I grew up understanding that riding my bicycle was an almost legit way to get out of the house for short bits of time. Home was busy. There was always something needed doing, and tension associated with getting all of the work done, whether that was baking for expected guests, picking fruit in the orchard, or, out in the fields, removing as many young bracken ferns as possible before the calves ate them and became very sick. We had moved from LA to rural Western Australia, and we were adjusting to a new culture and a different kind of life. In place of a house in a Los Angeles suburb, where I could ride my bike to the supermarket, we now had acreage, chickens, a garden, an orchard, and cows and sheep. And the closest market was not close enough to ride to. The cultural shock was significant. These city slickers weren’t no farmers and the romance of farming occasionally failed to carry us through. Sometimes it was nice to ride away, even on a bumpy dirt road.
Our small farm was in an area both remote and rural in the late ’60s. Wellington Mills was a dairy and orchard farming region, and all nearby roads were dirt. I learned to handle my bike on the washboard roads, but this kind of riding was and is work to me. Slipping, sliding, and bumping along seem to reduce some of the fun. Still, back then I appreciated the (temporary) freedom afforded by the bike and somehow, my parents didn’t seem to worry too much about me going out to explore. Where could I get to…out in the middle of nowhere?
I’ve been trying to remember the bike I had in Wellington Mills, but I can only remember the blue Schwinn that we had packed with our household goods when we moved from LA to Australia. I remember that I couldn’t wait for the cargo container to arrive and be unpacked so I could extract my bike and figure out how to put it back together. I’m sure I had help reassembling it, but my memory is of trying to do the job myself because I was impatient to ride. This bike had a blue and white tank fitted in the frame and a rack or fin over the back wheel that I could sit on and pedal from once I was tall enough.
But riding a bike is not just about escape because every bike ride is a little adventure. You will see and experience something new each time, even on a familiar route. You are going slowly enough to see the Bald Eagle sitting on the phone pole, to watch the deer family scamper away through the brush, and to appreciate the view from the crest of a big hill you’ve climbed.
I enjoy covering space and time by bike, and I appreciate the mental space that opens up as soon as I begin to pedal. Quiet time, reflective time. Time to let my mind wander and think about nothing at all, or sometimes to work through a problem or issue.
And as every bicycle rider knows, there is joy in simply turning the pedals, leaving your routine and schedule behind you. Riding still feels like escape, now mostly from myself and my self-imposed routine. Riding is as important as ever.
Shopping in a small, local organic food store a few days ago, I had a strong sense of traveling in the groove of life lived decades ago in Bunbury, Western Australia. The smell of late season cabbage, turnips, and beets mingling with the rose hips, licorice root and hibiscus in herbal teas and the earthy aromas from bulk bins of nuts and grains took me back to the Seventh Day Adventist store and vegetarian restaurant in Perth where we would occasionally shop and eat. So many years later, this experience felt familiar; more focus on the food being good for you than good to look at. Truth be told, I trust the food in this kind of store more…it hasn’t been waxed or stickered and mostly hasn’t been shipped thousands of miles to reach my shopping basket. Some of the produce doesn’t look great…but it’s February in Pennsylvania.
Looking for local fresh veggies in February is a challenge in Pennsylvania, but in recent years, more nearby farmers are growing some of the basics in hothouses through the winter. Fresh salad greens at this time of the year are a gift because I grew up knowing the seasons for fruits and veggies as we tended and depended on our garden and orchard. We didn’t eat strawberries in the winter. It just wasn’t a thing then. So I’m hyper-aware that if I’m seeing berries in the supermarket in March, they are coming from California, Florida, Mexico, or even further south and their nutritional value suffers from the long roadtrip.
When I returned to California from Australia in the late ’70s, I was seduced by the notion that you could buy anything you wanted in the supermarket at any time…you could eat strawberries all year…and that seemed a wonderful advancement. Slowly I started to realize that the ginormous strawberries didn’t always taste like strawberries, and that tomatoes purchased in winter were flavorless. Somewhere in my brain, while I had been seduced by convenience, I had known that there was likely a trade-off for access to summer produce during the rest of the year. Eventually I read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Wendell Berry’s “The Pleasures of Eating,” and other writings, and had to confront my unease to understand that I wasn’t lucky to be eating summer produce in the winter. Instead, I came to feel a bit spoiled and completely out of touch with the world of food production. I had put my farming knowledge on the shelf, temporarily….
