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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After a couple weeks on the road, I’ve got a couple good things to report. First, the Finger Lakes Trail. My son and I spent four days backpacking on a 50-mile section of the FLT, taking the very long and scenic route between Cortland and Ithaca. The trail, which winds for close to 600 miles (875 miles, counting loops and branch trails) between Allegany State Park in Cattaraugus County and the Catskill Forest Preserve, is one of New York State’s underappreciated gems – certainly a rival to the Appalachian Trail and Vermont’s Long Trail in ambience and accessibility. Go to http://www.fingerlakestrail.org/ for information – and join the Finger Lakes Trail Conference, as I just did, to support this mostly volunteer project. Then get out on the trail; camp at the new leantos or bivouac in the many State Forests along the route; and find the sort of beauty you’ll never experience from the highway. (You can minimize your trip’s environmental impact by taking the bus to the trailhead. Ian and I found one nice loop: we took Greyhound/Trailways from Midtown Plaza to Cortland, caught a cab to the actual trail seven miles further south, and made our wandering way to Ithaca, where we caught the bus back to Rochester.)

Second, I can report that organic agriculture is more than alive and well – it’s growing and spreading. That was just one take-home message from the Northeast Organic Farming Association’s annual conference held last week in Amherst, MA. Just one piece of evidence, maybe the most significant, in fact: It seems that more and more young people are joining the movement, buying farms or leasing acreage, forming communities (including some that happily are anarcho-socialist, or the like), creating relationships and families, and otherwise carrying the banner forward in the Dark Age of Bush. I was also pleased that organic folks are working overtime to demote Big Energy and fossil fuels, and to push appropriate technology and renewables. (Several workshops and programs at the conference centered on Peak Oil, the concept that global petroleum production has already passed or will soon pass its high point, after which we’ll see prices going up and energy wars and lesser struggles breaking out. (Go to www.nofa.org for more information – and check out the archived transcripts of talks from previous conferences, like Vandana Shiva’s 2004 keynote.)

I’ll be posting more good news gleaned on vacation – but now that I’m back in the saddle, I’m also looking at some of the news I missed while blissfully “lost” in the woods. Tops on this list is the inadequacy of local response to the Lebanon-Gaza-Israel crisis – response from the mass and “alternative” media alike, as well as from the peace movement. (Note that my name for this crisis reflects the descending order of impact on noncombatants and the ascending order of moral and political responsibility for the carnage, with the Israeli government’s culpability head and shoulders above the competition. Current totals: More than 800 civilian deaths in Lebanon, more than 130 in the often-ignored Gaza theater of conflict, and more than 50 in Israel.)

For now, you’ll find below a relevant document from one of Israel’s most progressive human rights organizations, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. ICAHD, under admirable leaders like retired Israeli academic Jeff Halper, has long resisted the policy of bulldozing homes in occupied Palestine. (The group also supports Israeli military resisters and objectors, etc.) The document does two things: it reveals yet another aspect of the Israeli peace movement that is largely hidden from US media consumers, who are led to believe that Peace Now represents the true Israeli left position; and it points to how we might adopt a more radical analysis and use the most appropriate rhetoric as we confront the worst perpetrator, our own government.

ICAHD STATEMENT ON LEBANON/GAZA WARS 8/4/06

END THE WAR! END THE OCCUPATION!
END STATE TERROR! END AMERICAN EMPIRE!

ICAHD, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, condemns all attacks on civilians, whether by Israel, the Palestinians or Hezbollah. We recognize Israel’s ever-repressive Occupation as the main source of conflict and instability in our region. Had Israel taken the many opportunities it had to secure a just peace, the peoples of the region would never have reached this point of despair and futile violence. Israel believes it can achieve “quiet” and normalcy through military power while retaining its Occupation, encouraged and protected by the US. This is the true convergence: Israel’s Occupation in return for an active Israeli role in expanding American Empire.

Israel’s disproportionate attacks on both Gaza and Lebanon on the pretext of freeing Israeli soldiers is intended to destroy any resistance to the imposition of the apartheid regime represented by Olmert’s “convergence plan.” Indeed, the democratically-elected government of Hamas which had been moving steadily towards a negotiated two-state settlement constitutes the greatest threat to the perpetuation of Israel’s Occupation, as witnessed by Israel’s delegitimization of that government and its systematic campaign to liquidate Hamas leaders. Israel’s illegal and immoral use of collective punishment against the civilian population of Gaza in which 3000 houses have been demolished in recent years and its months-long campaign of starving the local population into submission continues must be condemned. ICAHD will work with the international courts to bring the military and political perpetrators of these crimes against humanity to justice.

