Notes on Bicycle Commuting

I've been commuting by bicycle since 1993, when I was a college rower getting from the dorms to the boathouse. That was like 3 miles at 5:30 am. Naturally, I barely remember it, except for one dark morning when turning right onto Grant Ave downtown in a rainstorm. The ornate stone pavers are ultra-slick and I went down and butt-slid all the way across to the far sidewalk. Fortunately no cars were coming at me. Grant Street still gives me the willies when it's wet.

Without a doubt I do my best thinking when I'm riding. Unfortunately a vast majority of those thoughts vanish by the end of the ride. The ones that survive often come back to me incomplete. If only there was some kind of thought-recording device.

You see a lot when you ride on the side roads.

• I bought a Specialized Allez road bike in August of 1994 with the paycheck from my summer job as a camp counselor. I rode that bike out and back on Skyline Drive in VA when it was less than a month old. Over the past 20 years I've replaced parts on that bike, including the frame, and now the only remaining original part is the handlebar. It's bent but I resist replacing it. Those are the handlebars I have held onto day after day for two decades.
• Commuting via trails is a nice and pleasant way to start the day but it doesn't really wake me up. However, a 7-mile road race against city buses, big SUVs, erratic drivers, and slowly morphing clouds of college students and business people is a seriously intense way to start the day. I prefer the latter, hands down. 
• I've been hit by cars exactly three times. The first was the worst because it totaled that road bike I bought in 1994. The thing was only a few months old. The other two times I didn't even get knocked off my bike.
• I've figured out most of the traffic signals I ride through each day. So I know what's going on as I approach (this is particularly useful if you intend to run the red light). Some of them have 4-way walk signals, some have walk signals that only correspond to the green light. However, pedestrians are my eyes and ears. If I see pedestrians crossing that means that there are no cars coming that way. It's like a green light. The scariest traffic signal I know of from a bicycling perspective is the one at Dallas and Forbes, when I'm riding down Forbes away from Sq. Hill.
• In 1996 I took a job as a bike messenger downtown. I was new, and I was working for a brand new messenger service. I had a cyclometer on my bike, and was able to see that I was averaging 75 miles daily. Asking around, I discovered that I was naively being taken advantage of. Everybody else was riding less than 30 miles a day. I lasted two months, and was cheated out of $50 on my last paycheck that I haven't forgotten.
• I get a lot of hot air from drivers for running red lights and skipping ahead of sitting cars in traffic (which I admit are not legal and ill-advised for most). I don't pretend to be entitled to it, and it annoys me when I'm driving too, but I have a response to those who don't like it. Here goes: if there was essentially zero likelihood that you'd get in trouble for disobeying traffic laws, you'd do it in your car. But, you can't because a car is too big and because the likelihood is substantially greater than zero. So, please try to understand that I, just like every other human, strive to take the path of least resistance (like the path between lanes of cars sitting in traffic), or get on a bike yourself. At least I'm not taking up a coveted parking spot.
• I was yielded the right of way appropriately by a bus exactly one time in 20 years. Thanks to the driver of PatTransit #67 who was coming up 5th Ave through the Hill District at about 8:30 am on a Tuesday in March of 2014.
• I've had several bikes stolen in my life, but only one really hurt. It was very special to me because it was the bike I rode from DC to LA in 1995 and then from Oregon to Delaware in 1999. It was locked to a fence under the Star City bridge outside of Morgantown, and I had left it there for an entire weekend. The frame was given to me by a friend after mine was destroyed after being hit by a car (see above).
• In the week after September 11, 2001 I was commuting from Alexandria, VA to northwest DC where I was in grad school. I hung an American flag from my bike and for a short time it felt good to be patriotic as I rode past the Pentagon and the National Mall.  It's the only time I made any kind of statement while riding. I have a feeling that I was the only one who noticed.
• Trucks idle entirely too much. It chokes us up, and uses up resources that are limited. http://www.edf.org/transportation/reports/idling
• There's an lady in Squirrel Hill who is out nearly every single morning, in all kinds of weather, cleaning up litter off the sidewalks. She wears rubber gloves and carries a fistful of plastic grocery bags for the trash. It strikes me as a superb way to (1) productively spend your retirement, (2) get outside, (3) get some exercise, and (4) use up an old grocery bag. 
• We're lucky to have all these new bike lanes here in Pittsburgh, but there are some unexpected problems. First of all, many of them appear to not be serviceable by a snow plow. We'll have to see what happens, I suppose. Similarly, the bike path that I use regularly (Pocusset) was formerly a road. However, now it's exclusively a bike path and the street sweeper never cleans it. Because of that, the sharper turns are now dangerously caked with mud, leaves, and debris.

