AGAIN with the good-weather-for-ducks! We will probably get more than three inches before this one is over, and that's not even taking into account the winds howling. Might as well call it what it feels like: a low grade winter hurricane, and avoid it if at all possible...
And me, in my mind's eye, I'm just heading out from Iggy's in Oakland Beach, down the coast toward Quonset Point, in my "unhurried" way. Why would anyone be hurrying anyway? In my mind's eye it's actually sometime in June; there are 75 balmy degrees out there; the sky is clear and there isn't anything else to do but bike down the coast of Narragansett Bay.
Hmm... There is one thing missing though, so let's take care of that right off: http://seagrant.gso.uri.edu/daytrip/north_kingstown
What you have if you've got one of these in your bike bag is the part of A Daytripper's Guide to Rhode Island that would be extremely useful on a 15 mile trip from Iggy's Doughboy's and Chowder House to Quonset Point in North Kingstown. And this relevant why? Because, in addition to the cue sheets that will eventually attempt to provide the most scenic routes from here to there along Narragansett Bay, it would be a nice idea to have something showing-and-telling everything about public access to the coast. The Daytripper's Guide is a handy way to locate the dozen and a half sites between Iggy's and Compass Rose Beach, off the south east coast of Quonset Point, where, if you were inclined, you could get off your bike and work some Rhode Island sand between your toes. Hey, I'm just saying, check them out...
The most impressive sites literally jump off the page, like the year-round facilities of Goddard State Park (#2) and Sandy Point Beach at the end of Potowomut Neck (#1). Within the Quonset Point Industrial Park there are public amenities (bathrooms/picnic benches) at the Allen Harbor Complex (#34) to the north and the 800-linear-foot sandy-and-swimmable Compass Rose Beach (#33) to the south.
I wish I could say when I will get around to cranking out those cue sheets. But if this winter keeps on keeping on like it has so far, it won't be that long. It can't be that long! There are just too many places out there along the Narragansett Bay shoreline to explore by bike, and anything that can be done to advance that ball needs to get done now, while staying inside still makes some sense.
Finally, while on the subject of public access, Rhode Island Sea Grant, Narragansett, R.I. has put out a truly extraordinary 75 page "cousin" to the Daytripper's Guide noted herein. It is entitled Public Access to the Rhode Island Coast and can be downloaded at:
www.crc.uri.edu/download/GB_AccessGuide.pdf
Between these two publications anyone interested in visiting any of the 344 parks, wildlife refuges, beaches, fishing sites, boat ramps, pathways and views along the Rhode Island's magnificent shoreline can find their way to the best sites that our RI coast has to offer. The very best part is that these wonderful sites belong to all of us and are just waiting for us appreciate them...
Monday, January 25, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
No. 2 - Save the Bay to Gray's Ice Cream in Bristol, and Beyond...
OK, so it hasn't taken very long for a "pattern" to develop: identify reliably-rewarding destinations along the coast of Narragansett Bay and come up with a way to get to them SAFELY without four wheels. But wait, there's more! Just this week my-Colorado-brother-of-the-saddle brings to my attention this spectacular revelation: our good friends at Google are now offering up a Beta map- direction improvement; directions for the car-less, a WALKABLE option! Don't look now, but this entire thing about coming up with interesting routes in the neighborhood of Narragansett Bay is suddenly beginning to get kind of interesting...
The weather outside my window remains pretty gnarly on this Martin Luther King Day. Wind chill has been causing an extremely serious glaze of ice to form on everything. It has also made it very easy to remain focused on route maps, cue sheets and the like. More specifically: thinking about bicycle routes in January and planning ahead for those ridiculously HOT days in August may be the very best therapy to get through the next few months of winter.
The next "run" I'm cooking up is an August no-brainer. It involves some amount of the East Bay Bike Path and acknowledges, in the very best way, a world-class ice cream dispensary located at historic Tiverton Four Corners: Gray's Ice Cream (www.graysicecream.com). As it turns out, their original location, 16 East Road , Tiverton, RI 02878 (401-624-4500) was just the beginning. Their product, locally prepared hand-packed ice cream, and their overall approach to folks seeking to wolf it down, was successful enough to spin off a second location: Gray's on The Dock in Bristol, 259 Thames Street, Bristol, RI 02809.
