My extended stay in Southern California comes to an end this week, as I return to New York late Thursday just in time to teach a Friday morning, film history class at Pratt. In terms of my own physical activity, it couldn’t come at a better time, as my Apple Watch is keen to remind me.
Ironically, I am significantly less active in the mild climes of Southern California than in the less hospitable December weather of New York.
Much of this is because I have been staying in the suburbs, and it’s been hard getting in any casual exercise, such as bike commuting or walking around the neighborhood. But it was unseasonably warm in New York this December… to the point where it was as warm on Christmas Eve as on Independence Day in 2015.
One way to mitigate my lack of daily physical activity is to plan and take some long-distance rides. This month, I rode two.
Back in the days before Obamacare and mandatory health insurance coverage, underemployed “young invincibles” justified buying a health policy, which many of them would likely rarely use, to insure against an unforeseen catastrophe such as getting hit by a car. The prospect of mounting hospital bills, caused by such a calamity, alarmed a lot of people into getting covered.
But having been hit by a car while riding my bike, I can tell you that your personal health coverage does not normally cover you should you be hit by a car.1 The primary responsibility falls on an auto insurance carrier. If you get hit by a car while walking or riding a bicycle, the driver’s auto insurance is supposed to cover your bills and lost wages. At least that’s the case in a no-fault state like New York.
Here I am in California and, on TV, I see a spot for the state-run insurance exchange, Covered California.
The ad consists of a single shot, craning to follow an ambulance rushing to the scene of a injured bicyclist. On the right, there is an automobile that presumably collided with the bicycle and caused the rider to fall to the ground. The voiceover announces, “it’s more than just health care, it’s life care.”
But unless this was something changed in the Affordable Care Act since I was hit by car in 2006 and 2008 or something is different in California, I’m pretty certain that most health insurance policies would not cover the bicyclist, unless something is amiss with the driver’s auto insurance.
Or maybe it does now… Thanks, Obama.
Your health insurance will cover you should the driver flee the scene, but you’ll have to file paperwork proving that. ↩
Something is different this year than the previous two. My brother and I won’t be riding in a Breast Cancer Awareness Ride this year.
Apparently frustrated with their inability to cure breast cancer despite creating all that awareness, Trek is not sponsoring a tenth annual Breast Cancer Awareness Ride for 2015. In the past, Trek bicycle retailers around the country would organize a 10-mile or 25-mile ride to raise funds for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The entire thirty-dollar registration fee would go to this organization.
In 2013 and 2014, my brother and I rode this ride at Two Wheels One Planet, in Costa Mesa, California. Because my brother now has to take his son to soccer each Saturday morning, he said would not been able to go to Costa Mesa to participate this year. I suggested that he look for another location to at least ride ten miles before his son’s game, but that’s when we learned that Trek is not sponsoring a ride this year.
However, that did not stop a number of bicycle retailers from going rogue and organizing their own ride throughout the month of October. Two Wheels One Planet is one such shop. They will be hosting their ride today, on Saturday, October 17, and donating the proceeds to the American Cancer Society.
Kuods to TWOP and other shops that have continued to organize their own rides, even it’s without the support of a major bicycle manufacturer.
The ride is based on another “summer classic” ride by John Ferguson, author of the Riding the Catskills blog. Ferguson’s ride starts at Southeast station in North Brewster and goes through some very quiet roads, long stretch of gravel paths, and long descents. We also started our ride at Southeast station, but as city slickers, we adapted the course to follow more paved roads than the original course. (Thanks, Brian!) However, there was plenty of pastoral beauty among the rolling hills of the course.
And there were constant reminders that you’re riding through farm country, such as a rusted tractor that functions as a lawn ornament.
Some of those reminders, like the smell of fresh cow manure, didn’t photograph well so use your imagination for those.
Though both Ferguson’s route and our citified club version end in New Hamburg, I learned that some of my friends were hiking in Beacon that day, and I was drawn to meet them there for some après–hiking/biking activities. Failing in my role as a ride leader, I left the group at mile 67 and took the Dutchess Rail Trail to Hopewell Junction and headed southwest on NY-82 and NY-52 until I arrived on the eastern edge of Main Street in Beacon.
Nearly a decade ago, when I first went to Beacon, the falls near the (improbable) junction of Main Street and East Main Street, was only an abandoned factory.
On this day, there was a wedding on those grounds. I caught the tail end of the wedding party heading to the reception hall.
