Not on the Bike

I just returned from a trip to Nova Scotia. My mom owns a house in North West Harbor, a tiny little shoreline village in Shelburne County. It's a pretty isolated area by my urban standards, quiet and still very wild. You would think that this would be a perfect place for biking, but I have found that it is not.

About five years ago I went full bore with the idea of mountain biking in Nova Scotia. I had been watching a lot of freeride videos featuring Canadian locales (I know, wrong coast) and my parents owned a back lot of woods covering almost forty acres that I was determined to turn into a trail. So I brought my Kona Stinky and took to cutting out a trail. I labored in a bugshirt, trading sweat for protection from the thousands of mosquitos surrounding me with a feast in mind. I even made a little freeride feature, a bridge crossing over a massive fallen tree.

So you would think that my construction would have seeded a regular mountain biking pursuit in Nova Scotia, but it did not. After spending a full week clearing the trail, I had little time to ride it, so it was not burned in. When I returned the following summer, it was pretty much gone. I am used to bemoaning the over-riding of trails located around New York City, but in Nova Scotia I learned an important lesson: if there are not enough people riding a trail, it won't be a trail. In addition, the ecology of Nova Scotia really does not encourage mountain biking. I have heard that there is a good riding scene near Halifax, but down where my mom lives it is flat and the bugs are voracious. There are great rocks, but with no one riding over them, most are covered in moss and aren't all that rideable.

I should say that a lot of people travel around Nova Scotia as bike tourists, and I can see where it would be fun to pack up the panniers and cover the long winding roads that cover the coastline. But just riding around is pretty boring, and I have not gotten a lot of pleasure out of road riding in Shelburne County. I am not a big fan of just riding around on the roads, so perhaps my own lack of interest is my problem.

So what's a dedicated biker to do when visiting a place without good biking?

For me, it means a shift of frame. What do I like about biking? It's getting out and exploring the outdoors, it is discovering new places under my own power. In Nova Scotia, the best outdoors looks like this:

The best explorable terrain in Nova Scotia is the shoreline.

I have to admit it, a bike is not of much use in this terrain. The best human-powered vehicle for exploring the shoreline looks like this:

The ocean ride? My mom's sea kayak.

So I have learned to go with the flow and use my arms for a change. Really, although I am pretty much using the wrong half of my body, kayaking is a lot like riding. You have to set a pace and get into a rhythm, and once you get into that rhythm paddling can be really relaxing. Like a mountain bike, a kayak can really extend the range of places that you explore. A good ocean kayak can ride in about 6" of water, so almost nowhere is beyond range On the ocean there's also the potential for some "freeriding", as wind and wave conditions can create significant challenges. Is it mountain biking? No, but it is a fun alternative.

Although the kayak is pretty versatile, it does suffer from one characteristic that I really don't like: weather dependence. If there's significant fog it can be dangerous; my partner Teresa and I once got caught in between two coasts as the fog rolled in and for a few minutes we couldn't get any bearing on where we were or whether we were drifting out into the open ocean. Kayaking in the rain is possible, but with enough wind it is really not that pleasant.

Snow is the weather enemy of my mountain biking explorations. In a kayak, it is fog.

I will ride my mountain bike in pretty much any weather, with snow being the only thing that really slows me down. Coastal conditions unfortunately create "good days" and "bad days" for kayaking.

Bicycle Film Festival NYC 2009

I have been going to the Bicycle Film Festival (BFF) for the last four years. It's always a great place to reconnect with my passion for riding and meet other people in the New York City bike scene. I am about as far from being a "scenester" as is possible when it comes to bikes, but I like to sit back and check out other people's scenes. For most of the year I just live in my little riding cocoon, riding with a few friends, so it is good to get out and see what the rest of the biking community is up to.

The last couple of years, this is what the festival looked like...

This year was particularly bad, with a constant rain dogging all the outside activities that usually keeping Second Street in Manhattan jumping. There were plenty of people, it was just really wet...

Pedicabs were out in full effect, as was the pedibillboard above...

A new thing this year was free bike repair. Nice! I think that helping other people keep their bikes on the road (and even better teaching them to do it themselves) is a major mission for those of us with veteran status in the biking community.

