Bikeventure
It was looking like last weekend was going to be the last warm weekend of the year. It was going to be in the 70’s and a bit past peak leaf-peeking season so I decided to plot a bike route where I could get out, enjoy the weather, and peek the leaves.
This trip ended up being a full-day adventure from sunrise to sunset. I got up at around sunrise and rode to Grand Central to take the Metro-North to Croton-Harmon. A bunch of other riders also had the same idea, though everyone else was heading up further north. There was a group in the same car that was doing a gravel ride a couple of stops further north.
I’ve often lamented the lack of reliable transportation options in the States. When I was traveling in Switzerland at the beginning of the year, pre-pandemic, we took the trains all over Switzerland. The level of service of the trains over there were fast, reliable, and came often. Look at this train map and see how much of the country it covers. One of my favorite mental images of my Switzerland trip is seeing people walk around Zürich in ski boots carrying their skis. To me, it showed the accessiblility of public transit — one could get up, put on their ski boots, get their skis, and jump on the train to take you to the slopes.
Anyways, the Metro-North trip was surprisingly easy! I got to Grand-Central, got onto the train, and rolled on my bike. I had the eTicket on my phone too. We need more of this!
Quick hits:
I planned the route around going up to Croton Gorge Park. It wasn’t far from the train stop but I had some difficult finding the Old Croton Trailway (ended up on some private property and got stopped, though they were helpful in pointing in the right direction). The rest of the route went around the reservoir and eventually hooked up with the North County Trailway and I could take the North and South Country Trailways all the way back to the city.
While I’m talking about route planning, I’ve made some amendments after the fact to the route. The initial portion of trailway was too steep to go up on my bike (I suspect even on a mountain bike it would be too steep). So I ended up turning around and going on the road for that portion. Also on the part of the route that goes around the reservoir, one of the roads was closed due to a mud-slide of some sort. As a result I ended up having to go around and up a particularly steep road and then onto a busy roadway. Back home, while looking over the route, I found there’s a easier path around to the North County Trailway.
There was a lot more gravel riding that I expected — a few of the roads around the reservoir were gravel. It was fun and gorgeous with the colors of the leaves, but also meant I had to go slower than I expected. A couple of bikers that I ran into told me, unprompted, that they had gravel bikes. Next time I do this route, I’ll come back with some wider tires.
I fell quite a few times. This was my first trip with clipless pedals (sort of a misnomer, but the shoes have clips on the bottom). The first few falls were because I was going on single track on my road bike, couldn’t keep pedaling, didn’t clip out and fell over. I got quite a bit of dirt on me too.
I ran out of food and water. This was just bad operational planning on my part. I sort of expected that I’d encounter a water fountain on the way back but the only ones I found were in Van Cortlandt Park and they were…off. I ended up with some pretty bad cramping in both my legs in my quads and hamstrings. I stopped at a gas station to buy a bottle of water but that wasn’t until I made it back to Manhattan. Also, I didn’t have my lock with me so I didn’t stop at a bathroom.
On my home stretch riding back on the West side back, there was a group of cyclists trying to flag someone down to help them fix a flat on their bicycle. When I stopped to help them, the rest of the group dispersed and just let me and the guy with the flat. So, I ended helping the guy replace his flat.
Not being able to travel during the pandemic meant that these past 8-ish months have been the longest that I’ve stayed continuously in the city — so it was nice to take this as an opportunity to explore and appreciate the nature and places nearby in the city’s backyard.