I’m doing a bit better now. Jayne and I freeze and can as much as possible during the summer. We’re finishing last summer’s frozen corn now and look forward to fresh corn in a few months. The strawberries and blueberries from Jayne’s garden last year appear in our breakfasts on a daily basis. I just went out to the garden and saw that the strawberry plants are just beginning to peak through the mulch covering them. It’s still cold out there; we won’t have fresh strawberries here for quite some time yet. But when they arrive, they will be delicious.
Just so you know, though, I’m not totally reformed. After a longish period of time of depriving myself of avocados, a fruit/veggie that I love, but which I have no chance of ever eating in Pennsylvania if I refuse to buy produce shipped more than a few miles, I gave in and decided I could buy some…occasionally. I do enjoy them, but when I hit a bad one, I don’t fuss, because I know they have come a long way to be on my plate and that a perfect avocado is really more than I should expect.
A winner of the National Outdoor Book Award, Sara Dykman’s 2021 book will interest (1) passionate conservationists, and (2) avid long distance cyclists. In Dykman’s account of her 10, 201-mile journey from Mexico to Canada and back again, she follows the Monarch migration from their winter to summer homes and back to their winter refuge. As the journey progresses, she explains the Monarch’s life cycle, food needs, temperature sensitivities, as well as how climate change and other obstacles (such as the practice of mowing roadside “weeds” including milkweed) threaten the health of the species.
I would say that Dykman’s primary goal is to educate readers about Monarchs and the problems they face, and to motivate more people to get involved in whatever ways possible to improving the environment and chances of survival for Monarchs. Her focus on education is reinforced with the regular stops she makes along her way to do classroom visits.
Endorsements by Dr. Jane Goodall and other reputable scientists clue readers in to the fact that this book will offer a scientific account rather than one based solely on personal feelings about Monarchs…and it does just that, providing detailed information about the phases of a Monarch’s life, the stages of the migration journey, and science-based responses to changes in Monarchs’ migratory habits. Keep in mind, however, that Dykman’s goal is to educate more people about Monarchs and motivate them to do what they can to help; the science in her book is not a deterrent to understanding it.
Secondarily, Dykman talks about her bike trip. I am fascinated by her approach to her trip. At the beginning of the book she tells us that she has only a “bare-bones” schedule…and for most of the trip, it seems that where she is going to camp and what she is going to eat reveal themselves during the day’s ride. She writes that she prefers this approach, “to encourage just enough discomfort for an adventure to unfold.”
Because I like to plan trips as much as possible to avoid discomfort, I enjoyed reading Dykman’s explanation of her adventures and how they enriched her trip. Very shortly after the start of her trip north from Mexico, she comes to a fork in the road. Metaphor aside, because she is navigating without a smart phone, with only a not entirely accurate paper map, she makes a choice that affects the rest of that day’s ride… and leaves her not entirely clear about where she is or if she is heading the way she wants to go.
Near the end of the book, she looks back with satisfaction to this first day and notes that the road taken provided her with the adventures and opportunities she had hoped for. I’m sure I would not have been as unflappable about the situation, so Dykman’s perspective was a valuable lesson to me.
Of course, much of the science as well as the reviews of conservation and environmental issues are relevant in many other situations. It was good to spend time immersed in these arguments, and Dykman’s book is a valuable read.
In the garden of textile artist Jack Larsen, you begin to realize the art of nature when you look at Larsen’s weave of sculpture works among trees, plants, rocks, dried grasses and pathways. The long blue rods of Chihuly glass pointing skyward in the midst of beds of tall dry grass, the Sol LeWitt plain concrete block structure like a house or large cluster of shrubs….and this tree showing off its marbled bark, so stunning that it’s hard to imagine it’s not ‘art,’ just as it’s hard to imagine art as beautiful as it is.
At the beginning of the year I thought it might be ‘fun’ to deliberately choose more rides with more hills…to see what I can do when I have a bit more time for training. Why not. I am lucky to be riding so I may as well challenge myself, and I have a good bike with the right gears for climbing. I want to increase my mileage this year as well, but I want to put some energy into hills. This is not easy…I am slow in general but even slower on hills. Gravity is not my friend. But I’m riding because I love riding, and improving my climbing form even a little could buy me a little ease on brevets and/or permanents, so there is every reason to give it a go. Fortunately, it’s difficult to ride in Pennsylvania without climbing hills…so there is lots of opportunity for using the low gears on my bike.