So here's the basic drill on this one:
Part FIRST - Start at the Bay Center, make your way to Gray's on the Dock by way of the Easy Bay Bike Path in Barrington (plus-or-minus 20 miles, or three hours, taking in the sights); pause long enough to scarf some of their butter pecan;
Part SECOND - Book back north to Slades Ferry in Fall River and down the eastern shore of Mount Hope Bay to Tiverton Four Corners (plus-or-minus 24 more miles and another three hours) to visit the original Gray's Ice Cream "mother ship," for a major hit of moose tracks;
Part THIRD - Now this is where it gets potentially interesting... What exactly is the deal with bicycles and the Mount Hope Bridge? Is there a pedestrian lane? If so, back-track toward Bristol (more butter pecan?), walking the bike up and over that bad-boy and heading back to Providence (wrapping up another 45 miles and the better part of a "century." Forced to remove non-bike-friendly-bridges from this "equation," you are still pushing close to a "century's" hundred mile total, but without the pleasure of views of Narragansett Bay to keep you company...
Hey, I'm just saying: I've done stranger things for decent ice cream and the camaraderie of my two-wheeled friends!
So please do stay tuned on this one... If there's any way to pull it off without breaking laws regarding bikes and bridges, it could turn out to be a total gas! Between now and August's aforementioned ridiculously HOT weather I intend to put in some serious Google-map-time. The purpose is to see whether it's possible and/or even something I or anyone else might even be interested in.
What the heck: I've clocked a few centuries and it's not out of the realm of possibility. Specifically, you might want to consider "ramping up" to the experience. There's a pretty amazing ten-week training regime that I've evolved over time and actually seems to work which could eventually find its way into the mix... But that's for then. The speculating is for now! The ultimate purpose of this space remains coming up with SAFE routes that get bicyclists down near to the beauty that is Narragansett Bay. Even if some of us need to introduce moose tracks into the equation for, err, motivation.
The weather outside my window remains pretty gnarly on this Martin Luther King Day. Wind chill has been causing an extremely serious glaze of ice to form on everything. It has also made it very easy to remain focused on route maps, cue sheets and the like. More specifically: thinking about bicycle routes in January and planning ahead for those ridiculously HOT days in August may be the very best therapy to get through the next few months of winter.
The next "run" I'm cooking up is an August no-brainer. It involves some amount of the East Bay Bike Path and acknowledges, in the very best way, a world-class ice cream dispensary located at historic Tiverton Four Corners: Gray's Ice Cream (www.graysicecream.com). As it turns out, their original location, 16 East Road , Tiverton, RI 02878 (401-624-4500) was just the beginning. Their product, locally prepared hand-packed ice cream, and their overall approach to folks seeking to wolf it down, was successful enough to spin off a second location: Gray's on The Dock in Bristol, 259 Thames Street, Bristol, RI 02809.
So here's the basic drill on this one:
Part FIRST - Start at the Bay Center, make your way to Gray's on the Dock by way of the Easy Bay Bike Path in Barrington (plus-or-minus 20 miles, or three hours, taking in the sights); pause long enough to scarf some of their butter pecan;
Part SECOND - Book back north to Slades Ferry in Fall River and down the eastern shore of Mount Hope Bay to Tiverton Four Corners (plus-or-minus 24 more miles and another three hours) to visit the original Gray's Ice Cream "mother ship," for a major hit of moose tracks;
Part THIRD - Now this is where it gets potentially interesting... What exactly is the deal with bicycles and the Mount Hope Bridge? Is there a pedestrian lane? If so, back-track toward Bristol (more butter pecan?), walking the bike up and over that bad-boy and heading back to Providence (wrapping up another 45 miles and the better part of a "century." Forced to remove non-bike-friendly-bridges from this "equation," you are still pushing close to a "century's" hundred mile total, but without the pleasure of views of Narragansett Bay to keep you company...
Hey, I'm just saying: I've done stranger things for decent ice cream and the camaraderie of my two-wheeled friends!
So please do stay tuned on this one... If there's any way to pull it off without breaking laws regarding bikes and bridges, it could turn out to be a total gas! Between now and August's aforementioned ridiculously HOT weather I intend to put in some serious Google-map-time. The purpose is to see whether it's possible and/or even something I or anyone else might even be interested in.
What the heck: I've clocked a few centuries and it's not out of the realm of possibility. Specifically, you might want to consider "ramping up" to the experience. There's a pretty amazing ten-week training regime that I've evolved over time and actually seems to work which could eventually find its way into the mix... But that's for then. The speculating is for now! The ultimate purpose of this space remains coming up with SAFE routes that get bicyclists down near to the beauty that is Narragansett Bay. Even if some of us need to introduce moose tracks into the equation for, err, motivation.
Monday, January 11, 2010
No. 1 - Save the Bay to Iggy's at Oakland Beach, and BACK = 84 miles
NICE weather we are having... This morning it was ten (10) degrees out there. Not the kind of temperature to draw a fair-weather bike rider, such as myself, toward the open road. Actually, even a technically "open road" in Rhode Island in January still has plenty of ice about the shoulders. "Shoulders," you know, the part of the road where you'll find BIKES. So with weather like this I'm leaving the serious riding to serious riders, like those intrepid AmeriCorps folks who bike in to work at the Bay Center, and those true fanatics, the Narragansett Bay Wheelmen. A tip of the helmet and hearty WhatCheer to everyone out there today!