As I arrived in town slightly ahead of my friends, I stopped by the new-to-me Denning’s Point Distillery near the corner of Main and Chestnut Streets. Like most new distilleries, most of their products are “un-aged.” They offer two vodkas (one straight and one flavored), a gin, a rye moonshine, and an American whiskey, aged for seven years, that they bought from a distillery in Kentucky.
The rye moonshine was surprisingly smooth, especially considering how much trouble I had with another unoaked rye whiskey. I didn’t ask, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was filtered at least once to tone down the white-dog effect. I finished my tasting with the aged whiskey, which was the subject of a photograph I asked a fellow visitor to take of me.
After the distillery, I found my friends and headed to another new-to-me brewery. Beacon’s 2-Way Brewing is located in a multipurpose office park building, which reminded me a lot of what you see in Southern California.1 But what it lacks in architectural charm, it makes up in proximity to the Metro North station at Beacon. It’s about a five-minute walk to the station, making a convenient place to end a day-trip to Beacon. As for the beer, I only tasted their Beacon Brown ale, because I like alliteration, and Climb High PA, to salute my hiking friends.
Both were solid offerings, but nothing that stayed with me. That might be because the place smelled a lot like Pine Sol, which likely overpowered my senses, and because I had a really delicious Orangeweisse by Rushing Duck Brewing at Quinn’s earlier that day that really hit the spot, as they say.
But that’s not to say that we didn’t spend any time at the brewery. We kept missing trains until we finally caught the “ten oh-eight,” the last direct train to New York.
When I visited my cousin in Orange County late last year, I noted that most every cool place out there—a brewery, a music venue, a record store—was located in an office park. ↩
Pardon my silence over the last three weeks. I was asked to take an unpaid gardening leave for two weeks, and I stayed away from the computer as much as I could. And after my digital sabbatical was over, the beginning of the semester loomed on the horizon. Between the two, I stopped posting on this site.
I should have said something about it, but I was surprised as anyone that I would take such an extended leave from posting.
Before starting my leave, I planned to a bunch of awesome things, although tending to a garden was not one of them, including:
Visiting my friend Joe in Maine. He works there during the summer, and invited me to spend some time in the summer resort town of Northeast Harbor. Having never been before, it sounded like paradise.
Join my friend Steve in Baltimore as he watches a baseball game at a thirtieth different ballpark. Over the last three years, Steve leveraged all the spending his business generates into frequent flyer miles. Those miles allowed him to travel to a bunch of different cities to watch a baseball game at every current major league ballpark. His last stop was on August 17, at Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore. He’s not sure whether he’s going to do the International League or the Pacific Coast League next…or whether he’ll ever attend another baseball game again.
Hit the beach. It’s only in the last few years that I’ve been going to the beaches around here, and it’s pretty easy to bike to many of the beaches around here.
Organize my living and working space. Since I switched to the other side of the Newtown Creek, I’ve been uninspired to unpack the boxes I used to carry and hold my possessions. Going on cleaning and organizing binges used to be an embarrassing indulgence.
Go to Block Island or somewhere similarly exotic. As well as bikes and trains work together, bikes and ferries work even better. I had considered doing something like riding my bike out to Montauk and then catching the ferry to Block Island. But I could never find a time to do that.
As is the case with most of my grand plans, I did very few of these. Yes, I did go to the beach once, and I did go to Baltimore to watch the Mets play at Citi Field South Camden Yards with Steve and a few friends. But I didn’t visit any new places, such as the northeastern coast of Maine or one of America’s “Last Great Places”. Instead, I did a few familiar bike rides.
Biked to Peekskill. This was a Monday ride that turned into an opportunity to enjoy dollar-oysters at the Peekskill’s Brewery. It however started as a coin-toss ride. My friend Brian and I rode the Westchester and Putnam county trails to Carmel, then rode on NY-301 to the junction with US-9. There we flipped a coin. Heads: we turned right to Beacon; Tails: we turned left to Peekskill. Since neither of us had a coin, I asked Siri to do so. At first, it gave us a smart-ass response: “You’re never going to believe this, but the coin landed on its edge.” We flipped again, Siri said “tails,” and we headed south to Peekskill. I’m considering making this a formal club ride, calling it something like “Heads Beacon, Tails Peekskill.”
Biked to Philadelphia. I am planning to write a dedicated post about this ride. In the meantime, suffice to say that I had planned to ride all the way to Baltimore, over two days, to meet my friend Steve for that game at his thirtieth major-league park. However, after riding 97 miles to Philadelphia in 95°F heat, I decided it would be better to ship my bike back to New York and take a bus to Baltimore. The ride did serve as a testing ground for my canonical route to Philadelphia.
