Eight months after the one-two punch from Henri and Ida in late August and early September of 2021, it was time to check out how much repair work had been done.
The D&R Canal towpath was a mess after the one-two punch from Henri and Ida in late August and early September of 2021. Eight months later, it was time to check out how much repair work had been done and how rideable the route is.
So we hopped New Jersey Transit to New Brunswick to find out.
Continue reading “New Brunswick to Princeton on the D&R Canal + East Coast Greenway”Lead me to a food adventure on the East Coast Greenway in New Jersey.
We finally repeated our “Portugal to India” bike ride of two years ago, and I have to say I love it just as much the second time around. And so many more discoveries!
Continue reading “OMG this global food tour from Newark to New Brunswick to home on our bikes”We ate our way around the world on this 46-mile jaunt through northern New Jersey.
Northern New Jersey may be the last place you think of for a bike ride: densely populated urban areas with way too much traffic (and potholes) to make a cyclist happy.
This East Coast Greenway adventure showed us we had it all wrong. And it highlights just what a melting pot this state is.
Continue reading “A bike ride from Portugal to India without leaving New Jersey”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.
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 take on New Brunswick’s summer Ciclovia
New Brunswick is on the East Coast Greenway, but we took the road, not the towpath (and ECG), for this ride to check out New Brunswick’s Ciclovia (more than 3 miles of streets shut to motorists and opened to people to bike, play and more). While we knew the first few miles, we’d never been to East Brunswick and Milltown even by car. So the bike option on Google maps it was.
And it was a nice route on generally quiet, flat roads well to the east of U.S 1. On weekdays, a few spots might be a bit hairy, but Saturday traffic was light, even by shopping centers. We crossed U.S. 130 at a light — easy. And when we finally did encounter U.S. 1, the overpass over it was straightforward, and on the way back, the driver of a white Mustang on the off ramp slowed and waved us in front. Sometimes New Jersey drivers surprise you.
Total miles, including wandering around New Brunswick: 42.
As for Ciclovia … it’s not Manhattan’s Summer Saturdays, but then New Brunswick doesn’t have the density of New York. It was great to see little kids on their bikes, and there were some cool spots, like a rock-climbing wall and a skateboard trick park, and of course a fire hydrant turned into a sprinkler. There was a dance contest for little kids, a repair spot from New Brunswick’s Bike Exchange and a mobile New Jersey Hall of Fame that I thought was cool (and not just because of the air-conditioning break on a hot, cloudless day). But it felt too spread out for the number of people we saw, and you found stuff more by chance, such as the Hall of Fame that was hidden at the end of a side street.
Ciclovia went beyond “downtown”, and it lacked a block party atmosphere in the neighborhoods.
So here’s my outsider’s take, fwiw: Ciclovia needs to be marketed more widely in the region, to get it filled up with people from neighboring towns, as happens with Communiversity is in Princeton, and to work with New Jersey Transit and New York bike groups to get the word out there and people coming down by train with their bikes. I’d open up space to every nonprofit that wants to be there, no matter where they are from, to help fill up the quieter spaces. I’d encourage downtown merchants to have sidewalk sales or bring restaurant tables outside. Actually, I’d have had it kick it off Restaurant Week, which we inadvertently discovered was also starting. Or play on the range of ethnic groups in New Brunswick and create a list of participating food stops and pitch it to the foodies. Honduran specialties, anyone?
And at one end, have a spot for teenagers and their bands, or high school bands, all of which would bring in their friends and families. It certainly works for our local farmers market. (Too bad there’s no Saturday market in New Brunswick that it could brush by from the side.)
But it’s also early days. New Brunswick’s first Ciclovia was last October, and this was the second of three planned for this year. Maybe it’s more crowded when Rutgers is humming with 41,500 students. And maybe it’s just a matter of time.
At any rate, it certainly was more popular than what we saw of Princeton’s Ciclovia in May, which took over a long stretch of underused roadway.
Exploring by bicycle 