Of course our good friends Transportation Alternatives were on hand. Having ridden in New York City on and off for the last twelve years, I cannot thank TransAlt enough for all they have done to make biking better in New York City. They were launching their "Biking Rules" campaign with spoke cards and a new handbook at this event. Aimed at getting bikers to know not only their rights but also their responsibilities, this campaign is probably well overdue. What will be interesting to see is how it goes over with the "hardcore biker" contingent that usually turns out at an event like the BFF. The campaign is good for me because there are definitely some things I do that I should be more mindful of, such as riding on the sidewalk. It's not something I do often, but when I do I know it rightly pisses off pedestrians which is not great for the cause. I guess the one thing about this campaign that will be hard for me to get with is the idea that bikes ought to follow all traffic rules. I will elaborate on this more in the future, but I just don't believe that bikes should have to stop at every single light that's red.

A big part of being at the BFF is showing off your bicycle. Notice how the ubiquitous guy with the penny farthing and the lady with the matching rainbow bike and outfit get so much attention.

I got to check out Freeman Transport bicycles for the first time. They had several single-speed and fixed models including this pretty retro fixie, all with S-and-S couplers. Now my only question is how do you lock said gorgeous handmade bike that can be broken in two in a matter of seconds.

The Brooklyn Machine Works table was a fun place to check out. I covet a lot of their designs, including the SR6 with a Hammerschimdt crankset and green Gangsta Track bikes above. I learned that they even sell the Gangsta Track with a canti-mount equipped fork. I wish I had more reason to own both of these bikes, but right now they remain fantasies.

If you are looking for really tight street fixie, the bikes from Geekhouse were looking pretty sweet.

And of course there was a variety of other goodies for sale. Apparently rainbow anodized is still cool.


I love the small-scale sewing operations that have emerged from the biking community...

Including Long Island's own Vaya. Trust me when I give Vaya the DIY seal of approval. Check out all their stuff made from reclaimed tubes...

Of course the BFF is about films, and Teresa and I saw quite a few of them. Friday night we saw a variety of shorts followed by the film Where Are You Go. Shorts at the BFF can be pretty hit or miss, with a lot of them feeling like someone's film class project that happened to involve a bicycle that went looking to get into a festival and scored the BFF because, well, the film involved a bicycle in some way. The other kind of film that can be sort of tedious is the "celebration of the beauty of the bicycle" short. These are awesome in a way but start to feel like the same film trotting out the same themes with different rider profiles. I love my bike, it gives me time to think, it is better than a car, I live for my bike. I have now provided you with the narrative themes, now go get some footage and make a short for next year's festivals.

In contrast, Made in Queens was an amazingly tight short that brought something new. Profiling a group of immigrant kids whose families came from Trinidad and Tobago, this film was tight in its narrative and cinematography. Teresa and I were arguing about whether these were the same kids we saw at last year's BFF street party, but at any rate their claim to fame is that they turn old beater BMX bikes into five hundred pound rolling sound systems. Definitely DIY and definitely some thing to check out.

I also liked the imagery of Paris Vision, which was an artsy piece capturing the flavor of Paris' fixed gear and bike polo scene.

The Friday feature, Where Are You Go, was definitely worth watching. It was sort of a video montage chronicling the 2008 Tour D'Afrique, a grueling 12,000 km ride from Cairo, Egypt to Cape Town, South Africa. At times this film was not sure about whether it wanted to tell a story about this ride: we do get little profiles of the riders, but there wasn't a coherent picture of anyone other than the three guys who made the film. It was really neat to see how everyday Africans from such a huge geographical range reacted to these strange affluent westerners on bikes, but after awhile the novelty of watching another kid gawk at the hipster tall bike the filmmakers decided to make mid-ride wore off. I guess I would say that this film was good in spite of the filmmaking, simply because the event was so interesting.

We also went to see two programs on Saturday. The first was the "Mountain Bike" program with a few other things thrown in. There was a very small crowd for this program and the BFF folks did not seem to care enough to even have someone in the projecting booth who would notice the painfully out of sync sound that plagued the first few shorts. A short called Bike Trials: Regaining Balance was pretty neat, showing the exploits of a few trials riders in British Columbia. Trials is amazing, but it is a seriously obscure sport here in North America. According to this short, that might be due to an over-abundance of girlfriends. To decide for yourself, track this film down.

Comic relief was provided by Le Tour Rider, a sort of spoof allusion to Breaking Away, culminating in a collision between bike and automotive food delivery services. Silly, but awesome.

