Ride Samaritans

Being the masochist that I am, I signed up for the Tour Du Port bike ride this year and decided to do the 50 mile route. I do about one of these charity rides a year. Last year it was the Tour Dem Parks on the hottest day of the year. With the Du Port being in October I expected better weather and I got it. Setting off at 7:30 sharp, the first leg went from the Canton waterfront across upper Fells Point, around the Inner Harbor, through Federal Hill and back to the National Aquarium on the waterfront. There I got my chain lubed {insert Bevis and Butthead snickering here} and grabbed some snackage.

According to the cue sheet, the next rest stop was in another 23 miles which took me through some of the rusty parts of decaying Baltimore, past lots of barking dogs in greater Dundalk (and I haven't lived in Baltimore long enough to make Dundalk and Essex jokes), and finally along long stretches of marshland to North Point Park.

There I carb loaded once again as I reflected on the advantages of bicycling over running. Primarily that stopping for a food break is not frowned upon. North Point Park was quite large and rather scenic as well as being the general area of the Battle of Baltimore where the British were beaten in the under-heralded War of 1812.

It was those last twenty miles that proved to be the test of my mettle. The clips on my biking shoes had gotten rather worn from using them as brakes on the Bike NYC ride earlier this year and now the left foot wasn't clipping in right. And then I started passing a series of people fixing flats. I was counting my blessings until I heard an all too familiar hissing off my bike.

In one of Murphy's corollaries, I only get flats on the rear tire which means having to wrestle with the chain and gears to put it on and off. I waved off several concerned passers-by as I changed the tube, but when it came time to get the wheel back on, I finally accepted the assistance of two guys that asked if I needed help. Which I am glad I did since it took all three of us to figure out the CO2 cartridge.

After an earlier flat I learned the hard way that my frame mounted pump was more decorative than useful. I had bought the cartridge gizmo in hopes that I would never have to use it, but to my surprise, it worked perfectly. The tires ballooned up to a road worthy 65 psi in an instant.

I finished the last ten miles against a strong headwind and a suspicious number hills. I collected my tee shirt and burrito and hoped I had sufficiently thanked the good Samaritans that had helped me in my moment of need. Now when I pass stranded bikers I will make more than a token effort to check if they need help. And I will keep two CO2 cartridges in my bag, one to use and one to share.

Lost In Columbia

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Riding a bicycle in Columbia Maryland is not for the faint of heart. The 'planned' community is full of twisty roads, dead ends and endless loops. It's a quintessentially 1960s car-oriented bedroom community. Bordered by I-95 to the east and Route 32 to the south, it is bisected by US29, all very bicycle unfriendly limited access highways. To ride around Columbia requires a precise knowledge of which major roads lead into and out of any given 'village' as the neighborhood strip centers are called.

For my Sunday ride this week, I decided to combine some of my shorter routes and try for a forty mile ride which would be a record for the year. Little did I know how long it would be. As usual, I took Route 108 west to the edge of Columbia where Harpers Farm Road becomes Homewood Road and then Folly Quarter Road and finally Tridelphia Road all while staying the same road. From there it was back to Clarksville and the Bagel Bin. This was the 20-mile point and I rewarded myself with a bagel and a juice drink. Since my biking rule of thumb is one water bottle per twenty miles, it was time for a fill-up. With a cold full water bottle, I pressed on to the more experiemental longer route.

I skirted the edge of the Johns Hopkins Advanced Physics Lab campus and went past the famous Bollman Iron Truss Bridge in Savage. Then it was through Savage Park and back into Columbia. Here is where a bicycle route becomes tricky. All the major roads in this area including US29, Broken Land Parkway and Snowden River Parkway are major roads and not all that good for biking. But if you go north from the Kings Contrivance Village Center and cross 32 on Eden Brook Drive onto Shaker Drive (another road that changes names for no reason), you can thread your way through east Atholton and cross Broken Land Parkway at Stevens Forest. I had done this just once before, but I had had a map with me to figure out the precise twists and turns needed to make it. But I didn't.