Biked to Amagansett. Like the aborted ride to Baltimore, this was supposed to a Babylon-to-Montauk ride. On the same day as this ride through the Hamptons, our house was hosting a BBQ—a DreBQ as we call it out here. Since I didn’t want to miss the party, I aimed to return to NYC on the 3:30 PM train out of Montauk, which would put me in NYC by 7:00 PM. A couple of mechanical issues delayed our group’s progress so I bailed in Amagansett to catch that Montauk train along its westbound route. Until we had those flats, after the first half of the ride, we were due to finish the whole 92-mile course in about six hours.
And since returning to work, I assembled syllabi for three classes:
With the long summer break and my own gardening leave behind me and the semester beginning today, I recognize that I didn’t completely “turn off” during the break or do something completely unfamiliar. But I did do things that I enjoy and do pretty well.
Growing up in California, particularly around Los Angeles, you were either within the city limits or were in an unincorporated part of the county. Since I moved “Back East,” on the other hand, it’s been maddeningly frustrating trying to learn the difference between a city, a town, a village, a hamlet, and a borough, in addition to each’s relationship to the county. Located in Suffolk County, the town of Southold includes all of the North Fork east of Riverhead. The last twenty or so miles of last Saturday’s ride to Greenport went through the town of Southold.
Since at least 2003, our “tour director and humble servant” Glen has organized a North Fork ride that begins and ends in Greenport. After 2013, he had to shut down the ride because the town of Southold essentially banned any for-profit rides that pass through that town. This year, he resurrected the North Fork Century by partnering with Alzheimer’s Disease Resource Center. It was a clever workaround.
But now the town has banned all “race and bike events” between June 1 and November 1. It’s unclear if a club ride, such as a group ride organized by a local cycling club or an annual event such as the Suffolk Bike Riders Association’s Bike Boat Bike ride, is included in this ban. According to the town supervisor Scott Russell, “the blanket prohibition on running and bicycling events would help to put the brakes on the escalating problem, as bicyclists ride three and four abreast, running red lights and putting the public in danger.”
This ban, of course, won’t help to lift Suffolk County from its dead-last ranking as the worst cycling community in the United States, according to Bicycling magazine’s annual survey. Suffolk County is “always one of the most dangerous places in the United States to ride a bicycle. In 2008, the county was the site of 23.8 percent of all fatalities to cyclists in New York state, despite having less than 8 percent of the state’s population.”
As I reading through these reports, the Southold police and the town board are apparently discouraging any visitors to the town. This provincialist attitude was one of the things that bothered me about living in the Santa Barbara-Goleta-Carpinteria area, a region with 220,000 people compared to the 22,000 in Southold. It creates an us-versus-them mentality that isolates the community in a bubble. The town officials of Southold are prioritizing the rights of locals to speed on local roads—perhaps even while under the influence—at the expense of out-of-town visitors who might travel east by bus, limo, or bicycle on public roads.
It really makes considering another ride to the North Fork a disheartening prospect.
Over the last couple of months, a few of cycling buddies and I have been entertaining the idea of riding along the north shore of Long Island to the North Fork town of Greenport. Like Montauk, Greenport is a worthwhile cycling destination because both towns are about 100 miles from New York City and are each the terminals of the easternmost Long Island Railroad lines.
This past Saturday, four of us rode the Ride Between the Greens, a 108-mile ride from Greenpoint, Brooklyn to Greenport, Long Island. Incidentally, we also rode a few miles south of of Greenvale and through Greenlawn.
The ride takes advantage of the fact that the two locations are on opposite ends of Long Island and that they are similarly named. Green also provides a nice theme when it comes to designing a t-shirt.
Regular readers of this site will remember that I am not new to riding along the North Fork. I went on rides in September, October, and November last year. However, each of those rides started in Suffolk County, either at Huntington or at Babylon, where I caught an LIRR train to save about forty miles of pedaling.
This ride, like my now-annual ritual of riding to Montauk, started in Greenpoint, at Transmitter Park. There, a sign signals the end of the road that ironically was the beginning of our ride.
The route followed some pretty major arterial roads that were lightly trafficked early on Saturday morning. We took Greenpoint Avenue, over the Newtown Creek, to Queens Boulevard and then east to Douglaston to ride the LIE Service Road for a 14-mile stretch to Syosset. In Syosset, we stopped for our first meal of the day at—where else—a Panera Bread location.