I might be getting a little burnt of freeride mountain bike films. That, or my standards are getting higher after seeing quite a few. Either way I was not all that impressed with an edited short of the full-length movie Latitudes. Although I must say that it is cool to see Cam McCaul pull off back flip after back flip on an eight pack.

I was pretty excited to see Freeride: The Aaron Chase Story. I wasn't disappointed, but I wasn't blown away either. It is a great profile piece, giving you a flavor of Aaron's life early in his career and now that he is older, married, and a father. Although it was painful to watch, the best part of this film is the frank manner in which it deals with an accident Aaron had on some skinny at a demo. I have always felt that high skinnies are pretty stupid and pointless, and the story of his fall from ten-plus feet up to a hard concrete parking lot only reinforced that sense. The story turns out okay, and it almost makes one feel that you can come back from any injury, but for me the whole thing underscored a concern that I have had for a long time: pro bikers are being pushed to do things that are more and more likely to cause serious permanent injury. At the end of this film I did not find myself totally convinced that all the perks and adventure of being a pro biker are really worth it. That's easy for me to say from my midlife, relatively careful riding stance, but I don't think I would encourage on of my children to pursue a life like Aaron's.

The last program we saw was the BMX features. Of course that had to be preceded by a long jump contest:

BMX is kind of a gap for me. I never was a BMX kid, but I have always appreciated it. I skated, then I freerided, and in a couple of places in there I played around on twenty-inch bikes. Now, what with living in south Brooklyn and owning a Tonic Fall Guy, I am as close as I have ever been to BMX. So the curiosity grows...

These were the best films we saw. The first film I'm Good On That One, which was basically a promo for Lotek Shoes, was mind-blowing. This is the way I like my skate/BMX/freeride videos: fast, intense, and unrelenting. I know that it is much easier to make a video with filler because valuable footage is hard to come by, but I would much rather watch 15 minutes of amazing stuff than half an hour of slowly-revealed lukewarm action. All I can say is this: how the hell does anyone ride brakeless in San Francisco?

The second film, Train Trip, was also pretty amazing. It was slower in pace but the footage of veterans Joe Rich and Ruben Alcantara was well worth it. The stuff these guys still pull is just amazing: big long and burly.

The feature film was I Love My Bike: The Story of FBM Bikes. It seemed like every person from the local area with any connection to this DIY American-made company was out in force, and the place was pretty rowdy. But when the film came on, everyone settled down. What followed was a very well-crafted story about a very unlikely bike company. As a person who needs a primer on BMX history, this film really filled in a lot of gaps for me. Pretty much every important rider from the last fifteen years played some part in this film, which chronicled the slow rise and tribulations of FBM, an upstate company that has ridden out several boom-and-bust cycles of the BMX industry. Great film, great story. I think what interested me most was the maturation process of the major players in the company, a group of friends who went from reject upstarts to tastemakers over the last decade-plus. If I ever get my own twenty-incher, it will be an FBM custom.

After the film the BMX crowd was so pumped that they tried to get a makeshift ramp going:

This unfortunately highlighted some of the more "dumb ass" sides of the BMX scene, of which there are plenty. Ah, reminds me of the hardcore scene!

Besides watching films, we also got to hang out with Carl and Curtis...

The Truckers See Their First Tour

Last weekend Teresa and I took the Long Haul Truckers out for their first overnight jaunt. Since the day I got it, my LHT has been fully outfitted with front and rear racks, fenders, and full panniers. Ironically, I have ridden it over 4500 miles in two years, and not a single one of those miles involved an overnight trip.

We are getting married out in Montauk, so we decided on a whim on Friday night to catch an early Saturday morning Long Island Railroad train out of Flatbush Avenue. We quickly packed up a couple of sleeping bags, my tiny tent, a sleeping pad, and some basic snacks.

Getting on the train just before eight o'clock, we arrived just after ten. It's amazing what a geographical transition you can make in very short time on a train. After a comfortable cruise out the train hit the end of the island and we were free.

What I loved about this adventure was that it was so spontaneous. We had the stuff we needed, tossed it in the panniers and went. We didn't even have a place to stay, we just figured it would work out somehow. Our goal was to camp at Hither Hills State Park, a kind of mecca for Long Island beach families who jam the phone lines each year like a bunch of 1980's kids trying to get tickets to Springsteen so that they can camp for a week out on the beach. We pulled up and put our names on the waiting list and hoped that someone would not show.