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1. I pass Touché Touchet Bakery (which bakes excellent cupcakes) with half of bottle of water and the odometer reading 36.5 miles. I had been keeping a very steady 14 mile per hour pace and was eager to get home.
2. I hit Beechwood Road and should have turned left, but instead I prematurely turn right.This was the critical mistake from which I would not recover.
   
3. Wandering aimlessly looking for a landmark, I run out of road at the end of Allview. The road disappears down a narrow path and I figure it must lead somewhere. Somewhere is the wrong side of the river coming from Lake Elkhorn. Instead, I cross a smaller stream which requires getting my biking shoes thick with mud and lifting my bicycle over my head out of the stream bed on the other side. I then wander through nettles, miraculously none deflating my tires, and sneak through someone's back yard back to pavement.
4. As I cross Route 32, I realize I have gone the wrong way and u-turn in traffic.
5. Hot, muddy, and sweaty, I stop at the bakery and have half a coffee cake and an iced coffee. I also refill my empty water bottle. The odometer reads 41.5 miles. I have trekked five miles and gotten nowhere.
6. Rather than get lost all over again, I cut my losses and cross US29 at Seneca Road. From here I can find my way back.
7. Traffic is completely snarled at the entrance to Merriwether Post Pavilion. I assume there is some big festival concert going on.
8. I cross US29 yet again, this time on Broken Land Parkway, which is exactly what I was trying to avoid.
9. Finally back on the residential roads of Columbia I rejoin my planned route.

Just as the odometer swings past 50 miles, I get home at about 1 pm after having left at 8 am. I start rinsing the mud off my shoes in the shower when my wife tells me we are meeting some friends at the GiantWarehouseOfCrap where they are members so we can buy groceries on their card.

So the object lesson here is to never take roads in Columbia for granted. If you don't know where you are going, you will get lost. And while in a car, that is a minor inconvenience, on a bicycle, it turns a brisk Sunday ride into meandering nightmare.

Biking The Cape, Part II: The Solo Rides

In my last post, I told how while on vacation this summer I had a great bicycle ride with my son and tricked the other guys on the trip into a marathon long group ride. Having burned my bridges with the rest of the group, I knew I was on my own for the rest of the trip. Having done both the north end of the trail and the Chatham branch, the only part of the Cape Cod Rail Trail left was the section from Brewster to Dennis. I got up early and donned my geeky bikey gear and headed out. I wasn’t too far before I was distracted by the most picturesque general store on the Cape. I just had to stop for a pastry and a drink in a genuine family-run store.



This morning was a lot less lapine loaded than my first ride, but to fill out the Aesop fable, I did run across this turtle taking a leisurely stroll down the side of the trail.



Ten miles later I reached the western trailhead in Dennis and had to hang around for about ten minutes before I could harangue some passers-by into taking my picture to prove I had been at both ends of the trail.



From there I took the surface streets back to Brewster which included several miles of white knuckle riding along a crowded no-shoulder stretch of 6A. Definitely stick to the rail trail if you can.

Besides the CCRT, the Cape has several shorter biking trails at various points. One that is part of the National Seashore is the Salt Pond Trail that goes from the National Park Service Visitors’ Center to the beach. I had thrown both bikes on the rack and we drove down there. I had planned to let my wife drive the chase car while my son and I rode.

And this is where we hit the teenage attitude. He said that he had no idea we would be bike riding that day. I guess the two bikes on the back of the car was too subtle a clue. He grumbled and complained all the way to the beach. The trail ends at an old Coast Guard house that was just gorgeous.



I wanted to head up the road to to find the Nauset Beach lighthouse. And that is where he rebelled. Instead of continuing on the two miles up the road, he decided he’d rather ride the three miles back to the car by himself. So be it.

Later that afternoon, after we were done touring Provincetown and the surrounding dunes, we went to Herring Cove Beach to let my son splash in the ocean and for me to ride some of the trails through the park. I rode out to Race Point Beach where I took two of my favorite pictures of the whole trip. This one is currently the wallpaper on my home computer.