Git r dun.

Petawawa (wawawawawa)

Night falls before our first day on the water

Lucky me. After a decade of paddling whitewater in many corners of my backyard mountains, I finally am in in a position to take it on the road . . . well, at least once per annum.

A splendid site

It was the spring of 2014. The one-day adventures that end with beers at the take out followed by a comfy bed are wonderful, but I'm not that old yet and can handle more. And while boating a steep, narrow line with little margin for error is a rush, I have more on the line and am not young enough to be doing that all the time. I was chasing something that would really stand out. An overnighter with good whitewater, but even more than that: To be dropped off in the middle of nowhere with a few days' worth of food and gear; to see nobody other than my own crew; to have no way out other than paddling the river for days; to see little sign of the hands of man; to camp wherever it felt right, just pull over to the the riverbank and set up; and even to paddle quietly across water so calm that I could watch rings originate from the drips of water off my paddle blades. For miles.

One of the many rapids

It is in Canada, on the Petawawa River in Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park.

Sunset on Cedar Lake

I teamed up with two competent outdoorsmen and boaters for the trip. This was a very deliberately formed team. For one thing, Joe can build a fire in the middle of heavy sleet with nothing but his teeth. Oh, and he offered to drive. Brian's role on the team was equally important. He is an amateur astrologer. We didn't tell him that celestial navigation is actually astronomy and that you don't need it when you just point your boat downstream. He happens to be able to get rid of tendonitis, too. My role? I'm not sure, but the guys sure were appreciative when I agreed to carry a case of beer in my boat.

The Petawawa flows like a typical Canadian river. Between vacant miles-long lakes are long, powerful and thundering rapids. Most of those rapids are friendly enough, some of them are worth a look, and then there are the ones that are too dangerous to paddle, especially when all the gear you need to survive is weighing down your boat. But most of them are just plain beautiful and fun. A perfect river for my first-time expedition style trip.

A sneak

Our hired shuttle driver brought us deep into Algonquin Park to the edge of spectacular Cedar Lake, one of the few lakes in the park accessible by vehicle. The next morning we paddled away from the few trucks, trailers, and bass boats we saw until they were nothing but specks behind us. We were totally alone as the mirrored lake water transformed into a rushing torrent over the Cedar Lake Dam.

Looking for a line

Flat

As it turns out, the dam is runnable and not even much of a challenge. And so are many of the other "unrunnable" rapids on the Pet. That very first rapid set the stage for most of the rapids we encountered. We thought that our detailed guidebook would allow us to run most rapids without scouting unless a portage was necessary. Unfortunately, the book was usually wrong, either downplaying a rapid with monster holes worthy of a scout or overblowing a really great drop as being "deadly." Truthfully, we would have been better off without it. Any detailed map of the park would have have been sufficient.

A pool at a spectacular spot called The Natch

Our expectations of this kind of trip were also way off.  On our first day, we paddled about 25 miles which included two lakes, much less than I thought we'd get in. Getting out to scout took time, and while it was necessary, we didn't walk any of the rapids, even the mile-long set of rapids called McDonald that contained several "unrunnable" falls (Note: McDonald is outstanding and would be worth carrying upstream 8 km from the Lake Travers access just to get it, and all of its successors, into a super day trip).

Lake McManus: The third and final night

Camping the second night at the foot of "Portage Falls," the three of us examined the rapid for hours. There had to be a line. We had left our boats above the falls and carried our camping gear below so that in the morning we could attempt the drop with no gear in our craft. It worked well; we all dropped over three successive cascades with only one minor incident (but no yard sale!) and came back to our site to break it down and move on. It went on to be our eventual fall back plan: get the gear out and I might consider running a rapid that I wouldn't touch otherwise.

Run out of a long rapid

By 4:30 pm on the second day we had made our way a grand total of 3.5 miles for the day. Rather than paddling, we spent the day bushwacking, scouting, attaining back to a better vantage point, bushwacking again, dragging boats across islands, wading across tiny channels that are typically dry, repeat, bushwack to the portage trail, repeat, go back for a dropped paddle, repeat. It was a memorable day. Brian missed a ferry and we didn't see him for an incredibly long 20 minutes. Brian and Joe foolishly followed my instincts (or followed my foolish instincts) and went down the wrong channel. Twice.