I really love the feeling of carrying everything on my bike. At certain points on this trip we were paranoid about theft and had to pull off all panniers and bags and lug them around. But even with this inconvenience, there is something so amazing about just having everything you need on your person, moved along by your legs alone.

We got the campsite off the waiting list and set up our meager camp, consisting of one tiny tent and nothing else. We headed off to explore the town of Montauk. A cold fog rolled in and we confronted the fact that perhaps we had not brought enough warm gear.


A classic moment of my teenage years involved a camping trip on Fire Island I did with my friend Andy. It was summer and somehow I decided that during the summer there was no reason to bring a sleeping bag. I spent a long, cold night trying to conserve warmth by wrapping myself in a plastic tarp. This night was cold, but we had warm sleeping bags and were comfortable.

The next day, Sunday, was glorious. We awoke to a warming sun and clean beach air. Of course it is still Long Island. For those who don't know what that means, here's a quick primer:

First, people have to bring everything they own with them wherever they want to be. Luckily, they have huge gas-guzzling vehicles and don't feel bashful about pulling them right up to the place they want to be...


It's a beach, but make sure you don't turn your ankle on the tire tracks...


And of course it is critical that you set up your camp to resemble all the comforts of home...


It was somewhat laughable how different our campsite was. Surrounded by these SUV-hauled tent and camper cities, we seemed like we had too much room. And of course this is the wrong way to look at things: if everyone camped the way we did, there would be room for two or three times as many people to camp at Hither Hills. And you know what? I really didn't lack for anything during our visit.

We made our way west and north to Shelter Island. Here's the trucker rigged up on the south ferry:


Teresa's dad just happened to be doing an organized ride on Shelter Island, so we poached a rest stop and got to meet up with him and his riding partner Joe:


We spent the rest of the day cruising around Shelter Island and Greenport. I am resolving to not let too much time elapse before we load up the truckers for another getaway...

New Bike for Gaia

I have to admit that one of the ways that I treat myself is to buy new bike stuff. One could argue, based on the lifestyle that I live, that bikes are my one vice. I guess that arguing what is a "vice" and what is a "necessity" is a matter of perspective, but clearly bikes are the closest thing I have to a vice. I wear clothing that is mostly second-hand and wear out almost everything I own until it becomes, literally, a rag. I eat modestly, infrequently at restaurants, and my diet is 99.5% vegan. We live in a very small apartment with low energy requirements. I don't own a car. Excess? Yeah: I own five bikes, each of which is worth over $1000. Even if you judge my overall lifestyle as excessive by global standards, my worst vice by far is biking.

So with purchasing myself bike stuff being such a self indulgence, you would think that it would be uniquely satisfying. Well, it turns out that there is a way that I can make myself exponentially more happy with a purchase, because far more satisfying than buying myself a new bike is buying one for my daughter:


Gaia and I picked up her new bike about a week ago from Bicycle Habitat. They remain my favorite shop in the city for their tasteful selection of bikes and helpful unpretentious staff. Gaia was outfitted with a new Specialized Hotrock with 20" wheels, v-brakes, and six speeds. Of course dad can contemplate the specifications, but to Gaia it is all about the ride experience...


This is a defining moment. Getting that bike that expands your world and turns you into an explorer...



So far we have ventured deep into Prospect Park. Gaia's still not old enough or skilled enough to ride in the street, but we make good use of isolated sidewalks to pick our way over to the big glorious loop in Prospect Park. The first day she got the bike we were just trying to make it all the way up to the top of the sidewalk hill alongside Greenwood Cemetary (our training grounds), but when Gaia got to the top she insisted that she wanted more. We made it all the way over to the park and in twilight we explored before returning home victoriously.

Gaia's now all outfitted and ready for anything from the city streets to the mountain trails...


Since she was about six months old, Gaia has enjoyed every means of bicycle transport that I could strap her into or plop her on top of. I enjoyed every one of these stages, but nothing compares to watching your child pedal along on her first mountain bike...

Alleyway Crew

Living in Brooklyn can be a bummer sometimes. When I was a kid, I could ride my bike in the street from an early age, because my neighborhood was a place for families first and a place for driving second. On the congested streets of New York City, the car is king. Whereas a neighbor who was driving recklessly down the suburban streets would catch hell from every parent on the block, in the big city people drive however they want because they are anonymous. We don't even know our neighbors, much less the thousands of outsiders who drive through our neighborhood everyday.

