I hoped would make the tube and tools unnecessary.

Also like Ithaca, Burlington has long had something that most American cities can only dream of: incipient democracy, where a little power has been taken from the usual business interests and vested in the majority. The current mayor, Bob Kiss, is a member of the Progressive Party, the support structure for former Burlington mayor Bernie Sanders, now an independent socialist US Senator. The Burlington Progressives also have four members on the city council, counterweighted by some Democrats and Republicans. I don’t want to romanticize Burlington and the “People’s Republic of Vermont,” nor will I ignore the damage that standard capitalistic growth patterns are doing to this and other parts of the state. (Cf. the Route 7 corridor south of Burlington, a late example of standard-issue suburbanization.) But some good stuff is happening in Burlington and all of Vermont that we New Yorkers should envy – and emulate.

Burlington’s got a great interlocking system of bike trials, which run along the lakeshore, by rail yards, through old industrial zones, and out into the burbs and countryside. You can make a whole vacation of exploring this system and stopping along the way at parks, pubs, etc. Don’t look for an Erie Canal or Genesee Valley Greenway type of extended touring trail, however. I checked the maps, and I also consulted with knowledgeable staff at a non-motorized transportation advocacy group called Local Motion, which has an trailside office at the harbor, and I couldn’t find any long distance off-road routes anywhere in Vermont.

Of course, Vermont has many scenic highways and back roads. But they look a little different from behind the handlebars than through a windshield. More about that in the next installment, where I’ll cover my circuit through the highs and lows of Central Vermont and the Green Mountains.

Posted by jackbradiganspula at 15:53 EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 1 August 2007 15:37 EDT

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I’m seriously behind in chronicling my big bike trip of 2007 – the last installment ended in the Adirondacks, and since then I’ve hit the shores of Lake Champlain, Burlington (VT), the high points (and low) of the Green Mountains, the Mass. Berkshires, the Pioneer Valley, NE Connecticut, much of Rhode Island, and the budding bicycle magnets of Brooklyn and Manhattan. So let me take these one at a time.

After leaving Lake Placid, I headed down Route 86 through rocky Wilmington Notch, where I had an unusually clear view of Whiteface Mountain. I say unusual because in recent years, if the fog doesn’t obscure the summit, the particulate pollution does. Only we oldtimers recall how long the vistas used to be in these mountains, before the monster smokestacks of the Midwest and eastern Great Lakes sent so much stuff in our direction. Acid rain has infamously struck the Adirondacks, but acid deposition, via particulates, comes in any weather – and the fine particles produce a haze that limits the view. Still, the mountains are compelling. Whenever I pass through the High Peaks region, I get nostalgic. So many backpacking trips with friends and family. So many bracing climbs in all seasons and conditions, so many rainy but wonderful trudges up and down Algonquin, Marcy, Cascade, etc.

All along Route 86 between Placid and Jay, I saw bikers/triathletes in training – dozens of them. Lake Placid is of course a major athletic training center with state-of-the-art facilities, but still I was surprised to see so many pedalers on the road. Jay itself is a quiet hamlet; I took a half-mile side trip to see a covered bridge that’s being reconstructed. (Yes, NY State has a good share of this type of bridge, which through the miracle of marketing has become so closely associated with New England.)

I have to admit that for most of the ride between Jay and the west side of Lake Champlain, I was fixated on getting to the ferry at Port Kent that goes across to Burlington, Vermont. I also had to watch the road surface a good deal, since it wasn’t as smooth and inviting as it had been. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing worth seeing on that route. Indeed, the edge of the plateau offers scenery with two personalities: over your shoulder there are the mountains receding, darkening as the sun sets; and before you is more open country leading to the expanse of the lake, which since the 1990s has officially been the “sixth Great Lake.” It’s much smaller than the Big Five, of course. By the way: Why is it that Lake Superior is considered the largest of the five? Though this ranking business inevitably involves arbitrary standards and judgments, it’s obvious that Superior, which I dearly love, is much smaller than Michigan-Huron, which has a level connector (the Straits of Mackinac) and by rights should be considered a single lake.

Anyway, Champlain is easily crossed by bike – and I don’t mean pedal-boat. All you need to do is get the Port Kent-Burlington ferry, a traditional and long-successful operation that costs only $4.70 for a walk-on plus a buck for your bike. A lesson for any community that longs for such service. (In a future installment I’ll discuss the equally pleasurable fast ferry service between Providence and Newport, RI – bike-friendly and cheap.)