Kayakers call those "holes."

The truth is that we didn't even SEE the biggest whitewater on the Pet up close, Poplar Rapids. We definitely heard it on that second day, and we all saw the pool below it from above as we got too close for comfort, but you can't see a waterfall from above. By the time we were in the woods dragging our gear-laden kayaks toward the bottom, the idea of getting back to the river so we could look at a rapid that we could hear and clearly not run was too much for any of us. When we got back to the water we were at the point where the Pet's current ends at Lake Travers. We paddled more mileage in the next hour across that lake than we had in the previous eight. But we didn't come for a picnic, right?

My friends are so ugly, they have to wear bags over their heads

By the third day of paddling we had settled into our routine. Mental inventories of gear location (surprisingly elaborate given that anything is either in the bow or in the stern) as well as understanding of the river itself had materialized. We got out to scout only once we heard the roar of whitewater, rather than where the guidebook suggested. We didn't spend time pondering. We ran it or we walked, efficiently, and we got through 30 miles of river by mid-afternoon. One of the rapids we portaged, the Crooked Chute, gave us a glimpse of what the Pet could dish out, and what Poplar Rapids may have looked like. We all saw the line. We all considered going for it for about 0.15 seconds. Then we all dragged our boats.

While I have some normal friends, others are not so much

We passed through an amazing gorge at a place called the Natch. Looking back on the trip now, it was the moment I fell in love with paddling multi-day trips. Thoreau would have been proud. There was perfect harmony in the scenery, the boat's motion across the water, and my mentality. I was buzzing from three days in the wilderness, continuous all-day effort, sleeping like a hibernating bear at night, and eating everything I could consume. I had become desensitized to how badly I smelled. Unfortunately it didn't last long and for the first time on trip I started to really miss my family.

When we camped that night on Lake McManus, a whippoorwill irritated us all night long. I've never had a better excuse for a lousy night sleep.

The final morning on McManus

Upon reaching the car the next morning, we had several days left before we had to head home. Our next destination, the Adirondacks on New York, would wait a day as we drove further down the Pet to attempt the "town section" through the city of Petawawa. Our shuttle driver from above brought us to the launch and described the line through the first rapid. "Everybody I've seen runs it on the right," he confidently told us as we peered downstream. There was nothing for us to see but whitecaps and disappearing water, but we took his word for it and foolishly shoved into the current. It was a mistake. As the river swept me down, I stayed right as I was told. Before long I was going uphill. This particularly unique scenario -- uphill, downstream motion -- is not anything to ponder for long. It means one thing: there is some really huge feature just over the hump of water. At the apex, I looked down through about 15 feet of vertical space into a very wide and supremely powerful hole. I screamed out loud.

After working to exhaustion for a few seconds, I found my way out of a vicious side-surf. Feeling victorious, I hollered out some kind of war cry and then felt that awful feeling again. I was rising. At the top of the next hump I looked down into an even worse looking V-shaped hole and just about puked at the sight of it.

Several minutes later, as I hugged the rocks along the mighty Petawawa adjacent to a huge, swirling eddy, both my kayak and my paddle obediently swirled over to me. It was like my dog had come over for another walk around the block after mauling me. I was bloody and coughing, and just as I would have done with the dog, I said "no more today, buddy." We all walked the next big rapid and headed back across the border.

If you are a boater and are looking for an introduction to multi-day kayak excursions, definitely consider the Petawawa. May is a bit early in the season, though in most of the rapids we did not feel that we were being pushed around. However, whenever the river is channelized and steep, you're looking at big water.

And don't trust the guidebook.

All That

Trail junction, Bear Run Nature Preserve, PA

A long time ago, when Molly and I were dating, she wrote a story about me . . . er, about kayaking . . . er, about relationships. Okay, so maybe it was about how I was a lousy boyfriend every time it rained. The story appeared in the My Turn column in NEWSWEEK, a periodical you may have heard of. Unfortunately, NEWSWEEK doesn't keep its all of its content archived online. Never fear; it can be found here.

So, maybe it's my turn now.


Some random yet noteworthy details: We once went on a trip that included a rustic cabin and a 7-mile moonlight hike. Toward the end she was really looking forward to the hike being over so she invited me to run with her. It was 2 am and we ran 2 miles in boots through the woods. That was the night we met, and it kind of sealed the deal.

