Follow The Brick Road – Bike Snob NYC

Is it peak foliage yet!?!

Let’s check the foliage report!

I don’t know what that means. Is peak foliage when it gets to 100%? Well it doesn’t really matter, because peak or no peak, I will say the colors this weekend did not…leaf me disappointed:

That’s a foliage pun, sorry. I promise not to do it again. I also hope I haven’t added to any resentment you may already be arboring towards me.

Oops.

Anyway, the above foliage is technically in New Jersey–along the popular local cycling route known as “River Road,” to be exact, a nickname that is a subtle reference to the fact that it, well, runs along the Hudson River (I believe a tidal estuary at this point in its journey but let’s not go all River Fred here) and is also, uh, a road:

I enjoy River Road very much, and in fact it’s quite convenient to my home, which is among the buildings you see in the above photo on the other side of the river. However, prior to this weekend I had not ridden on it in over a year, because last time I was there was with some guy from upstate who calls himself “Some Guy From Upstate.” (That’s a sobriquet nearly as esoteric as “River Road, come to think of it). He’d come down to pick up the ‘Noner…

[Looking at it makes me want it back.]

…and we headed over to River Road for his inaugural ride on it, only to find that it was impassable:

Now when I say it was impassable I don’t mean that it wasn’t rideable, since obviously I could totally clear that on my full-suspension gravel bike, and I bet we even could have conquered it with that Canadian Steel (which sounds like a Bachman-Turner Overdrive song) Some Guy From Upstate was riding. Also, I’ve been ignoring road closure signs on River Road for years, with the exception of this one some years back:

Sure, I’m probably breathing worse fumes riding across the George Washington Bridge, but still, I figured I didn’t have anything to lose by heeding it.

No, in this case River Road was impassable because there was a ranger there who literally wouldn’t let us pass. And since it remains closed to this day I hadn’t been back since, because there are few things more annoying on a ride than having to turn around on River Road. It’s like when you come back to a movie you’re in the middle of and you accidentally hit restart instead of picking up where you left off.

But the other day I was talking to someone who had just returned from riding there without being thwarted by a ranger, and so I headed over, and while I had to carry my bike around some barriers and ignore some signs telling me not to do exactly what I was doing, I was able to ride the denuded section of River Road without being molested:

[Bricks are the new gravel.]

Also, while it may or may not be peak foliage in New York (or New Jersey), the color of the Milwaukee is peaking all year round:

They say red bikes are faster, and after this weekend I believe it. Then again, as a reader informs me, a human on a bicycle of any color is more efficient than any other creature on Earth!

Though I’d say they buried the lede, because the big surprise to me is how highly cows rank:

I mean they’re not too far behind horses, that’s pretty impressive.

As for bikes, they have the power to transform humans into…fish? Though for maximum fishiness you’ll need to go Full Velomobile:

Bikes allow us terrestrial folk to be more like fish. Wheels, a simple machine, let us coast without putting in power by pedaling, and the rigid frame supports the sitting rider against gravity. “They turn humans into this hyperefficient terrestrial locomotor because they make being on land more like swimming,” says Tyson Hedrick, a comparative physiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The main drawback is our clunky human shape; bicyclists aren’t streamlined like bluefin tuna, so they must overcome more drag. Hedrick calculates that bicycles with an aerodynamic shell, called velomobiles, can let humans move with even more aquatic efficiency.

Sorry, no thanks. I take my scientific advice from only one person, and that’s Jan Heine:

And thanks to him we all know that in order to really put the “fish” in efficiency you need Reeny Hersy tires:

Clearly the state of Utah want to harness the efficiency of the human on the bicycle, because they’re starting a whole freeway system for bikes:

Huh, I did not know the demonym for a person from Utah was “Utahn:”

“We need to spend more time outside, more time connecting with people and more time exercising, and the way we do that is through our trail system,” Cox said in a news release. “The Utah Trail Network helps every Utahn commute, recreate and enjoy Utah. It’s a great way to build for future generations.”

I thought it was Utonian, or maybe Utard.

Anyway, like every other bike network in America it has a bright future ahead of it:

And it won’t be long before it’s full of every contraption you can possibly imagine…except for bikes.

Yes, in 2025 the last place you’ll find a bike is on a “bike” path. If you’re looking for bikes, maybe check the gravel.