Nine Mornings to California: Morning 5 - Cheyenne, Wyoming

Morning 5:  (Wednesday, May 6) Cheyenne, WY

Staying on the edge of Cheyenne, I was dismayed to see rain this morning. I already ruled out sending an invitation to Dick Cheney to go biking with me like the invitation I sent Warren Buffet the day before since I didn’t think he’d have a good time biking in the rain (I also wasn’t sure if he still lived in Wyoming or was still in an undisclosed location). 

While the rain bucketed down, I realized that I couldn’t remember a single, solitary time I was glad I decided not to take a bike ride. So I asked the guy behind the hotel’s front desk if I could snag a shower cap and, after stretching it over my helmet, biked off. I was soaking wet before I left the parking lot. 

There wasn’t a lot to see other than ranches. But the pickup trucks that passed me gave me plenty of space.

As annoying as the rain was, I was still happy I got to do at least five miles before saying goodbye to Cheyenne and setting off in the car once again.

My wife and I were both pleased that, a few minutes after that photo was taken, we were able to finally leave the mind numbing I-80 behind and head south into Colorado. 

The landscape began to look more interesting the closer we got to Boulder, where we joined a friend for lunch. Since the rain had stopped, I took a short ride - first stretching the shower cap over my bike seat since that was still wet from Cheyenne.

You may know Boulder because I believe the city appears on a lot of ‘top fittest cities’ and/or ‘top happiest cities’ lists. It’s also the place Mother Abigail leads the survivors in Stephen King’s The Stand. I think the line in the book was something along the lines of: 99% of the human race died of the flu, you're being stalked by a half man/half crow mutant, so we may as well live in a bike-friendly community.

While there are a lot of cars you get the feeling the bike infrastructure has a lot to do with the friendly and happy reputation. The more bike friendly the city, the more livable it is. Boulder is the anti-Cherry Hill. 

There’s also a correlation between cities like this and the number of awesome bike shops, such as University Bikes, which I got to visit briefly. Not only do they have an excellent selection, but they have a bathroom that just warmed my heart and make me yearn to have a place to plug in my welder once again. 

The shop is just as much a cool bike store as it is a museum with a lot of fun and interesting exhibits - including a 1910 Montauk camera cycle which they dubbed as ‘The World’s First GoPro.’

After leaving University Bikes, I pedaled uphill, away from town, hoping to get a good photograph of Colorado's stunning landscape. I wasn’t successful, but I did get to ride about 100 feet of single track, which was just as gratifying.

 I couldn’t leave Colorado without doing single track - I believe that is in their state constitution - but I knew that after another long stretch of afternoon driving we’d end up in a place I could really put my mountain bike through its paces. 

Click here for Morning 6

Nine Mornings to California: Morning 4 - Omaha, Nebraska

Morning 4: (Tuesday, May 5) Omaha, Nebraska 

I woke up early and was feeling much better - like I had gotten over my Illinios/Indiana/Iowa hump. Even though the hotel room coffee was inferior as hotel room coffee always is, I was in a playful mood, so I sent that tweet. Cycling with Candidates worked so I figured this was worth a shot. 

The wheels of the mountain bike hit the ground in Omaha and I immediately took off around the city. Something about the place just felt…right.

This is a bike share station belonging to B-Cycle - which is expanding quite a bit in 2016 thanks to a federal grant. It was nice to find this steps from the hotel, but also a lot of bicycle and pedestrian paths on the Omaha side of the Missouri River.

What was weird is that after driving through Iowa and biking in Davenport the day before, getting bored of Iowa’s amber waives of grain, adding up the numbers in my Honda Element’s dashboard for the lack of anything else to do - what do I do in Nebraska? I biked to Iowa. 

In my defense I did it via the beautiful Bob Kerrey bridge. I don’t know who came up with the design, who fought for funding, the names of the people who worked on this thing…but if any of them are reading this: you made a beautiful bridge that anyone passing by just feels compelled to cross.