After filling up on egg sandwiches and coffee, we headed towards Cold Spring Harbor and then to Huntington, where two of last year’s North Fork rides started. As a sign that we were riding on well-worn cycling routes, we spotted markings for several other rides, including the Huntington Bicycle Club’s Gold Coast Tour, the Suffolk Bicycle Riders Association’s Bike Boat Bike ride, and, yes, faded marks from past North Fork Century rides.
Speaking of well-worn places, we stopped at Briermere Farms for a peach-raspberry pie. The pie wasn’t to our expectations, which was a little disappointing considering that peaches and raspberries used in the filling were both in-season and especially surprising given that we were famished from this ride.
The ride was especially tough. As happened almost on every Long Island–ride last year, we faced a stiff headwind most of the day, and as we got closer to the end, the wind intensified. Four of us started the ride, but only three of us finished: one guy bailed about 70 miles into the route. Another rider was riding her first century ride and was challenged by the sheer length of the ride. But regardless of our experience and our training, we all were physically and mentally drained on this ride.
Ten hours and almost 110 miles after starting in Greenpoint, we arrived in Greenport just after 4:30 PM. As soon as we arrived, we went to the Greenport Harbor Brewing’s taproom to fill our growler—yes, I carried a 64-ounce glass bottle for over one-hundred miles—for the train ride home. We then went to the Little Creek Oyster Farm and Market for a bucket of two-dozen oysters we shucked ourselves.
We caught the 6:11 train out of Greenport—the last train that runs on weekends—back to New York City. Credit goes to my Tom Bihn Daylight backpack because, despite its apparently small size, it carried a full growler of beer, a pie, and my wallet, keys, phone, snacks, and the mirrorless camera I used to snap some photos that day.
As we nibbled on our pie and sipped our beers, I asked, “so, when are we riding the South Fork?” The silent but stern glances I got in response suggested that it was a little too soon to consider a ride to Montauk.
One of the coolest parts of the ride was, when in Greenport, Ian Wile, the proprietor of the farm and market heard about our ride and came to personally congratulate us. He confessed that he always wanted to do a ride like this. I was tempted to quip that I always wanted to run an oyster farm and market, but honestly, I would even know where to start.
Last year, I observed Bastille Day by riding to Philadelphia for a weekend with Sarah. We were met by two of my oldest and dearest friends, who travelled from Washington, DC, to meet us. I was never into doing “couple’s weekends,” but this one was easily one of the best weekends of my life. At the time, I regarded the weekend—consisting of a bike ride, perfect weather, a Bastille Day party, and some great exploring—as perfect.
Then it all fell apart. Sarah and I split shortly thereafter. To their credit, my DC friends still reach out occasionally to ask how I’m doing, but I am still reluctant to connect with them: it feels like I was expelled from the couples club, and I am too embarrassed to come around without a current membership.
For this year’s Bastille Day celebrations, I wanted to do something similarly epic to last year’s trip, but it seemed foolish to again ride to Philadelphia. My friend Brian, who I do a lot of long rides with, had a birthday this week, and we planned a three-day trip to New Paltz to ride around in the Shawangunk Range:
Riding 80 miles to New Paltz
Riding 70 miles around the Gunks
Riding 30 miles to Beacon
Because you might someday want to do something like this, here are some details about the ride.
My favorite convergence of two nineteenth century technologies is that of bicycles and trains because they work well together. In fact, they complement each other much more than the two quintessential twentieth-century transportation technologies: airplanes and automobiles. Don’t believe me? Think about how onerous it is to pick up or drop off someone at the airport, let alone park a car there.
One of the great things about bicycling in the New York City area is that there are trains that can assist with planning your long bike rides. Having a train enables you to do a long ride that isn’t a loop. Thanks to the tireless work of bicycling advocates throughout the region, it is possible to ride for a whole day and catch a train—and an attendant nap—to whisk you back home.
Although we still have a long way to go compared to the west coast, where you can reserve a space and roll your bike onto many Amtrak trains, the New York City–area does have some excellent infrastructure to carry a bike on a train.
Except, perhaps, for holiday weekends…such as this coming Independence Day weekend.
The patchwork of separate railroads have implemented an array of restrictions:
NJ Transit does not allow bikes on its trains on Independence Day. It is not entirely clear whether this policy also applies to July 3, but I wouldn’t plan any long rides in the Garden State.
SEPTAwelcomes bicycles on Independence Day and Sunday, July 5, although there are some weekday restrictions on Friday, July 3.
These restrictions put a damper what seemed like a nice idea: an Independence Day bike ride to Philadelphia, our nation’s former capital city. Instead, it looks like I’ll be riding with some friends north through Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess counties this Friday. The ride will end in Beacon, but we plan to take a very scenic and hilly route by way of Amenia for a day-long double metric century.
