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cycling

Here are 1,000 quick words

Today began with so much ambition, and maybe half of the plans were accomplished. (More for tomorrow, then!) I blame the super late night, last night. But, hey, all of the professional tasks were achieved. Emails answered, questions asked, and so on. Dishes were also done. Some laundry was completed. It wasn’t all bad. Take that, super late night.

Oh yeah, I wrote something yesterday for the work Substack. No one has called to complain yet, so there’s that. Here it is.

This is terrible and senseless. And the extended Gaudreau family, who are experiencing a hurt that’s hard to express and impossible to heal, are by no means alone.

The National Safety Council has it that the number of preventable deaths from bike crashes rose 10% in 2022 and have increased 47% in the last 10 years (from 925 in 2013 to 1,360 in 2022). The League of American Bicyclists notes that 2022 was the deadliest year ever for cyclists. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s 2022 records show more cyclists were killed by motor vehicles than any year since they began charting the data in 1975.

Talk to a cyclist, any sort of cyclist that rides on roads, and you’ll quickly hear themes emerging. The infrastructure is insufficient. Drivers don’t see cyclists. Drivers are distracted, or inconsiderate, or worse. Vehicles have gotten much, much larger.

Every cyclist you talk to has a story about a dangerous moment, a scary encounter, or a truly life-changing experience they’ve had on the open road. A place where they also belong, by the way (go here to see the specific laws for your state). It goes beyond a random heckle or a dated Lance Armstrong reference.

Each cyclist has their own reason for being there. They love it. This is how they commute. This is their exercise. Their childlike freedom. Their community. Their only means of transportation. Whether they are carefully calculating their watts, carefully balancing their groceries, or they are teaching their kids how to ride, no matter why they find themselves on two wheels, their experiences with motorists are common, profoundly troubling and they penetrate deep into the psyche.

We’re seeing that in a survey we’ve conducted in the light of the killing of Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau. The Center for Sports Communication and Social Impact is asking cyclists in South Jersey a series of questions, has immediately received more than 500 responses, and the responses continue to roll in.

I was asked about this at 1:09 p.m. yesterday, 37 minutes later I had the first 770 words down.

And then I thought about it during most of the two hours I spent on my bike this evening.

My shadow went hunting for historical markers. Between the two of us, my shadow and me, we found quite a few, starting with the cheapie you’ll see below.

And this is the long straight road, the flat part of it, heading back home. I was halfway to a great ride. The bike felt smooth, in that way we spent all our time hoping to feel.

You get just a few experiences of la volupte, if you’re lucky. It’s so rare, maybe, that you can mistake a tailwind and a stellar ride for the sensation, la volupte.

La Volupte translates roughly to “voluptuousness”, and while the first thing the mind goes to is a sexual definition, my favorite is, “the property of being lush and abundant and a pleasure to the senses.” In a sport where pain is worn like a badge of honor, those times when cycling is lush and abundant and a pleasure to the senses are what makes us want to climb onto our bikes again tomorrow.

Today wasn’t that. But it was something, an experience I have noticed before. Some days everything just feels sure, steady, at your command. My problem is that when I’m always going slow when I have that experience. I was not flying today, but, also I was not going slow. I had three Strava PRs, including a two-plus mile drag at the end of the ride. While my legs were not carrying me especially quickly, they had the decency to keep turning over without needing to stop, which was nice.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, wherein I am tracking down the county’s historical markers via bike rides. By my count, this is the 46th installment, and the 78th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. And this one is, in fact, barely a marker.

In the 17th century, this was a place focused on trade and shipbuilding. One of the first ports, 1682, around here was near where this photograph was taken. There were British customs houses here. There’s still a local port authority nearby. It was an important center of trade until the Revolutionary War. The founder, John Fenwick, who we’ve learned about on two different Wednesdays (here and here) laid out this street for commerce and traffic.

Wharf Street was 90-feet wide, lined by houses and shops going all of the way to the docks and water. The people here here saw wheat, corn, beef, pelts and lumber come and go. Fishing was popular in the bay, oystering was a booming pursuit into the 20th century. Growth and overfishing killed the sturgeon and caviar business. Crabbing survived. The railroad, which came in 1876, was here by then, and so was the second industrial revolution, which was about glass around here, owing to the special sand that everyone was walking on, the sand that Wharf Street was built on, the street that was here for all of it.

Two genealogy site suggested Wharf Street was renamed for a prominent settler, Edward Bradway, a Londoner who landed in 1677 and built a fine house down by the water. Later, the town fathers updated the name again to Broadway. There are still Bradways in that town.