I rode out a few miles with the Missouri River on my left before turning back, and while I was pedaling, with the highway on my left, a thought struck me.

Why would anyone want to build a new car traffic lane along Interstate 95 in Connecticut? Or any highway, for that matter? Why tie up traffic for something that is just going to end up attracting more car traffic and slow down commutes anyway? Why not make a trail close enough to the highway to be considered a travel artery for cyclists but far enough away so bicycle commuters aren’t inhaling Prius fumes and the construction won’t interfere with normal car traffic?

I think those are all good questions. 

I pedaled back across the Bob Kerry bridge and meandered a little while longer before I returned to the hotel to find my wife made a lovely sketch of the buildings outside of our window. After her watercolors had dried, we had to get in the car again and continue driving. Warren Buffet never answered my tweet. He missed out on a good bike ride. 

Many hours of driving through Nebraska later (some of which was spent listening to a new playlist featuring the song Eggs by artist Bruce Horan), Wyoming greeted us with an 80 mile per hour speed limit.

And little else. Along the I-80, at least, the message Wyoming was sending was: there’s not much to see here so you may as well get through it as quickly as possible. However, we were spending the night in Cheyenne - and I didn’t have a good feeling about the next day’s weather forecast.

Click here for Morning 5.

Nine Mornings to California: Morning 3

Morning 3: (Monday, May 4) Bolingbrook, IL

With an incredible amount of distance to drive to get to Omaha, Nebraska, I didn’t ride that morning in Bolingbrook, Illinois. From what I saw - at least from the hotel - the town had been assembled from a DIY Corporate Park & Instant Outdoor Mall kit anyway, so it didn't have a lot of appeal for a bike ride.

Instead, after several hours of driving through field-and-windmill country, we stopped for lunch and I rode along the The Riverfront Trail in Davenport, Iowa. My wife sketched it while my mountain bike tires hummed over the pavement.

It’s a pleasant, family-friendly path that runs along the Mississippi River and I stopped briefly to watch a freight train rumble into Illinois.

Riding in the afternoon instead of the morning came to haunt me later, and it became a valuable road trip lesson: it almost always feels better to ride in the morning. Pedaling under the sun in the middle of the day made me tired - especially since there was so much more of Iowa that we needed to drive across before nightfall.  

I got antsy and irritable. My mood wasn’t helped when I ate my last alfajore cookie from Lorca. Remember that moment in 127 Hours when the guy who had his arm pinned under a boulder in a canyon drank the very last of his water? It didn’t feel at all like that. But it was still pretty demoralizing nonetheless. 

We made it to Omaha, Nebraska after a long day of driving. I glanced at the bike in the rearview mirror as I parked and silently promised to ride early the next morning.

Click here for Morning 4.

Nine Mornings to California: Morning 2

Morning 2: (Sunday, May 3) Cleveland, Ohio

As a cyclist, Cleveland never disappoints me.

After waking at sunup at Clifford House B&B in Ohio City, I rode over to the flats to see if, by chance, the Ohio City Bicycle Co-op - which may still have some of my artwork on display there - was open. It wasn’t, but the bridge that had been under construction for my last two visits to Cleveland, had been finished.

After a great breakfast at Clifford House I decided to ride again while my wife went off to do some sketching. I rode around aimlessly and eventually found a spot I had ridden to the first time I had come to Cleveland.

Cleveland has its decay, but it feels like it is getting harder to find each time I visit. 

As I closed in on 10:00am, I began to feel a bit down since I knew I not only wouldn’t ride in Cleveland again for a while, but that I was missing what would have been my eleventh Five Boro Bike Tour - which was going on this very day at that very moment. 

I passed West Side Market and turned right past Nano Brew (which does burgers a whole lot better than In-N-Out, incidentally) and nearly collided with a huge mass of people who were standing in the street with bicycles. 

There was a lot of buzz and happy chatter among the individuals and families who were gathered. I asked a fellow rider what was going on, and she gave me a brief rundown of the ride: it was a ‘Bike Awareness Ride’ organized by Bike Cleveland and it had a four mile and a ten mile route. It was to start at 10:00. 