Posted by jackbradiganspula at 10:06 EDT

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NY Route 458 gets two thumbs-up as portal to the northern Adirondacks. I say this for two reasons: Rt. 458 is less traveled and woodsier than either Rt. 56 or 30, it goes through the unspoiled hamlet of St. Regis Falls (a perfect rest stop with a general store/deli), and it has lots of hills and thrills.

Of course, it’s the hills that in a sense exile many of the truckers and – let’s face it, bicyclists, too – to the lowlands and heavy traffic. But it turns out Route 458 is not a corridor of solitude. There’s some local traffic, even an occasional logging truck, and of course the wildlife here has an audible voice (amazing in the modern world!). And then there are the fitness enthusiasts.

All through the northern Adirondacks I ran into triathletes in training and other high-powered cyclists on fancy machines; most of them are connected to the top-drawer training facilities in Lake Placid, which since the 1980 Winter Olympics has become a year-round athletic venue to rival Aspen, et al. But not everyone on the roads is an Ironman champion.

Case in point: On Rt. 458 I ran into a cyclist named John who happened to be doing a training ride; he’d driven his car down from a town near the St. Lawrence and was cranking out some miles uphill and down, all to prepare for more challenging hills like the infamous stretch of Route 73 between Placid and Keene -  a gloriously frightening descent or heart-pounding upgrade, depending on which direction you’re going.

Anyway, John, a North Country college professor who said he had a son studying at RIT, proved to be a great conversationalist as he and I rode along together, mostly side-by-side on the otherwise mostly vehicle-free highway. We covered plenty of bike topics – strangely, though he didn’t hesitate to hit the road alone, he didn’t have a full tool kit, nor did he know how to change a flat – and shared anecdotes about the blackboard, now whiteboard, jungle of academia. (When I stopped at a public library to check my email, as is my custom on the road, I got some bas news about a case I was following: Norman Finkelstein, one of the best and most committed scholars working on the question of Israel/Palestine, was finally denied tenure at DePaul Univ. in Chicago; the denial follows heavy-handed intervention by the egregious Alan Dershowitz of Harvard. It's a complicated story that I'll pursue in another venue. But the take-home message is this: Readers should check out Finkelstein's website, normanfinkelstein.com, and send their messages of outrage to DePaul administrators.)

John was riding a Serotta road bike; later, at the Lake Placid bike shop he recommended, I saw Serottas on the sales floor priced up to $8,000. Talk about sticker shock. But the shop did have some good, and reasonably priced, Pearl Izumi cycling gloves; I bought a pair to replace my old Lake gloves, which lost their cushioning power a year ago or more. So with the new PI’s, at least my hands were able to proceed in style.

Speaking of attire, etc.: When the temperatures were in the 70s or 80s, I stuck to my usual road gear: cycling jersey or 50/50-blend long-sleeved tee, plus the mandatory padded cycling shorts. But when the weather turned blisteringly hot, I went back to my canoeing outfit, at least from the waist up: a loose-fitting, cotton-flannel long-sleeved shirt (probably a lightweight Chambray would be even better). When you’re in motion, the loose shirt billows up and acts something like A/C. True, the added air resistance cuts down your mechanical efficiency – but what the hey, touring is not a race.

Another concern: As a melanin-deprived person of Celtic descent, I’m a big believer in bathing in sunblock. But I know that sunblock/sunscreen can’t equal tight-woven fabric for UV protection. And exposing bare skin to the sun also increases solar absorption. Not to disparage fun in the sun, but we’d probably do better to emulate the traditional peoples of the desert in summer from 10 AM till 4 PM – and save the para-naturism for safer hours.

Posted by jackbradiganspula at 17:46 EDT

Updated: Friday, 13 July 2007 11:04 EDT

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When I told friends I’d be posting regular road reports from this summer’s bicycle tour, I was making one of those fine resolutions fated not to be kept. But now I’m home – at least for a spell, while I get stuff together for another jaunt – so I can sketch out what I saw from the saddle the last two weeks.

After a conversation with Wayne County raconteur-naturalist and inveterate bicyclist Roland Micklem, I left from Peacework Farm (Arcadia/Newark) on June 24. A series of paved back roads took me to Route 104 and then lunch in Wolcott (not-quite-famously the birthplace of “Grandpa” Al Lewis, one-time TV “Munster,” and later, NY City radio personality and Green Party gubernatorial candidate). This lunch was in the grain for my bike trips: bursts of pedaling followed by long stops with the usual small-town “bottomless coffee cup” and a local newspaper.

From Wolcott I pushed on to Oswego. In the past I’ve taken Old Route 104 through this area, but this time I went for the new 104: more traffic passing but fewer hills, plus generally smoother pavement. Mostly I wanted to get to the North Country asap.