The next several weeks of markers are down that road. Some are really great; you’ll want to keep coming back. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

cycling / New Jersey / photo / Rowan / Tuesday — No Comments
3
Sep 24

A part of something on two wheels

Last Thursday night we got a series of frantic text messages from two different friends asking if we were OK. Of course we were OK, we’d just been in the backyard. It was a nice mild evening, and everything was fine. Only everything was not fine. Just two miles away two cyclists were killed.

Word spreads quickly in a small town. A fireman heard a scanner and called the bike shop and the local bike shop started calling and texting people and some of them thought, “Two people,” and thought of us. We spent the night with eyes a little bit wider, and a lot more sad.

On Friday we learned it was two guys who grew up around here were killed on their way home. They were hockey players. Both had skated at Boston College. Both became pros. One was a star in the NHL. The other had returned to their high school to coach the team. It seems the driver was drinking, had been drinking for sometime, and in his own little rush, swerved right through them, killing them just a few miles from where they were headed.

One of the guys has two young children. The other was expecting his first kid later this year. They were to be in their sister’s wedding this weekend. And now, there’s a growing memorial on the side of the road.

I went by there this afternoon to see it. It’s a stirring little thing, a series of small town gestures that barely registers in the terrible anguish that has been visited upon their families and friends.

This weekend, through the Center for Sports Communication & Social Impact we started a survey for cyclists in the area, and we’ve been impressed by the number of responses we’ve received, but not at all surprised by what their telling us. We’re going to going the survey and have several ideas about what we can do with the data we’re collecting.

In the meantime, my lovely bride did two interviews with the local media today. One with ABC 6.

She did another interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, which hasn’t been published yet.

They’re asking us, these cyclists who’ve all encountered scary situations, how they can help. The local bike shops want to get involved too.

We went to one of them this afternoon, the ones that were looking for us on Thursday night. They are fed up with losing with losing their friends, worrying about their customers, and making these calls. We listened to them talk about all of it. The stories they can tell. They’re planning a big community meeting, they have the ear of some local lawmakers. Maybe something good will good from this awful mess.

For Johnny and Matty. For our neighbors who ride, from the people we wave at on the road and see on Strava. For all of us.

cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
2
Sep 24

Happy Labor Day

Happy September, happy Labor Day, happy Monday. There’s a lot going on, clearly. And so this will be brief. And though brief it be, it has all of the important things. Including the site’s most important weekly feature, our check in with the kitties.

Phoebe continues to enjoy spending sunny summer afternoons in this window. She can keep an eye on the comings and goings of the neighborhood and enjoy the warmest part of the sun.

A little kid lives across the street and plays in the yard quite a bit. I wonder if Phoebe sneaks a few peaks in between naps.

I mean, if you had to be a cat, this is the way to do it, right?

Poseidon, as I write this, is complaining that I’m not holding him. It’s one of his three speeds. So you’ll have to give me a few minutes to placate him.

So the cats are doing just fine.

The site’s least important monthly feature is checking in on my cycling progress. The mileage took a dip in August, as you can see from the flat bits on the right side of the blue line. I’m still well ahead of last year’s pace, when you compare the blue line to the red line. I’ll get my real mileage over the green projection line here again soon.

So it continues to be a good year, a personal best year. September should become a new personal best compared to all the other Septembers. I’m predicting a good autumn, in terms of bike rides and the miles I can keep adding to the spreadsheet.

And, this weekend, we had an 30-mile ride. Except it wasn’t really easy, because I had to keep up with my lovely bride, who is fast.

Today a member of the family is stopping by to visit. Tomorrow, the fall semester begins. So I’m going to go get some work done.

cycling / Indigo Girls / markers / music / photo / video / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
28
Aug 24

What does it look like if you keep going further?

It’s a banner day of banners around here. I laid out the photos and the videos and put in the appropriate segment pieces up and everything here goes under one of our old familiar pieces of art.

I got in a 21-mile ride this evening. It was one of those, What if I went straight at that one intersection, instead of left or right? Where would I wind up? rides. The best kind of ride.

Going that particular direction, you’re bound my geography anyway. The river is out there somewhere. But after I passed that intersection, pedaled through some tree covered roads and dodged a few potholes, I got to a new stretch of road.

What is down there?

It’s a wonderful feeling. You’re about to see something new. And maybe it’ll be regular fields and houses. But they’ll be new houses. And you’ll be able to wonder who is on their way to that house? Who is the light on for?