I looked at my watch. It was 9:59. I had one minute to fill out the registration form.

And I did.

I only got to do about twenty minutes of the ride, but I did have a chance to feel the cycling energy that only Cleveland has and ride with a fun group of eclectic strangers. It made me grin from ear to ear and made up not going to the Five Boro Bike Tour. 

Thanks, Cleveland. We’ll meet again.

Click here for Morning 3

Nine Mornings to California: Morning 1

Whenever possible, I #choosethebike when getting around. But since my wife and I couldn’t use bicycles to travel from Stamford, Connecticut to Redwood City, California in ten days, we took our Honda Element. I brought a bike, she brought a sketchbook. Here’s what we did: for context, this adventure began two days after I gave away the Bikeducken and one day after we sold our Stamford house. After I started the engine in Connecticut for the last time, I stuck a Yoda action figure on the dashboard for morale.  

Morning 1: (Saturday, May 2) Cherry Hill, New Jersey 

Getting here was the shortest leg of the trip but the most emotional. We had just said goodbye to my parents, signed the closing documents related to the home we had lived in for almost ten years, and headed off to my wife’s parent’s house in New Jersey to spend the night. Spending the night in New Jersey means biking off for coffee in the morning.

From the point of view of a cyclist, Cherry Hill is a collection of busy roads crisscrossing a grid of strip malls. I can assume the town is very old and was built before left turn technology was available. I refer of course to the ‘all turns’ lane that forces drivers who want to turn left to loop right. Like most other ideas connected to improving The Flow, it may have seemed like a good one until cars outgrew the place. The design is just plain hostile, or at best unwelcoming, if you’re a cyclist.

I had set a promise to myself to ride a minimum of five miles a day every day I was driving. I brought only one of my bikes - the mountain bike I had built myself - and had to remove it from the interior Honda Element bike rack I made and attach the seat and front wheel each time I wanted to take a ride (the car was crammed full with stuff we didn't want the movers to put in storage).

With the seat set high (no off roading to be done in Cherry Hill) and the sun just coming up, I set off in search of an independent coffee shop. And Cherry Hill delivered in the only way Cherry Hill can. 

This abandoned shell was found between Dunkin’ Donuts two and three (and it was at the third one - not four miles from where I started - I gave up on looking and settled for What A Marketing Person Says America Runs On. It made me miss Lorca and realize that the more car centric a city, the less friendly it is to independent businesses. At least I had a chance to stretch my legs. I returned to the house and put the bike away, where we visited with her parents a few more hours before setting off to Cleveland - a city I am always excited to bike in and is really the anti-Cherry Hill in terms of design.

The drive from Cherry Hill to that was endlessly long but worth it.  Upon arrival my wife and I ate an excellent dinner at Bar Cento (she sketched it) and then we walked to W. 25th Street to the new Mitchell’s Ice Cream. I reasoned I could work off the treat the next morning - and since I knew it would be my last time biking in Cleveland for a while I wanted to make the ride on Morning 2 count. 

Click here for Morning 2

The Last Days of Bikeducken (And, by Association, Living in Connecticut)

    First photo of 2015: Sunrise on West Beach in Stamford, January 1, 2015

When you collect - well, not really collect but accumulate - bicycles, you don’t really do so thinking you’re going to have to eventually move them. Suddenly presented with that reality in late 2014 when my wife and I realized we were, indeed, moving from Connecticut to California, I began to look at my collection through an anxious lens.

Over a period of nearly five months I sold, scrapped or gave away bikes, parts and other things I didn’t think I’d need in California. It took a long time mostly because I was busy doing freelance work, fixing up the house and getting it ready for a sale, and flying back and forth to California trying to bond with the place (riding through the area, especially in the Willow Glen ride planned by the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, has helped).

