Day Touring in Your Own Area

This summer I have been trying to ride my bike on as many “new roads” as possible. By new, I mean new to me, roads that I have never ridden before.

I have seen many people through the years that stick to pedaling the same route time after time. That is fine, but unless you branch out and ride new roads you never know what you’re missing.

I have ridden the Rt. 9 thing from AuSable Point to Chazy. I have ridden the Rt. 22 and Rt. 22B and Rt. 3 corridors. All of those rides are nice, in brief doses. What about the view that you can get from atop Hallock hill in Peru, or the speed you get coming down the Chazy Lake road into Saranac? What about the isolation you feel between Standish and Clayburg? How about the rolling terrain around Chateaugay Lake and Ellenburg? They are all very nice too.

I was riding in the Patent Road, Mannix Road area on Sunday. My goal was to ride the hill by the Mother Cabrini Shrine; mostly because it is supposed to be THE hill test piece in the area. By the way, it is quite steep. I was taken by surprise by a mechanical problem, broken spoke.

That broken spoke made my day. If it weren’t for the wobble in my wheel, I would have ridden the hill and ended up riding off toward Peasleville to allow my legs to unravel before heading home. Instead, I wanted to keep my speed down as low as possible (If my wheel were to collapse, I would rather be going slowly). On a whim I turned down, a road just north of the Mannix road.

It was absolutely beautiful. I felt like I was transported back in time. There was a pretty tree farm, a couple of old farmsteads, farmscapes and beautiful forests. All of this in a slightly downhill package, so I could just glide along sitting on my bike for a few minutes.

Yes, I was exploring that day but I was not fully prepared to see what I saw. I am glad to have stumbled upon a gem of a road and I am encouraged for my future rides.

I hope you too get out there and find your own special pieces of road.

Lance Armstrong

Lance Armstrong and Sportsmanship

I am usually the last person to jump on a bandwagon. In the case of Lance armstron, I feel really inspired. Not for his rebound from cancer survivorship, as amazing as that was, instead I am impressed by his sportsmanship.

He is truly a model athlete. Every other professional athlete that American culture holds high on a pedestal could learn a lesson from Lance. He competes cleanly and he commands respect from his peers by acting in a respectful manor. He talks to the press, he appreciates his fans and he is respectful of his competitors.

Recently in the Tour, which I rarely get wrapped up in the soap opera, he acted in a very commendable manor. He declined the award of the yellow jersey because he felt that the race was too close to call when his primary competitor crashed. Not only was the race too close, he admitted he might have been behind. Therefore, he didn’t feel right being awarded the jersey without “earning it” he felt like he won it by a fluke.

I think about NFL players and how they would have been dancing and reveling over the carnage of their competitors getting injured and maximizing the windfall as if they were the greatest.

NBA players are so at odds with their fans that brawls breakout between fans and players. NBA stars are accused of rapes and drunk driving accidents.

I am not saying that cycling, in general is free of bad seeds, but Lance Armstrong is in deed a model athlete and everyone could learn a lesson in humility from him.

Bicycle Safety

June 28, 2005


Just in the past week I have been honked at, screamed at, and Buzzed uncomfortably close and “shooed” as if a passing motorist were waving off a fly from his desert.

All in a days ride…or is there an epidemic of ignorance. I would tend to believe that some people just don’t know that bicycles and cars have a right to the road. Sharing the road comes with responsibility; riders need to share the road. Stay out of the way of traffic, so not to obstruct cars. We also have to signal our intensions with hand signals and also observe the rules of the road: as if we were also in a car.

Visit these sites to get a better feel for your knowledge and brush up on some things. Be a better representative for bicycling. Too many car drivers hate bikes and riders and they can very easily hurt or kill one of us in our mutual ignorance.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bikeped/bike-nys.html
http://www.dot.state.ny.us/pubtrans/share.html
http://www.nybc.net/bicycling/laws.shtml