Or maybe it’ll be something surprising, big or small. There was a small surprise near the very end of that road. A lovely suburban farmhouse style home on a great big lot. Next to it was an oversized produce store. It looked like a family operation, perhaps the same people ran it as lived next door. At least that’s the way the landscaping felt. It was large and looked great. Better than most of the houses, and there were a few nice spreads on that road.

Here are two more brief clips from last week’s concert. “Yoke” was the last track on 2011’s “Beauty Queen Sister,” and it became one of my favorites in their whole catalog almost right away. It feels like an Amy Ray song. And Lyris Hung’s violin, which sounds like a circus organ, an ethereal cacophony, a mental high wire act. All of it just sticks in the head, not an earworm, but something even more potent. And this part, right here …

Again, we were about a quarter of a mile away, so please excuse the visual quality.

This one was the second single from their 1997 record, the second track on that record, and I’m pretty sure everyone fell in love with it in about two seconds of the first time they played it. It takes less time for a crowd to voice their approval when they play it live, and so they play it live all the time.

It’s a historically important song. When my lovely bride and I were just dating, we were on a trip and playing this song. It’d been a good weekend after a long week and the sun was shining and the road was long and actually using an actual map — as one did back then — and singing along.

I don’t sing in front of people. We’d only been dating for a few months and there was that barrier dissolved. Music makes you vulnerable. And now here we are, all these years later.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, wherein I am discovering the county’s historical markers via bike rides. This is, I believe, the 45th installment, and the 77th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. This one is a new marker for an old site. It’s not even in the marker database yet. I visited it only because I saw it out of the corner of my eye while riding to another site a few weeks ago.

The history of this cemetery is not well documented. An article appeared in the January 6, 1941 Standard and Jerseyman that indicated that Mrs. Lydia Fox Kelty had paper records in her possession which showed that her father, Robert Fox, was a direct descendant of James McGill, who donated one acre of his farm to Alloway Township, in which residents of the township were to be buried free of charge. Research of family records reveal that Robert Fox was the son of Charles H. Fox (1845-1929) and Lydia Megill (1846-1897). Lydia Megill was the daughter of John Megill (1805-1883) and Elizabeth Margaret Shaw (1810-1881). John Megill was the son of James Megill (1780-1842) and Margaret Mower (1788-1824).

Per the newspaper article, James McGill was the great-grandson of Rev. James MacGill who came to America from Scotland in 1725. Several of Rev. MacGill’s grandsons settled in Salem, and one, Patrick MacGill, a blacksmith, settled in Allowaystown. James McGill, who gave the ground, was Patrick’s son. James McGill, his family and a number of soldiers of the American Revolution are buried in this old cemetery. Research of the June 1793 tax records confirm that Patrick McGill lived in Alloway.

According to the article, this gift was made by James McGill in the year 1810-11, when he learned that the owners of the cemeteries in this vicinity refused to allow soldiers of the American Revolution to be buried without buying a lot. This so incensed Mr. McGill, whose father and uncle had served in the Revolution, that he gave the aforementioned ground to the citizens of Alloway Township. Unfortunately, the deed documenting this gift could not be found in the Salem County archives. Burial records are incomplete and many of the early gravestones are no longer legible, and documentation has not been found to identify what Revolutionary War soldiers are buried here.

Some of the earliest known burials include: Elizabeth Bee 1768-1832, James Bell 1756-1830, Rebecca Sweeten Bell 1767-1806, Jesse Earley 1786-1867, Peter H. Emel 1778-1823, Esther Emmel 1786-1847, Martha McCormack 1777-1806, John Mowers 1760-1822, Lydia Johnson Mowers 1765-1807, Anna Simms 1798-1855.

There are still McGills in that community, and dozens and dozens more in the broader area. The cemetery has 158 memorials, but among the unknown things are if any stones have disappeared in the last 200 years. And while the marker and the people that put it together have come up short on Revolutionary War veterans that are buried here, we know at least 10 Civil War veterans and two WWII veterans are at rest on McGill’s old land. One of those Civil War veterans served for all of two-and-a-half months. He died, in camp, of a fever.

The rest are normal people. And that’s rather the point, isn’t it? In the end, we’re all the same. Husbands, wives, their families. Old and much-too-young. There are carpenters and farmers and a firefighter who died on the job. There are 158 markers and at least that many stories that have been passed down and then gotten blurry and then forgotten. The sign says it is still an active cemetery. I believe the most recent burial was in 2003, of a widow who outlived her husband by 43 years. She was 25 when she got married, and 39 when she lost her husband. She lived half her life as a widow, and made it to see 83 or 84. I wonder what it was like for her to go by that place, or go to that place, to see her husband. It’s been 21 years since she joined him, and you wonder about those memories. As far as I can tell, there’s no one in that community with their family name.