And I just love the sight of my bicycle resting next to the dunes here:



While waiting for my wife to drag my kid off the beach, I went up to the top of the visitor center widow's walk and shot a bunch of pictures including several of a plane landing at Provincetown Airport.



I had a great time biking the cape. There were trails and paths for every ability and plenty of things to do along the way. The bike I rode on that trip was a hand-me down that had gone from my dad to my son and to me. Just before the trip I added some new much-needed handgrips and rack with bag just the right size for my camera equipment. Now I can indulge two of my favorite pastimes, bicycling and photography. And isn't that what a vacation should be all about?

To see more pictures from the trip, click on any picture in this post or the previous one or go through the whole set of my Cape Cod pictures.

Biking The Cape, Part I

I never quite got around to blogging everything about my summer vacation on Cape Cod. Sure we hunted some lighthouses and bought some books and visited Provincetown and even checked out Mianus, but the best part for me was taking my bicycle along. Normally our vacations are so wide-ranging or far-flung that taking a bicycle isn’t practical. But this trip, since we were renting a house, each of the three families brought along a few bikes.

According to the rental property description and the Google Map, our cottage was right near the Cape Cod Rail Trail. It didn’t say it was a good deal up a hill from the rail trail. That didn’t bug me, but some of the less active bikers in our group (which was everybody except me) found that hill rather challenging.

I was shocked when my son said he’d get up at 7 a.m. to go biking with me. I think he just wanted to get the obligatory father-son ride out of the way.



I had bought a new rack and bag for my bike just so I could take my camera along. That morning the trail was infested with rabbits out for morning silflay. We saw more rabbits than people for the first several miles.



A few miles down the trail we hit the bicycle rotary in Harwich. I had never seen one for bicycles before and it looked like a great place to stop for a short rest.



From the rotary we took a side trail that went towards Chatham. This branch was a little hillier than the main trail and for the last couple of miles it kept detouring onto residential streets for blocks at a time making it difficult to follow. The path abruptly ended at a ball park and my son and I were trying to read a bad map to figure out how to get to the beach when the other two dads happened to drive by. They had been dawn lighthouse hunting and were now in search of coffee. My son abandoned me and tossed his bike onto their rack and left me to do the last five miles to the lighthouse by myself. The dads caught up with me at Chatham Beach.



We had gotten there just a little too late to catch the sunrise yoga class, but they sure looked pretty out there on the sand doing their downward facing dogs.



We also took time to watch the Coast Guard officer raise the flag at the lighthouse. The Code of Married Guys Acting Macho forbids me from repeating anything that might have been said about the attractiveness of this young lady in uniform.



Our rental was also right near Nickerson State Park that boasts eight miles of biking trails. As a group activity, the five guys on the trip all rode down to the park, but the trails were so windy and steep there was a mutiny and we only ended up riding a few miles that day.

Two days later we all mustered again to tackle the north half of the CCRT. As the most experienced cyclist, I said that we could turn around at any point that they felt was right. I rode sweep at the end of the pack to make sure we didn’t lose anybody. A certain machismo kept everybody from calling it quits until we hit the end of the trail in Wellfleet 12 miles later.



My son tended to lead the pack but the other kid on the ride, who was only fourteen, wasn’t used to his big sister’s bike and it was apparent that he wasn’t going to survive the ride back. As luck would have it, right near the trailhead was a breakfast place. They sat the five of us at a table where our biking fragrance wouldn’t offend the other patrons. We called the wives who had just begun their day of antiquing. We told them to come rescue the kid or we were going to send him home with the college sophomore waitress who was about to go off duty.



An hour later we were back on the trail, but the return trip was slightly into the wind, but we made it back with only one stop for ice cream. In total we rode over twenty-five miles that morning. A good weekend ride for me, but a serious stretch for the other dads. They complained about sore seats and stiff muscles the rest of the vacation. They may have complained, but the ride was sheer heaven to me.

Tomorrow: More tales from the trail.