Hezbollah, whose very existence comes by way of resistance to repeated Israeli invasions, illustrates how counter-productive are the attempts of Israel and the US to impose by force a “new order” on the Middle East whose only rationale is to serve Israeli Occupation and American Empire. Without equating the two politically or in terms of power, both Israel and Hezbollah must refrain from attacks on civilian populations.

Israel, of course, could not have reached this point without American and European complicity. Indeed, American refusal to countenance a ceasefire only affirms Israel’s role as its military surrogate in the Middle East. Their shared aim is a Pax Americana over the region for which Israel will be allowed to keep its settlements.

The war must end immediately, all attacks on civilians must cease immediately and permanently and UN resolutions must be implemented. The international community, especially a complicit and passive Europe, must intervene. America must cease to exacerbate regional conflicts for its own ends. Israel, which holds some 9000 Palestinian and Arab political prisoners, must negotiate a meaningful exchange in return for its captured soldiers. Above all, Israel must realize that there is no military solution to the conflict in our region. Relinquishing its Occupation in favor of genuine negotiations with the Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese is the only guarantee of Israel’s security.

END THE WAR! END THE OCCUPATION! END ISRAELI STATE TERROR! END ATTACKS ON CIVILIANS! END AMERICAN EMPIRE!

Posted by jackbradiganspula at 10:26 EDT

Updated: Monday, 21 August 2006 10:49 EDT

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I hate to rub it in. But my experience aboard the Lake Express ferry between Milwaukee, WI, and Muskegon, MI, shows how such a service can be done right. That is, differently than has been done, ah, elsewhere.

Lake Express Inc. runs three round-trips daily – the ferry runs only May through October, with a reduced fall schedule – across Lake Michigan between the two ports. The boat is small by Rochester standards, such as they are. It’s rated to carry 46 cars or light trucks and 12 motorcycles; the promo literature says nothing of bicycles, but mine rested nicely in one of maybe a dozen special mini-racks mounted on the bulkheads. The passenger cabins (first- and prole-class) seat around 150. So as you see, this is a boat that’s small enough to bhe viable economically, though questions about marine diesel and air pollution still apply.

The ferry also benefits from geography. It’s 280 miles between Milwaukee and Muskegon by road via Chicago and northern Indiana, versus 100 miles by water. Time on the road is estimated at five hours; the Lake Express catamaran gobbles up its route in half that time, even allowing for a slow passage through enormous Muskegon Bay.

Milwaukee has provided workable dockage for the ferry. Public entities have also chipped in loan guarantees, etc., and the ferry company’s business plan inspired lots of local commentary before the service began two years ago. But the investment at risk, both public and private, is much smaller that what Rochesterians have been treated to. You can see this not only from the scale of the ferry itself, but from the Milwaukee terminal, which is modest and utilitarian. Over in Muskegon, things are more spartan yet; the ferry docks at an old pier with minimal upgrades. Both terminals are in commercial-industrial zones that otherwise are low on boat traffic.

The service is not cheap. I paid around 55 bucks, including a $10 bike charge, for my one-way trip. By comparison, I paid $84, plus a $15 bike charge, for my 600-mile Amtrak journey from Rochester to Chicago. (Let’s leave the Amtrak delays aside, however costly they were in time wasted.) The ferry operators also have put a $6 fuel surcharge on each passenger and vehicle. This surcharge doesn’t apply to bicycles – simple justice, I guess. But when you consider that the other categories not subject to the surcharge are infants and pet kennels, you wonder what message is being sent.

Whatever my social status as a biker on board, I enjoyed the trip. Lake Michigan has real azure depths, straight outta Homer, and oceanic immensity. The dunes and mixed clay-and-sand bluffs that dominate the eastern shoreline are spectacular, too, and extensive enough almost to withstand the impact of modern tourism, the latter being synonymous, at least in moto-state Michigan, with promiscuous use of gas-guzzlers and off-road “recreational” vehicles.

(Next time: the two sides of Muskegon, and thoughts about other economically-stressed smaller cities in what is less a “heartland” than a dominion of the fuel-injector.)

Posted by jackbradiganspula at 11:16 EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 12 July 2006 17:31 EDT

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