Exploring by bicycle

Time to fundraise

One part of this East Coast Greenway ride involves fundraising. Here’s the plea. Thank you for your support.

One part of this East Coast Greenway ride involves fundraising. Here’s the plea. Thanks to all who have already responded so generously. For everyone else, please consider supporting me and the East Coast Greenway.

Friends,

Once again I’m doing a week-long bike ride for charity and like last year, it is for the East Coast Greenway, an amazing project to string together 2,900 miles of (generally paved) trails through major cities from the Canadian border in Maine down to Key West. Already 30% of the route is away from traffic (such as the D&R Canal towpath and Manhattan’s Hudson River Greenway), and another big chunk is on quieter roads.

Working with governments at all levels to close the gaps is a Herculean effort, but the benefits are enormous — for people young, old and in between, and for those who bike, walk, run .. even cross-country ski.

You can help close one gap just by signing this petition

I’ll be riding 325 miles over six days with about 40 other people, getting a first-hand look at the route from Fredericksburg, Virginia (where last year’s ride ended), to Raleigh, North Carolina. We’ll be paying our own way, so your tax-deductible donation goes straight to the East Coast Greenway Alliance. Everyone who donates at least $25 gets a one-year membership in the ECGA. All those in the New York area, that means there are some ECGA-organized bike rides in NYC that you can do without paying the usual free. I can tell you all about them.

I’ll once again be blogging the ride (and my training), and I hope you’ll follow along.

And you can donate online here.

Finally, should you know anyone who’d like to ride, send them my way!

The sights of New Brunswick’s Ciclovia

Here’s what I saw at Ciclovia and what I discovered in Johnson Park across the river.

Today was a chance to explore a bit of New Brunswick and Johnson Park in Piscataway, as New Brunswick shut down a few miles of street to traffic and turned it over to the people in one of the year’s three Ciclovias. We — a group of five — arrived just as it began, and by the time we left after ice cream, er lunch, kids had taken over with their bikes and trikes, found the bouncy castle and were cooling off with a temporary fountain:

I got a smattering of that spray and oh did that feel good in the day’s heat!

A colleague took us beyond Ciclovia and guess what I found:

Yes, New Brunswick wants to make one of the river crossings more bike-friendly!

What else did we discover off the bike-friendly trails in Johnson Park?

We wandered around the East Jersey Old Time Village and saw a man going around the racetrack with a horse and carriage. We glimpsed a cricket match:

and rode under the railroad bridge:

And if blogs could smell, I’d share a whiff of sun-ripened fresh strawberries at the pick-your-own place we cycled past on the way home.

Gearing up for Ciclovia in New Brunswick

On Sunday I’ll be riding with some friends (and the Brit!) to New Brunswick for the summer Ciclovia — one of three times in the year when some city streets are closed to traffic and opened to the people for biking, walking, playing.

Though New Brunswick is on the East Coast Greenway, we’re passing up the trail (ie towpath) and opting for a shorter 20 miles of mostly quiet roads instead. And there’s always the train for those who don’t want to ride another 20 miles home. Our experience at last summer’s Ciclovia was that the streets aren’t anywhere as packed as when New York City shuts down Park Avenue for Summer Saturdays in August — but then New Brunswick is never as packed as New York!

A bonus: One of the people in the group has only recently become comfortable riding with traffic — but he’s now so comfortable that he’s ridden out to the Shore!

My National Trails Day weekend

A 27-mile bike ride, a spin class and teaching bike safety to the neighborhood kids.

Here’s the rundown: A casual, flat 27-mile loop ride to Allentown NJ with one of last year’s East Coast Greenway Week-A-Year riders (with about 3 miles of trail), a one-hour spin class that probably covered about 20 miles (I go so much faster in spin class than on the road!) — and teaching the neighborhood kids about helmet fitting and bike safety before taking them on a parade around the block as part of a neighborhood party.

What I’m already learning about Virginia bike trails

One article about a small section of trail in Virginia leads to the discovery of Virginia’s awesome plans for long-distance bike routes.

One article in my Google Alerts, about a two-mile section of a Virginia trail called the Seaboard Coastline Trail, sends me down a rabbit hole.

It’s a trail I hadn’t heard of, in a town called Suffolk, in a part of Virginia I’ve never visited, so of course I want to know where it is and whether it’s part of the East Coast Greenway‘s coastal route (I think so, because another part of the trail is). To boot, this year’s week-long fundraising ride for the East Coast Greenway is mostly in Virginia.

But it gets better. Another article says the trail will eventually be 11.5 miles long and part of something bigger called the South Hampton Roads Trail, eventually a 41-mile trail between Suffolk and Virginia Beach. This same page from the regional planning commission describes two other trails that will go through the area, including one called the Beaches to Bluegrass Trail (B2B) that will traverse the entire state. And it’s supposed to be more than 400 miles long, though not necessarily all trail. It’s seen as one of six trunkline trails in Virginia (the East Coast Greenway is another).

The conceptual plan for that one was finalized late last year. Now I know these things take an awfully long time before they become reality. But linking trails makes each one more powerful — and would get someone like me to spend more time exploring the state on a bike (and boosting small-town economies.) I’ll be watching for updates and one day planning my ride.

Bikes everywhere

Time to start training for the weeklong East Coast Greenway ride in October.

It’s time to revive this blog and start training — I’ll be riding in the East Coast Greenway’s annual weeklong fundraiser ride again come October, this time from Fredericksburg, Virginia to Raleigh, North Carolina.