Rebecca Sweeten Bell, one of those earliest burials, in contrast, has a huge list of descendants in the region. The man who is recorded as the oldest member of the cemetery was John Mowers. He died at 62, but in just six generations we can get to a descendant of his who is buried elsewhere, having died just last year. You wonder how far the memories reached back, even as you know why they sometimes don’t. For in the end, we’re all the same, but it’s still a bit uneven.

Next week’s marker feature is still a mystery to me. You’ll just have to come back to see what I’ve found. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

books / cycling / Indigo Girls / music / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
27
Aug 24

Really got a lot in here

Do we have a lot for you in this post. Let’s jump right in! First, I just came in from watering the pothos plants, and I checked on the spider. She’s still out there doing her thing.

I’ve decided this is a she for reasons that don’t have any basis in anything, really. But he, or she, is one industrious spider. Every day that web disappears. Every night it returns. Almost in the same spot. The angle of it has shifted in the last few nights. Maybe this is better for catching things coming off the prize-winning plants back there.

Looked up how long spiders can live, and this is not a long-term location for my new friend. I’m going to wind up re-positioning this arachnid, if for no other reason than I’ll want this little section of sidewalk back. And also because this is too close to the house, and I don’t want it coming inside when the weather turns.

I bet she’ll have great success in the woods out back.

I got in a late evening bike ride. I started a little too late, which is funny because I’d just been mentally patting myself on the back for how well I time these rides. Usually, I’m back just as it gets dark.

It was still daylight when I started. Here’s the proof, this is about halfway through.

You know how those late summer evenings get, though. The sunset and the gloaming happen more quickly than you’ve lately been expecting. This photo was just four miles later.

And this was an accidental shot, but look at that blurry wrist!

The problem — if you want to think of it in those terms, and I don’t — is that soon after that last photo I made an impulsive decision to add on a few miles. Turned left to add a circuit, instead of heading straight in. That gave me almost six extra miles, which was nice. And about three miles into it, I had to pull the headlight out of my pocket and light the road in front of me.

I have a lot of light on the back of the bike for oncoming cars. But the other thing that’s nice is that I was on sleepy country roads. Over the course of the last six miles of today’s ride I was passed by five cars, and only two of them came by when it was truly dark.

Anyway, another delightful, slow, 22-mile ride is in the books.

You might recall we went to a rock ‘n’ roll show last Thursday. On Friday I wrote in this space about Melissa Etheridge. Today, and for the next few days, we’ll have a few short Indigo Girls clips.

This year they’re celebrating the 30th anniversary of Swamp Ophelia. And this is a deep cut, a tremendous song off a lush album. A song I don’t think I’ve heard live in decades, and apropos of the moment.

I’ve been in awe of that line about the summer since the 1990s. It’s not fair what Emily Saliers can do with a few lines of verse.

And here’s a 1997 classic to go alongside of that one.

That song — which went to number 15 on the US Adult chart, enjoyed a bit of air play on the radio and was in the last batch of videos I recall on MTV — was inspired by this documentary, which has become something of a classic on its own, while still remaining contemporary even as the sands shift around us.

That documentary itself is three decades old now. It’d be interesting to go back and see the modern version, just so we can marvel at what is and isn’t different.

I finished Walter Lord’s The Dawn’s Early Light. It is wonderful pop history, my first Lord book and I’m sure I’ll go find more of his writing later.

Militarily, his tactics are sparse, and written at a regimental level, but he’s not writing too much about the military action. It might be easy to get bogged down in that, or easy to get it wrong or be incomplete, all these years later, despite his excellent research. It’s a book about the time, rather than the conflict. He basically has it that the places the U.S. did poorly were down to bad organization and ineffective leadership. The places where we did better, Baltimore and New Orleans, were down to a key British army officer being killed and the Americans getting their act together.

And because it includes New Orleans, Andrew Jackson does become a minor character late in the book — a book which doesn’t sit on anyone for too long, come to think of it. Jackson has a few good lines in the text. This is, perhaps, the best one.

I’ve jumped ahead some 120 years in my next book. I’ve started reading about mid-20th century journalist and author, Richard Tregaskis. Updates on that text are something to which you can look forward. Also, more music tomorrow. And a swim! (Maybe … I’m trying to work up the nerve.)