Oswego was quiet and refreshing that warm Sunday. Of course, SUNY was not in session, so this college town – which, alas, doubles as the capital of regional nuclear power – was in the doldrums. I stopped in the partly gentrified harbor for a sandwich and microbrew. By now you should have a clear idea of my mode of travel, alternating hair-shirt and bon-vivant.

Struggling to be more of a leisure destination than old milltown, Oswego is showing too many signs of sprawl these days. The big-box miasma stretches east of the city center over what I remember as an interesting greenspace that flanked a creek and led to farm fields and woodlots. Now there’s mostly traffic, and not of the nonpolluting kind.

From Oswego I made my way to Route 104 B and then to Route 3, which hugs the Lake Ontario shoreline till it veers through Watertown and heads toward the Central Adirondacks and, eventually, the west side of Lake Champlain. Route 3 has evolved over the last couple decades from a narrow, unpleasant bike route to a fairly nice alternative to the likes of Route 11, which along with I-81 (the latter off limits to human- or actual horse-powered vehicles), carries most of the heavy commercial traffic.

And speaking of horses: All through the North Country I came upon Amish farmers, who’ve relocated to several parts of rural New York because land is both expensive and unavailable in south central Pennsylvania. Indeed, Northern New York still has some of cheapest farmland you can find, and thus is a magnet for anyone who lives outside the mainstream. Here’s to appropriate technology: I enjoyed greeting the Amish families who, relying on their horsecarts and wagons, truly know how to share the road.

Route 3 took me through Henderson Harbor, where you look westward to beautiful islands and the oceanic expanse of Lake Ontario, north to Sackets Harbor. The latter is still a little overwhelmed with its War of 1812 past, in the sense that the town and its historical markers tiptoe around the truth – that the dirty little war almost 200 years ago was launched on shaky grounds (which is not to deny the British were guilty of various crimes, like the impressment of US citizens into the British Navy) and largely aimed at “neutralizing” indigenous peoples who thwarted westward imperial expansion.

But none of this neutralizes the visual appeal of Sackets Harbor, which now hosts a fine, eponymous brew-pub, even though it’s all too close to Fort Drum, home of the US Army’s 10^th Mountain Division, since the Reagan Pentagon build-up a big player in imperial “conflicts.” (Disclosure: When I was in the Marine Corps Reserve, I used to train occasionally at what was then the modest, retro Camp Drum, a holdover that should have gone out with spats. It was a shithole, and though the layout and amenities have changed, the character of the place has not. It’s such a shame that Watertown and neighboring towns bring a little bit of, say, eastern North Carolina-style militarism into Northern New York.)

From Sackets I pedaled due north toward the St. Lawrence River, and I soon found myself on a freshly-repaved Route 12 through the Thousand Islands. Long about Chippewa Bay, where there’s a scenic overlook more than worthy of the designation, you can see just how wonderful the region is, especially when you get a good distance from the powerboats and, ugh, jet-skis. I think the vistas around Chippewa Bay are as grand as any I’ve seen on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts – but you have to realize I’ve been accused of being a Great Lakes chauvinist.

The ride along Route 12 was as hot as it was beautiful, though. Ninety-eight degree air temperature on new asphalt: That’s got to translate to 115 degrees. But at least I had a stiff tailwind and thus cruised in style.

I thought I might continue up along the river, but frankly, once out of the Thousand Islands, the scenery didn’t turn me on so much, so I veered southeast toward Canton and Potsdam. Great riding country here, though I was fighting a powerful crosswind most of the way. On Route 56 just outside of Canton I saw a cooperative experiment in progress: local colleges and the state DEC have put up fencing of various types and diversion culverts so that migrating turtles and amphibians can get to the other side of the road without harm. I didn’t see any roadkill on the quarter-mile experimental stretch, so I suppose things are working. Elsewhere on my trip, roadkill – everything from snakes to waterfowl to beaver – was extensive. (Lest you think I’m being a sanctimonious cyclist, here’s a confession: near Saranac Lake a young grouse that was sitting on the pavement shot up as I approached and hit my handlebar pack head on; the impact broke the bird’s neck and it died within half a minute as I stood there, helpless. The mother grouse cried out from the bushes at roadside. A couple days later, a second mother grouse mock-attacked me as I apparently went by her concealed brood. Quick karmic retribution, I guess.)

Well, I’ll continue the travelogue pretty soon, covering the itinerary through the Adirondacks and on to Vermont. So check in again…

Posted by jackbradiganspula at 13:26 EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 11 July 2007 13:35 EDT

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