Over time I gathered what I thought I absolutely needed and put myself in a mental place to give up the rest. Bike related stuff that never would have deemed non-essential under any other circumstances went to either the Trafigura Work & Learn Center in Stamford or the BikePort Co-op in Bridgeport. Since we had to make the amount of stuff we needed placed in storage fall under a certain threshold (and fairly certain whatever residence we’d end up with in Silicon Valley would be smaller than what we had in Stamford anyhow) I made other, previously unthinkable choices.

Like throwing away the Bikeducken.

The Bikeducken. It began as one discarded Diamondback and ended up as the DiamondSchwinn because I wanted to see if I could cut a bike in half and weld it back together. Later, when I finally found a children’s BMX bike that had a five-speed cassette in the back I created the two-part DIYBIKING.COM Salutes the Cargo Bike feature. By the time I was done eight bikes - all throwaways - had been used to make it. I had to splice two chains of different makes together to make it work - and when pedaling I’d hear the clattering of the chain passing through the derailleur change pitch. 

The bike was used to carry an entire 4 x 8 sheet of plywood six miles from Rings End Hardware in Darien to build the one sheet workbench.

It carried anything I wanted it to, and in the last days of living in Stamford it was essential for bringing stuff to Goodwill - including a trail-a-bike. 

While closing in on Christmas 2014 I made a run to the Domus Work & Learn Business Center that topped all others before it. If Hollywood wanted to do a reboot of The Grapes of Wrath with bikes this has that covered. 

The Bikeducken was even featured on a web site called Hackaday.com this past September. I wondered why anyone would write anything about it, but I took their publicity. I also got a lot of amusement by reading the comments section of the story: one commenter even said: “that’s not welding; more like trying to glue it with spatters of metal” which didn’t make me upset because it was not only an accurate description of the amateur welding technique I had at the time, but it was funny.

As useful and unique as the bike was, I didn’t think it had any value to anyone other than me. Save for the kickstand, bell and derailleur cable the bike was built from what people in Connecticut threw away. With few exceptions, they loaded a slightly-distressed bike into their car, drove it to the Katrina Mygatt Recycling center on Magee Avenue, and dropped it into or around the Metal Only bin without giving it another thought. 

I decided the Bikeducken should return to the scrapheap from whence it came. Even though I thought it might help with closing my relationship with Connecticut I wasn’t going to feel sentimental about it. I decided I’d buy or build another cargo bike when I got settled in California and that was that. 

I removed the rear deck to make it easier to carry up and down the basement stairs (During half of March and the start of April I had to remove all personal belongings every time a realtor came calling) and the countdown to its last ride began. 

As coldhearted as this all sounds, I saw a practical reason for this as well: All but one of my remaining bikes - The City Bike, the Recumbent, The Dahon Matrix, The Mystery of South Norwalk - were being packed up in a moving truck. In fact: I watched it happen.

The mountain bike I built (in fact, the project that led to this site in the first place) won the coveted spot of being the bike that was to come with us for the cross-country drive to California, and it needed to be packed up and ready to travel too. Having a throwaway bike on hand would actually be useful since it could be used right up until the very end. However, as a promise I made to my cycling brothers and sisters in The Constitution State, I reattached a sign (with an updated date) to the frame. 

When I wasn’t biking around Stamford I was biking around Silicon Valley on my Bike Friday, which had been in California since February. As Bike to Work Day closed in on the West Coast, I attached signs I had procured from the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition.

As stressed out as I was with everything going on, I could at least sleep at night (no matter which time zone that would be in) knowing I was doing what I could to get the word out on Bike to Work Day. 

In addition to promoting Bike to Work Day 2015, the Bikeducken did some irrefutably useful things, such as taking my cable boxes and to the UPS store on High Ridge so I could mail them back to the most incompetent cable company that ever walked the earth. 

It was the last frontier for those cable boxes, I gotta say. 

When my last week in Stamford arrived, I welcomed four guys into my house. I only knew them by their first names and watched them carry everything I owned out of my house and place into a truck  - at one point while the song ‘Love Train’ was playing on an iPod. 

Try to get that image out of your head.