Indie, one week in

She loves sleeping in a tent, far more than I do. And campfires.
A branch used as a support in our hoopah later became a walking stick which now hangs in our home. When I gave it to her after finishing it as a walking stick, she asked that if there is ever a fire in our home, that I save that first. (We've had kids since then so I'm guessing she'd make the stick my third retrieval.) Instead of those professional photos that people take of their babies, Molly stuck our first kid into the boots I have used on many of our adventures.She passed that around to our family.

We're kind of perfect for each other.

Molly and I have established a semi-annual tradition where we rough it for a couple days with no kids or phones. It's a breather, a chance to reconnect and take stock. The trips are often a bit on the masochistic side (long days packing, jogging the river shuttle, etc.), probably so we don't slip into boredom and start to miss our kids. And the kids don't even miss us because their uncles, aunts, and grandparents engage in attempts to undo all of our parenting by busting out all their ammunition: unlimited sweets, junk food, dollar store toys, and relaxed rules.

Along Big Sandy

Otter Creek Wilderness, WV

We're racking up quite a list, and this is just the beginning. We've packed into and out of the Otter Creek and Dolly Sods Wilderness Areas, Bear Run Nature Preserve, spots in the PA state forests and parks that shoulder the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail, and WV's North Fork Mt. Trail. We "found" Indie Falls on an unnamed tributary of French Creek as well as the Otis Rocks outcropping at the top of the French Creek canyon. We've bushwhacked through areas where no trail exists to find National Falls on the Upper Yough and the entire stretch of the Lower Big Sandy. We've discovered that we prefer a "base camp" loop itinerary to increase mileage on pack trips. She's not so much into boating (I know, a shocker given the article above) but we've managed to find our way onto the Casselman, Yough, Indian, and French and she might even admit that she has enjoyed several snowstorms on the water. In general we avoid campgrounds, especially if they include mini-golf.

Like I said, perfect.

Now, what could be better than marrying your adventure partner? That's easy: kids that can't wait to come along for the next trip!

Limekiln Falls

Up high on the S. Branch Moose

Limekiln Falls is the most scenic spot on the beautiful South Branch of the Moose River in New York's Adirondack Mountains. The lucky people who have the legal right to see it fall into two categories: members of the Adirondack League Club (ALC) and boaters who paddle a 25-mile stretch of the river. To become a member of the ALC, one must be a property owner on the club's 50,000+ acre property. Current sales of those properties have all been well over $2.5M and the club by-laws prohibit mortgages. In other words, Limekiln provides yet another illumination of the economic dichotomy we live in -- 1% of us could potentially join the club and see it, while the other 99% of us must posses the equipment and skill to paddle the river.

The Rules

I was lucky to see it in May 2014. However, just getting there was not only an arduous undertaking on my part, and the part of my boating friends, it was also the result of a years-long struggle that involved various conservation and recreational organizations, the ALC, and ultimately the New York Supreme Court.

That struggle is outlined very well in this NY Times Article, but I will paraphrase here.

The ALC for years used their own security detail to arrest any boater who was caught paddling the South Branch, who would end up at the Old Forge police station facing trespassing charges. Skeptical of the legality of this, the Sierra Club joined with a local conservation movement and publicized a trip down the river in 1991. Armed with photos of that important boat ride, the ALC sued the Sierra Club for millions, and a court battle began. 

Several years later after belaboring over the definition of "navigable", access was upheld by the NY State Supreme Court, and two decades after that, I found myself signing my name to a roster. My signature on that roster, a clipboard chained to a signpost where the pavement ends just outside the town of Inlet, indicated that I would follow the policy set forth by the court agreement. Essentially, I agreed to not get out of my boat unless absolutely necessary for my own safety for 15 miles as the river passes through the ALC property.To do that, though, we had to paddle a total of 25.

Our particular struggle for access stemmed from a handful of situational issues: (1) we had only one car, (2) it was Memorial Day weekend and all the local outfitters were too busy with their regular business to be hired as our shuttle, (3) the put-in for the river is at the end of a rough road which is in turn many miles from the main road and the outiftters' storefronts, and (4) the shuttle itself is far too long for even the most ambitious boaters to do on foot. Because of this confluence of problems, after spending about four hours in Old Forge trying to convince anybody we found to "give us a ride down the road," we came up empty. So, we had to take our best offer. We set up a campsite at the take-out, drove to the put-in, and launched. An employee of Mountain Man Outfitters agreed to pick us up the following morning and drive us as close to our car as possible before getting to work at 8 am. After running the river, we were picked up at 6 am the following day and by 7:15 we were still 5 miles from the car. So, we got out and ran the remainder of the shuttle on foot so our driver wasn't late for work.