So I rode two out of three days this Memorial Day weekend — the 40-miler was the “easy” way to Hopewell, while the 30-miler was the hillier way. So many cyclists wherever I looked! Sometimes it was a group decked out in lycra (oh, besides us), other times a family with a bike trailer for kids heading onto the towpath trail. There were even some (besides us, again) who’d ridden to catch our town’s Memorial Day parade.

So yes, May has been the month to start riding more than just to the train station and to work on the other end, plus the odd errand in town. One of my other notable rides was the 22-mile Four-Island Ride in New York with the East Coast Greenway.

But clearly I need to do more! This year’s ECG ride is being compressed into six days from seven because there wasn’t enough room for all of us in a small-town hotel. So this is what I’m facing:

Day 1: 68 miles from Fredericksburg to Richmond

Day 2: 31 miles from Richmond to Petersburg

Day 3: 80 miles from Petersburg to South Hill (hope it’s not too hilly!)

Day 4: 37 miles from South Hill west to Clarksville

Day 5: 59 miles from Clarksville to Durham (that’s the day we cross into North Carolina)

Day 6: 49 miles from Durham to Raleigh (I had no idea they were so far apart)

Thanks, and next year’s ride

The 2015 Week-a-Year ride will pick up where this year’s ride left off, in Fredericksburg, on Oct. 4 and will end on Oct. 10 in Durham, North Carolina about 325 miles later.

Thanks to everyone who supported me on this year’s East Coast Greenway ride. Thanks to your generosity, I came out of nowhere to be one of the top fundraisers for a project I deeply believe in.

The 2015 Week-a-Year ride will pick up where this year’s ride left off, in Fredericksburg, on Oct. 4 and will end on Oct. 10 in Raleigh, North Carolina about 325 miles later.

I’m in and already looking forward to seeing a bit of both cities. Lots of history in Fredericksburg!

Who will join me?

Note: This year’s ride was hillier than I expected. And you need to be comfortable riding with traffic because the route remains a work in progress and we’re not always on trails on quiet roads. That’s what happens when you aim to connect cities rather than bypass them.

Two final requests:

If you don’t already receive updates from the East Coast Greenway, please sign up here.

And please sign the petition for a safe bike and pedestrian crossing over the Susquehanna River.

Random photos from this week

More sights from a week on my bike.

More sights from a week on the road:

Colonial flavors at an ice-cream shop in New Castle, Delaware — In New Castle, Delaware

Unfortunately it wasn’t open when we biked by.

Message on the Riverfront Trail in Wilmington, Delaware — On the Riverfront Trail in Wilmington, Delaware

Farm stand on a path between New Castle and Newark, Delaware — On a path between New Castle and Newark, Delaware

The owner gave us bottled lemon-mint water.

New Jersey Transit in Baltimore (and my bike)

Business on the B&A Trail — On the B&A Trail

Capital bikeshare — For when I don’t have my bike with me

These inedible fruits, also known as hedge apples, are the size of a softball. They were for sale at a Washington D.C. farmers market, but you could pick up plenty for free on the East Coast Greenway route in northern Maryland.

What's missing on this sign in Alexandria? — What’s missing on this sign in Alexandria?

Answer: Mileage to Key West on the East Coast Greenway!

Promoting the East Coast Greenway

On this ride, I met several people who have found their own ways to promote the East Coast Greenway.

There’s Barb and Bev from Connecticut, who say they ride so that their grandchildren will be able to enjoy a safe East Coast Greenway from the Canadian border down to Key West.

Each keeps a box on the trail or a trail spur stocked with information about the East Coast Greenway. (Bill from Connecticut, one of the fathers of the Greenway, also has a box). Every month, about a dozen cards get taken from each. Awesome idea!

Here’s what one looks like:

Rob, also from Connecticut, rode all week with his East Coast Greenway flag flying from his bike. How could anyone miss him?

I was also impressed by Chuck, who is working to get the Octorara Trail built in Pennsylvania’s Delaware County. News on a grant for a feasibility study should come soon, and the vision is for the trail to eventually to connect to Chadds Ford in the heart of the Brandywine region. It would also eventually connect to the East Coast Greenway via the Chester Creek Trail. I know how hard it is to get a sidewalk added on a busy road, and getting a trail built is lots and lots more work, even if you have the Bicycle Coalition of Philadelphia and its Connect the Circuit vision behind you. Chuck rode with his son and is one of the many faces in my photos.

Day 7 — Dumfries to Fredericksburg, Virginia

Today was the East Coast Greenway’s #IceBucketChallenge.

It rained for almost the entire ride, sometimes moderately, sometimes hard. My RainLegs worked (thank you, Dede and Janet) and got plenty of interested looks. The new rain jacket got its first test and passed with flying colors. Still, it was cold, especially after a stop. And then going downhill.

Of course it stopped just before we reached Fredericksburg and the end of the adventure. Too bad there wasn’t time to explore the town and the Civil War battlefields in the area before lunch and the bus back to Conshohocken. I’ll be back.

Once again, plenty of hills. We climbed just under 2,000 vertical feet in 30 miles, just 200 less than on a longer Day 6.

Bonus: Signs for Adventure Cycling’s U.S. Bicycle Route 1, part of a developing network of urban, suburban and rural routes, as we neared Fredericksburg.

Odd names for roads on today’s ride: Eskimo Hill Road. Dishpan Lane.

Total mileage for the week: 343.19.

And after seven days of biking, it took us just 3 1/2 hours and no D.C. traffic to zip back up I-95 and I-476 to Conshohocken.

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