I’ve completed the hilly NJ 300 brevet several times, but never with more than 20 minutes to spare, and one year Chris and I finished with fewer than 5 minutes to spare. Those rides also involved me staying on my bike almost the entire time: no sit-down meals, no leisurely breaks at controls, and eating while riding. Thinking back to the older versions of hilly NJ 600s as well that took in the Catskills and Harriman State Park, I successfully completed all but one of those attempts, but again, that was made possible by taking brief overnight breaks and keeping control stops short…all business, no time for chatting with the locals, having a relaxed meal, or napping in the shade.
Most (in)famously, I completed BMB with its more than 35,000 feet of climbing with just 30 minutes to spare and only two hours sleep in four days.
Nearly 18 years have passed by since BMB. I have been lucky to be a randonneur, albeit a slow one, all this time. I have nothing to lose, of course taking reasonable precautions and paying attention to how my body is responds, in trying to bring a little more ease and fun into rides.
We’ll see how it goes. If nothing else, I’ll see more of the beautiful wooded areas in Berks County, PA.
The question for January riding is, how far can I safely push my body against cold, wind, and poor road conditions? Will my toes and fingers be ok at 22, 25 or 30 degrees? Will I see the patch of black ice or an other large icy patch created by some form of run off in time to ride or walk around? Can I choose the right clothes, socks, gloves, and toe warmers to allow me to be more or less comfortable for the five or six hours it takes me to do 100k routes. At what point is it not worth the risk or the weight and bulk of extra gear? The discomfort, the chill that finds its way between collars and hats onto the sliver of bare neck. A hilly January ride is guaranteed to generate times when I’m too hot followed by times when I’m really cold…the clothes are never just right. The best I can do is target ‘adequate’ for the day and then see how it goes.
Reviewing the weather forecast, I had planned that I would ride outdoors yesterday because the rain was supposed to stop and the temperatures were to rise close to 50, really quite warm for us in January. However, because of the temperature difference between the cold ground and ‘warm’ air, it was foggy all day. The clouds did not clear so the air was damp, dark and chill all day. Another day on the trainer.
Today, I bundled up for twenty miles outdoors. I returned with popsicle toes but the ride was absolutely worth the effort and discomfort because several waves of snow geese in V formation passed overhead as I was climbing the first small hill.
The winter landscape is so different: stark, seemingly bleak, shades of brown and gray…more monochromatic than a black and white photo. But this backdrop allows small splashes of color and interesting bits and pieces to really make an impression. A bright red cardinal, a blue jay, a pond created by recent heavy rains, a warehoused old caboose, a long closed factory, even a street sign….
January riding feels like a gift on the days that it is possible, a gift that requires me to pay close attention to what I’m doing and to deliberately look for the beauty and life in my surroundings. And I also look forward to things greening up again in a few weeks.
Thomas Footer started his steam cleaning and dyeing business in 1870 in Cumberland, MD. His sons took over the business in the 1920s and managed it until bankruptcy occurred some time in the 1930s. This historic building is being transformed into apartments and businesses (footerbuilding.com).
Near Footer’s is the train station, a bicycle shop that serves trail riders, a few small restaurants and the Dig Deep Brewing Company. All are situated at the junction between the C & O Trail and the Great Allegheny Trail, as well as being nestled in among overpasses and off/on ramps for Highways 68, 40, and 220.
Just a few miles from home in Dryville, PA, the Fleetwood Auto Body Building is also being transformed into loft apartments, and parts of the former Bethlehem Steel Works site now houses an entertainment complex with theaters, performance spaces and more. Many additional similar spaces in Pennsylvania are simply abandoned. However, it will take investments of not only money but also creative energy and people once again living and working in these revitalized spaces for them to stop feeling a little bit haunted.
Ireland was fun. Different enough that we knew beyond a doubt that we were in a different place but familiar enough that eating, sleeping, shopping, getting around and talking to people were enjoyable and manageable experiences. Well…almost. Driving was a challenge, especially when I chose routes that avoided toll roads. In such cases we were often on roads maybe just wide enough for two compact cars, but sometimes only wide enough for one car. Driving the narrow lanes involved backing up, pulling over, stopping and communicating with drivers coming from the opposite direction. While it was a bit nerve-racking, I am not sorry that we traveled some of these roads…beautiful farms, hills in many many shades of green, and tiny villages lie along them.
I took my Bike Friday with me, hoping for many hours of exploration by bike. On tv, the Irish countryside looks like a great place to explore by bike. However, when I saw the country roads and the narrow streets weaving through towns, I hesitated to set out on unfamiliar roads that could quickly become very narrow. Instead, I took just a few short rides and that occasionally included riding on sidewalks. Before the trip, I had read about some recommended bicycle adventures…all I can say is that you must have a high tolerance for riding in close proximity to cars to have fun on some of the suggested routes.