At the put-in

We began our trip down the South Branch of the Moose where it is a small stream above the ALC property, at a place deep in the Moose River Plains Wild Forest that locals called the "Million Dollar Bridge." For a few miles it meanders through thick marshy terrain with little gradient and mild current. After passing though a rapid at a place marked on topographic maps as "rock dam," we became fully aware of our newly constrained legal rights. You're in ALC land now, said the countless signs posted on the trunks of the thousands of riverside trees. 

Printing 50,000 of these must have been a substantial tab at Kinko's

Looking upstream at Limekiln Falls

This is a real adventurer's river. The mileage alone make it a heavy commitment for your run-of-the-mill canoeists not able to make it an overnighter (though I suppose one could try sleeping in their boat). It is also in prime whitewater country so it is passed up by thrill seeking kayakers. Those guys could get in three runs on more challenging rivers in the same time. Thus, for the first 20 of the 25 miles our party saw not a single person, neither boater nor ALC member. We paddled the river through steep gorge sections, around pristine mid-stream islands and through rough water and flat mirrored pools. There were rapids, but none warranting anything beyond a boat scout.

Which brings us this narrative's namesake: Limekiln. After many miles of our incredible Adirondack wild river, the river took a strange 90-degree left turn and all of its flow passed through a space of about 15 feet between two large boulders. There was no gradient, though, so the current simply picked up and rushed through the space without much turbulence. Then, after a short, flat pool of no more than 50 feet, Limekiln Falls dropped out of sight.

Brian drops into Limekiln

It would be the only time we got out of our boats to scout. The scene was dramatic: a 50-foot long chute down a 20-degree slope. A hole here or there, but nothing to be concerned about. Like all rapids it was very loud. Eddies at the bottom gave us the chance to stop, turn around, and take it in before paddling through the run-out to a point too far downstream to be really in it. On the left bank, a branchless trunk reached skyward like the creepy finger of Death and just before the tip sat an enormous Osprey's nest. The resident bird swooped and chattered at us, reminding us that we were just visitors to its home.

Below Limekiln, an Osprey nest

Lucky ALC members could enjoy the scene from a beautifully built timber frame shelter and freshly-mowed picnic spot just above the falls, but just like every other ALC structure we saw all day long, it was empty. Remembering that this was Memorial Day weekend, I told myself that all the ALC members were working overtime at their Manhattan jobs, unable to enjoy their seven-figure salaries. Of course I was probably wrong, that they were sipping top-shelf liquor on the deck of some monstrous lodge just out of view, but this five-figure guy needs to feel like he's got it better than those guys once in awhile.

Just out of the ALC property, an enormous pan

Before long we had left the protected land of the Adirondack League Club. When you get to know rivers, you begin to be able to feel the gradient relax beneath you. The character of the river changes along with the steepness of the canyon walls, the eroded banks look like they're a  bit less mauled by spring runoff, and the sky opens broadly. Kayakers can tell when the rapids are done. We had just begun to relax in our boats and unsnapped our helmets when we heard, "Hey! You guys need a beer?"

An extended family of men, sans spouses and daughters, were camping on the riverbank. We pulled over and met the antithesis of the prototypical ALC member we'd been thinking about all day. In fact we met about 20 of them. Their family tradition goes back over 60 years, and these guys are serious. They have crafted their own rickshaws that they use to carry in ridiculous amounts of bacon and lousy beer for their 3-day trip. They have several shelters, an eternal campfire, plenty of whiskey, a devoted hole in the ground for pissing, another for other unspeakables, and the most enormous cast iron pan allowable by the physical properties of cast iron. The irony of the dramatic disparity between the pretty little empty shelter at Limkiln and this rif-raf Appalachain camp was beautiful.

Boaters: go to New York and run the South Branch of the Moose. Bring your long boats. Not for any singular reason but for many. This is a victory lap for river access. The 99% won this battle, and we don't win many battles. If you do it on Memorial Day weekend, you'll be treated to the most hospitable group of guys I've met (we're not talking rednecks -- though it takes a while to realize it), who guaranteed that they'll be there, and they'll invite you to stay all weekend ("don't sweat it, guys, we have lots of extra sleeping bags!"). Lastly, unless you're a multimillionaire, you're the only one with the skills to allow you get to a good look at the beautiful Limekiln Falls.