And, yes, we’ll be taking a late Metro North train back to NYC.
Last month, I travelled to California to attend two weddings—one for Nicole and Tom, and another for Jason and Jamie. Both couples are friends who live in Southern California.
The first wedding, though a worthwhile affair, involved driving from Los Angeles for about 230 miles each way to the Central Coast–town of Paso Robles. As someone who doesn’t care for driving much anymore, it was difficult to pilot a car for two four-hour one-way drives.
For the second wedding, I changed my approach. I would do no driving. Instead, I took Amtrak from Burbank to Santa Barbara on the day of the wedding with my California-road bike in tow. After spending the night on a friend’s couch, I would return to the LA area by bicycle. The morning following the wedding, I sucked down some coffee, a calorie-rich breakfast, and a couple of Ibuprofen tablets before riding eighty miles to Santa Clarita. From there, I planned to catch a direct Metrolink train back to the Antelope Valley.
This would match the longest ride I had done on the west coast. It’s not NYC-to-Montauk, but it’s still a long ride, especially after partying at a friend’s wedding.
From the Sea to the Desert
The first thing about traveling from Santa Barbara to Santa Clarita is that the entire trip is actually along an easterly heading. Most everyone who drives a car thinks that Ventura is south of Santa Barbara because one takes US-101 South to get there. But between Point Conception and Point Mugu, the Pacific Ocean is mostly south—not west—of the California coastline, thus the trip is just as much east-west, as it is north-south.
The second thing about this trip is that there are two possible routes to take to Santa Clarita.
Via Ojai. This route is about 90 miles and is very hilly with about a mile of vertical gain. It includes a long eleven-mile, thousand-foot ascent before descending, almost as long and as steep, into the Santa Clara River valley just east of Santa Paula. When I mentioned this route to a friend, he referenced Greg LeMond, which turned me off to this option because of the requisite effort. Had I not been at a wedding the night before and carrying about 15 pounds of stuff in a backpack, I would have taken this route.
Instead, I went…
Via Ventura. This route is about 80 miles and is very flat. The route more or less follows “southbound” US-101 and then continues along eastbound CA-126. Taking this route gives a rider a taste of several Southern California terrains, including the sea, the desert, and the ‘burbs.
This route starts along the section of US-101 named “Pacific Coast Highway” and, because it is along the seashore, also appears to be one of the most popular bike routes in the region.
This stretch of the route ends in downtown Ventura, where you will come upon a quaint main street, appropriately called “Main Street.”
After downtown Ventura, I stopped by a little burger spot to get some lunch. I hear you can get things “animal style,” which isn’t as gross as it might sound.
As I waited for my food at In ‘n’ Out, I found two other cyclists who were more or less riding the same route—in reverse, from Chatsworth to Santa Barbara. They had some mishaps in that they were fighting a headwind the entire way—which was my tailwind gently pushing me east—and even had to escort a friend whose tire blew out back to a train station. I pitied them at first, but then I reminded them that the story of cycling is a lot better when someone asks, “how are you two holding up on this ride?” and respond with, “Great, but there were three of us when we started.”
After Ventura, the route traverses through some quintessential Southern California terrain: citrus groves, oil fields, and the banks of the desiccated Santa Clara River.
The terrain completes its transition to desert as the elevation increases and approaches Castaic Junction, where CA-126 connects with I-5, north of Valencia.
As I approached the last ten miles of the route, I came upon two stretches of CA-126, just west of Castaic Junction, that had no shoulder for me to ride.
I bypassed the first stretch by jumping over the barricade and riding on hard pack. But the second stretch was just a ravine: I had to “take the lane” on a road where cars regularly speed at 60-70 MPH. It reminded me of riding on Tyburn Road in Morrisville, Pennsylvania during my inaugural Cheesesteak Century where I had to sprint and merge onto a highway with big trucks barreling towards me.
Tyburn Road in Morrisville, Pennsylvania is an awful, awful place to ride a bike because it’s a heavily potholed highway. Yikes!
East of Castaic Junction, the route heads south and is essentially suburban as you ride through California’s eighteenth largest city. For seven miles you’ll ride past industrial parks, shopping centers, and overly planned subdivisions to ultimately arrive at the Metrolink station at Santa Clarita.
This might not be the most arduous ride, and judging from the Strava heat maps, it’s not the most unexplored route to take. But if you’re looking for a direct way, low-traffic route to get between Santa Barbara and Santa Clarita, this will do just fine.