In Dublin, and after a day of walking all over the city, I discovered bike lanes along a canal as well as along the River Liffey and around St. Stephen’s Green…it took a while to familiarize myself with the city and figure out the logic of the routes. It’s that way in towns and cities with bike lanes…they are generally planned to serve particular functions; if you don’t understand their purposes, it will take a while to find them and work out where they run. And I had expected to walk a lot during our trip…so mostly we explored places together on foot.
Before our trip, we had watched so many travel shows about Ireland that I was not surprised by the narrow roads (although no one mentioned that drivers go just as fast on narrow roads as on main highways), but it was amazing to see a landscape actually as beautiful as it seems on tv. In County Clare, we saw the well-known Cliffs of Moher, but also other lesser known cliffs along this same stretch of coastline…almost as magnificent as the Cliffs of Moher but with far fewer visitors. (I think I took the photo below at the Cliffs of Kilkee.) The bits and pieces of Ireland’s west coast that we saw are all part of something called the Wild Atlantic Way, 1600 miles of scenic coastline that you could probably easily spend a couple of weeks exploring.
Generally, we kept time spent at the major tourist sites to a minimum. In Dublin we walked to the Guinness Factory, hoping to visit the Gift Shop, but discovered that there was a long line just to get in the building even if you only wanted to buy souvenirs, and you had to pay for the privilege of entering the building at all. The biggest ‘touristy’ thing we did in Dublin was the literary pub crawl. Of course, the tour began at a pub with stories and music by our two hosts, who then led us around the city center to three more pubs as well as through the grounds of Trinity College and to St. Andrews Church to see the Molly Malone statue outside it. Our hosts were genial and the rest of the folks on the tour were there to have a good time and had interesting travel stories to tell. I would do this tour again because it was an easy and relaxing way to have a bit of fun and learn a little of the history of Dublin.
From Dublin we drove to Ennis which was our home base for exploring County Clare. The distances aren’t great, and navigating with the aid of google takes most of the guess work out, but it still takes time, especially on the small roads and lanes, so most of a day was taken up with the drive between Dublin and Ennis. I found the driving tiring so we worked in a couple of days that did not include too much time in the car. Before we went, we had already decided that our goal wasn’t to see as much as possible in a week; rather, we wanted to enjoy our time as much as possible, no matter how little or how much we saw and did.
I would be remiss not to mention castle sightings during our trip because if you watch travel shows on Ireland, you see castles. On the first day of our trip, right after we landed and picked up our rental car, we drove to Trim and saw our first Irish castle just as we entered the town. And on our last night in Ireland, we stayed in Kilkenny, across a river from the castle in the center of that town. Somehow we weren’t really interested in touring castles, but we walked around the perimeters of these two and spent time just looking at them…they are so not contemporary (both were originally built in the 1100s to 1200s), and while I have no idea how well they are maintained inside, from the outside both are still imposing…seemingly part of a world very different from mine. I guess that is what makes them so interesting? How were they built? Why have they lasted for hundreds of years? What was it like to live in a castle? Many local folks, however, clearly did not have these questions in mind that morning in Trim. There is a hiking path along the river across from the castle that is much in use by morning walkers. While we strolled, trying to take in the castle and surrounding town, locals zipped by us at a purposeful pace indicating that they knew where they were and where they were going. They were not suffering the sense of disorientation that we were experiencing. I guess if you live next to a castle, it eventually becomes as familiar as the corn fields and farmhouses surrounding our home are to me.
Questions, curiosity, a bit of disorientation, are all part of travel, and ultimately make it satisfying. We returned home with memories of new sights, sounds, and tastes, as well as with a renewed appreciation of home.
Our trip was fun partly because we slowed down, asked questions, and let people around us help us make decisions. I’m glad that we did not sign up for additional organized tours. A few short tours might be ok…but I don’t think I’d enjoy spending whole days following pre-determined schedules. When we stopped at the Cliffs of Moher, and later at The Visitors’ Center in The Burren, we could see that folks on bus tours were obligated to try to do the same things at the same time as everyone else on their tours, creating congestion: in food lines, restrooms, gift shops, at the easily accessible points of the cliffs, anywhere they stopped. Despite the higher quotient of uncertainty, there is something to be said for planning your own travels…if that is an option.