I don't want my daughter to be harmed by this menace. I mean this in two senses. First, I don't want her to get hurt by someone driving recklessly down our block. But second, I also don't want her view of the world, her exploratory spirit, to be dampened by living in the big city.

Thank goodness for the alleyway between our building and the next:


It's here that the Louisa Street alleyway crew is in effect. Gaia and her pals next door rip around on their bikes and scooters and tricycles in this short but sweet little alleyway, protected from the dangers of the outside street. They can be kids, albeit in a small space. They can enjoy time together unsupervised by adults. They can learn from each other.

I of course am not allowing this alleyway to define the limitations of Gaia's riding world. We have already gotten out on some long rides, allowing the sidewalk to be our ally as we make our way over to the safety of Prospect Park. But I am thankful for the alley, because it is a place that Gaia and her friends can claim as their own.

Bike #5: Performance Superbe Pro

My fifth bike was a 1986 Performance Superbe Pro road bike:

As you may have gathered, when I was growing up my family was not all the big on the local bike shop. We actually used to buy a fair amount of stuff at the local shop, but for whatever reason we got me a couple of bikes, one each from each of the bike mailorder houses of the time. Part of the reason that we purchased bikes online had to do with value: this bike was relatively cheap (I think about $550) given how nice it was. Tange chromoly tubing, Suntour Superbe Pro full gruppo, and lightweight Araya rims made this a pretty fast bike. Still back in the days of friction shifting, but quality components for a first road bike.

I remember the first few rides on this bike, and the sensation that every last ounce of effort was propelling me forward.

I did a lot of road riding around Huntington on this bike with my parents. One time I was on a ride with my mom and we were in the left turning lane at a light and when I started to turn this car ran up on me an squashed my back wheel. Luckily this was my only encounter with a car on this bike.

I did RAGBRAI on this bike with my dad, I believe in 1987. During RAGBRAI I did my first century on this bike.

I brought the Performance with me to college, and used it during a brief experiment with participating on the Claremont Colleges Cycling Team. I enjoyed the training rides as I had a close friend on the team (Tina Briones) and I did fine at the second race of the season, a time trial up Mount Baldy. Riding alone, especially along difficult stretches, is something I am good at. But my first two proper road races were a bit of a disaster. My first, in San Diego, ended moments into the race. I had purchased a lightweight "race wheelset" and had put some stupid-small tires on. I had obviously made the amateur mistake of not properly getting the tube into the tire so as soon as I took a turn my tube herniated out and blew up. My third race was another road race, this one an absurdly tight criterium that basically was a loop around a parking lot. I got dropped super early and pulled from the race. Stuck riding in the sketchy lower category races and plagued by American-style crits, I decided road racing was not for me.

By the time I left Claremont skateboarding was the dominant pursuit in my recreational life, and I decided that it wasn't worth shipping the Performance back to Long Island. A fellow student low-balled me on the price, but I let it go.

Bike #4: The Nashbar Mountain Bike

I got my fourth bike in 1983. At that time my family was pretty into bicycling, and the Bike Nashbar catalogue was a staple in our home. When Nashbar introduced their first mountain bike (then called a "dirt bike"), I was all over it. And because my parents were always very supportive of my bike habits, they got me one:


Although it may seem primitive by today's standards, this bike was pretty sweet at the time. Bullmoose handlebars, Dia-Compe cantilever brakes, first-generation Shimano Deore XT drivetrain (with the "stag" graphics), and a Bio-pace crankset. As you can see I had tricked this bike out with a rack and bike computer.

I rode this bike everywhere. I knew every dirt path and gravel road in my town, and I even got to take this bike up to our family's favorite camping area Merck Forest and Farmland before mountain bikes were banned there. During the summer between eighth and ninth grade (1985) I took this bike on a American Youth Hostel group tour through Maine. Perhaps I should have switched out the knobby tires because I was always bringing up the rear behind kids on narrow-tired road bikes, but there was no question this was a fun bike to ride once we got to the campsite.

I got a lot of service out of this bike, including riding it in the foothills outside Claremont, California while I was in college. I brought it home and eventually got a new mountain bike, so I let my brother borrow it and use it in Hanover, New Hampshire while he was at college. This bike was stolen from outside his house. I still wonder if I will run into it while I am up in the Vermont and New Hampshire area. Its glory days are gone, but it built the foundation on which my mountain biking enthusiasm rests.