In between their visits, I went to my last yoga class at Exhale - which was even nicer because talented Stamford artist Holly Danger was among my classmates - and sipped my last hot cappuccino at Lorca. 

I also bought some of my favorite cookies - alfajores - for the cross country drive (and enjoyed them all the way through Iowa). The morning I was at Lorca, I treated the Bikeducken to a good parking spot and was reminded of how much cheaper it is to build a place to park many bicycles instead of a place to park one car (the following week, Stamford Mayor David Martin announced a new bike parking pilot program featuring bike hitches welded by a Stamford city worker I never had a chance to meet and thank).

And somewhere in the middle of all this, Jon from Rippowam Labs (where I taught the class on how to fix up your bike for spring), who had heard I was throwing away the Bikeducken, asked if he could have it. I was baffled at why he wanted it but decided not to argue. The night before I left Stamford he stopped in to pick it up. 

Jump ahead a couple weeks: I’m looking at the great Bike to Work Week features written by Elizabeth Kim at the Stamford Advocate and I see Jon holding a familiar-looking bike. 

In Stamford, Two Bike Commuters Launch a Ride-Share Website

It gave me a real smile, and it made me thankful I had put enough value on that strange, wonderful cargo bike to not throw it in the trash. It could go there another day, but maybe, just maybe, that picture in the Stamford Advocate inspired one other person to think one or more of the following:

Maybe I should give away that old bike to Domus or BikePort Co-op instead of throwing it in the trash. 

I have a bike and I can ride it safely. I’ll ride it. 

Rippowam Labs sounds really cool. I should check out their class schedule.

I should bike to Lorca, eat some cookies, and take a class at Exhale Stamford to cancel those cookies out - or at least make me think I did. 

I should bike more and drive less. 

Whether or not any Stamford motorists thought those things or not by seeing the Bikeducken or reading this site, they are going to be thinking those things anyway. After all, there are a lot more cyclists on the roads and a lot more coming. Hope they keep an eye out for them and notice how much faster they’re moving and how much more fun they’re having than they are. 

So farewell, Bikeducken and farewell New England. Thanks for reading and thanks for riding. 

    Last photo I took in Stamford before moving: May 1, 2015

Hi, Silicon Valley: Bike to Work Day is Tomorrow!

I’m still getting over internal combustion engine-lag (I had to turn my watch back an hour every couple of days during last week's cross-country drive to get to Silicon Valley from Connecticut - a trip I’ll write about later) but I wanted to give you a reminder that tomorrow - May 14th - is Bike to Work Day in Silicon Valley. 

And you're going to do it. 

I once told Elizabeth Kim - the reporter at the Stamford Advocate who is writing excellent Bike to Work stories all this week - that half of what a city needs for cyclists is infrastructure and the other half is acceptance. (For reference: Delhi and Gurgaon, India has a ton of acceptance - a road user is a road user - but no infrastructure, Cleveland, Ohio has a great and growing amount of both and Greenwich, Connecticut has just about none of either).

When I moved out here, I wanted to find out how much of both Silicon Valley has. And you know what? You’ve got a lot going for you: nicer weather, flatter terrain, a superior bikes on trains policy, no Massachusetts or New York drivers around - the list goes on. That also means your list of excuses for not biking to work is even shorter than most folks in Connecticut. So remember those Thirteen Words: If you have a bike and can ride it safely, please ride it. 

The Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition is doing a lot of work to bring a great Bike to Work Day tomorrow, so be assured that if you #choosethebike you won’t be alone. They’ve got Energizer Stations (which is what it sounds like) all over the place - check their map to find one near your route. They’ve got tips on how to ride safely to work and are even having a Bike Away From Work Bash from 6 - 8pm at the Roosevelt Community Center in San Jose.  They’re also inviting you to share your photos to their Twitter and Instagram accounts (@BikeSV and @BikeSiliconValley, respectively). Also use #BTWD and #BikeMonth to talk about both. 

So give bike commuting a try: as I wrote before you’ll save money, make friends and change yourself - and your neighborhood - for the better. Thanks for reading and thanks for riding.