My favorite part of our trip was the time spent wandering, not knowing exactly what we would see along the way. In Dublin, in Ennis, and along the lesser known parts of the County Clare coast, we did see some sights that we had anticipated visiting, but some of the best moments occurred when we experienced the unanticipated: small shops all along the main street in Ennis, the pedestrian walkway along the River Liffey in Dublin, the cozy pub in the Schoolhouse Hotel (where we stayed in Dublin), and the miles and miles of rugged coastline along the narrow lanes of County Clare. Travel shows offer some of the best tv programming, and I have my favorites. But traveling is very different, personal, and if you’re lucky, with lasting effects that remain long after you have unpacked your suitcase and returned to your daily routine.
Late October, early November and still hoping to ride the GAP Trail between Cumberland and Ohiopyle before winter. Forecast includes possible snow flurries, but will it really snow? I had planned to do this trip in August but canceled when the weather suddenly included a heat wave and heavy rains. The riding would have been uncomfortable and muddy. I’ve been on the GAP after rain and it’s not much fun. This time the trip looked possible but then a cold snap appeared in the forecast and it included the possibility of snow showers around Ohiopyle. I thought of canceling again but really wanted to do this ride so pressed on. Morning lows predicted to dip below freezing but the afternoon highs were supposed to be tolerable, even better than that for this time of the year.
I drove to Cumberland and checked into my room at the Fairfield Inn. I had intended to ride the 72 miles from Cumberland to Ohiopyle the next day, stay overnight and return to the car the following day. However, I spent the night rethinking my plan, a little unnerved by the thought of being cold for two days, and decided to ride only 30 miles, return to Cumberland, drive to Ohipyle and do a similar length ride from there the following day. Turned out this was a good plan. I didn’t get to ride long as I had hoped, but I slowed down to stop and enjoy the most scenic points instead of rushing by them.
Riding out of Cumberland, it’s a steady climb for about 25 miles, so my entire outward journey was uphill. While the temperature was only in the mid-40s, the climb warmed me considerably. But as soon as I turned around and started heading back to Cumberland, I began to freeze. The downhill was enough to allow me to pick up speed without working very hard. Maybe I was also riding into a slight wind. It was really cold…in the middle of the day, so I was glad I wasn’t trying to do 72 miles within rando time limits that day.
The first 10 miles out of Ohiopyle toward Cumberland is especially scenic–for the most part right alongside the Youghiogheny River. Along the same stretch, there are also several sets of waterfalls making their way down gulleys toward the river from the opposite side of the trail. Definitely a place for slowing down, even stopping occasionally, to take in the experience.
The word Youghiogheny is apparently Lenape and means river that flows in a contrary direction–the “Yough” flows north, from West Virginia and Maryland into Pennsylvania toward Pittsburgh. And Ohiopyle is another Lenape word describing the “white frothy river” (Wikipedia), the state of the Youghiogheny in Ohiopyle where white water rafting is a popular summer activity.
I do love the sounds of the river, but another sound that is both unnerving and wonderful is the sound of trains along the tracks on the opposite side of the river. Since the trains are often invisible through the trees, they seem sort of ghostly. However, I know those trains are real. A couple of years ago, I took the train from Lancaster to Pittsburgh to ride the GAP. We traveled on these very tracks, along with all of the freight trains…so every time a freight train was going to pass by, we slowed or stopped to allow them to proceed unimpeded. It was a very slow trip but I experienced firsthand how PA rail transport works.
There is so much more to say about the sights along the GAP. I guess this is why I never tire of it even though I’ve ridden it several times. I thought I would enjoy doing the Cumberland-Ohiopyle permanent that covers half of the trail, but I’m glad I changed my mind. I may never do the official RUSA version because I enjoy riding the GAP at a relaxed pace. Perfect for paying more careful attention.
I need to be clearer about things I said in my last post. Leaving a small ‘footprint’ is not the same as having one’s history ignored or erased. While leaving a lighter footprint is certainly something most of us could work to do better, having one’s history erased, ignored, misrepresented and/or having one’s home usurped are different matters. Across the globe, we are seeing longterm effects of moments of historical colonization. And I also want to remember that histories are more complicated than we are comfortable keeping in mind.
Riding today in the hills around home, I tuned in to the sound of water rushing across rocks in Bieber Creek, the vision of rapidly changing foliage–such splashes of color everywhere–and the challenge of climbing hills. I am grateful for the time and space to think some more about my thinking and writing. I try to be thoughtful when I write, but when I think I am done, I see how I have missed something important, how my experience and perspective is partial and biased. Climbing hills is good for reflection.
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