But for the rest of us this is the time when it's OK to think about Narragansett Bay Bike Rides. Specifically, those will be the bike rides occurring in close proximity to Narragansett Bay, preferably when the temperature is somewhere a good deal north of freezing.
So today is as good a day as any for thinking about riding. And when I start thinking about riding in the vicinity of Narragansett Bay one of my default locations is Iggy's Doughboys and Chowder House. OK, they do have two locations, but I am particularly interested in the one open all season, the one at 889 Oakland Beach Avenue, Warwick, RI 02889. They also have one that's a more seasonal operation, at 1157 Point Judith Road, Narragansett, RI 02882, and that one is on hold for another day...
Now it turns out Iggy's is pretty high tech, as chowder houses go. You hit their web site (www.iggysdoughboys.com) and they will link you to Google directions to help you find your way to the place. So far so good. But, as everyone knows, Google directions are totally oriented toward that "open road" mentioned above, especially the four wheeled vehicles that travel them. Throw Harborside Drive (the closest thing to the Bay Center's 100 Save the Bay Drive, Providence, RI 02905 address) into the drop down menu and some direction will pop up to get you to Iggy's PDQ. Not exactly what I'm talking about. While it's just getting started, the ultimate goal of this particular exercise is to produce user-friendly sets of "cue sheets" to get someone from Point A to Point B in a way that has more to do with a safe, visually interesting experience. The 7.7 mile, 19 minute "blast," from the Bay Center to Iggy's that Google directions currently serve up have nothing to do with a scenic approach to travel, nor should they. But if you are on a bike, getting there is half the fun and that's where the "cue sheets" come in...
So that's a brief thumbnail of what, if it is successful, will be going on here. As soon as I can I'm looking forward to posting a "cue sheet" that accomplishes the task of laying out a scenic route from the Bay Center to Iggy's.
Updated 03/08/10: DRAFT MayMyRide version of one way to do this thing:
Think about this as a work-in-progress... And if there is anyone else out there who has an idea about safe and interesting bike routes relating to Narragansett Bay, please have at!
As for me, as soon as I am thawed out enough to grind out my first miles of 2010 I intend to have at that! But until then I will try to make the best use of this winter-inflicted "window" of opportunity...
But for the rest of us this is the time when it's OK to think about Narragansett Bay Bike Rides. Specifically, those will be the bike rides occurring in close proximity to Narragansett Bay, preferably when the temperature is somewhere a good deal north of freezing.
So today is as good a day as any for thinking about riding. And when I start thinking about riding in the vicinity of Narragansett Bay one of my default locations is Iggy's Doughboys and Chowder House. OK, they do have two locations, but I am particularly interested in the one open all season, the one at 889 Oakland Beach Avenue, Warwick, RI 02889. They also have one that's a more seasonal operation, at 1157 Point Judith Road, Narragansett, RI 02882, and that one is on hold for another day...
Now it turns out Iggy's is pretty high tech, as chowder houses go. You hit their web site (www.iggysdoughboys.com) and they will link you to Google directions to help you find your way to the place. So far so good. But, as everyone knows, Google directions are totally oriented toward that "open road" mentioned above, especially the four wheeled vehicles that travel them. Throw Harborside Drive (the closest thing to the Bay Center's 100 Save the Bay Drive, Providence, RI 02905 address) into the drop down menu and some direction will pop up to get you to Iggy's PDQ. Not exactly what I'm talking about. While it's just getting started, the ultimate goal of this particular exercise is to produce user-friendly sets of "cue sheets" to get someone from Point A to Point B in a way that has more to do with a safe, visually interesting experience. The 7.7 mile, 19 minute "blast," from the Bay Center to Iggy's that Google directions currently serve up have nothing to do with a scenic approach to travel, nor should they. But if you are on a bike, getting there is half the fun and that's where the "cue sheets" come in...
So that's a brief thumbnail of what, if it is successful, will be going on here. As soon as I can I'm looking forward to posting a "cue sheet" that accomplishes the task of laying out a scenic route from the Bay Center to Iggy's.
Updated 03/08/10: DRAFT MayMyRide version of one way to do this thing:
Think about this as a work-in-progress... And if there is anyone else out there who has an idea about safe and interesting bike routes relating to Narragansett Bay, please have at!
As for me, as soon as I am thawed out enough to grind out my first miles of 2010 I intend to have at that! But until then I will try to make the best use of this winter-inflicted "window" of opportunity...
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