A Seamless Web

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Joey here.

Jeffrey connects all our Rides to NYC. He won’t parachute into a place and consider it part of our tour of the Lower 48 States.

Last year’s Ride to Seattle was relatively short. Floods, gales, downpours, landslides, a collapsed highway, a logging-road detour . . . we pedaled less than 600 miles, interspersing 2 parts biking with 1 part motor transport.

We decided to add 160 miles more to connect Washington, DC, to our 2012 Ride to Nashville; and to connect Jeffrey’s native village to our 2014 Ride to the Five Great Lakes.

Enjoy this travelogue!

  • April 28, 2019. We took a bus to Baltimore and set out for D.C.
  • Our folding bike and a Baltimore mural.
  • Baltimore bike lane.
  • Monument to George Washington.
  • Sign on a pizzaria.
  • Welcome to Pigtown.
  • Morrell Park.
  • Lunch!
  • Southbound on U.S. 1. Sometimes there was no bike lane and no shoulder. We always manage.
  • Relay, on an 1830 horse-drawn rail line to the capital.
  • Bridge over Paint Branch, College Park, Maryland.
  • A 60-car motorcade gathered here in July 1913. Participants drove to the Senate with a petition for women’s suffeage bearing 75,000 signatures.

Now we’d connected D.C., and George Washington’s Mt. Vernon (Virginia) estate to which we biked in 2018, to NYC. No loose ends!

In August, our friend Shira drove with us to Cicero, NY, from which we pedaled our Lightning Phantom 103 miles north to Jeffrey’s native village.

 

Ready to roll in Cicero.
Our new friend—Jeffrey! He supports human rights for all.
This part of New York is a different world from ours. We didn’t stay for the raffle.
Moose! It’s fun to say.
Wide smooth shoulders for bikes and buggies.
A construction manager stopped to talk with Shira (seen through 3 car windows), who was waiting for us to catch up. This generous person belongs to a local Latter Day Saints church, helps the needy, and feels the tensions among religion, law, economics, and human rights. We learned a lot from her and shared some immigration facts that she hadn’t known.
No fish allowed . . .
. . . unless they’re the manager’s!
Easy riding.
Imagine a 1400 lb (640 kg) cheese being carted hundreds of miles to Washington, D.C., in 1836.
We don’t know what this flag of slavers and traitors means to the rural New York owner. To us, it’s like flying the swastika.
Dewey! Of the Decimal System! Motorists speed by these gems. We go just slowly enough to see what’s there.
These rocks formed during eons of prehistoric mountain building and erosion. The universe does its thing in its own time. Humans, take note.
August Saint-Gaudens sculpted this bronze of statesman Roswell Pettibone Flower (1835-1899) in 1902.

Forks in the road.
The road to our cabin.


Arrived!
Howdy, neighbor!

Jeffrey grew up here.  He stuck me between the screen doors.

Jeffrey’s mother roller-skated here. (The sidewalk, of local marble, may be over a century old.) I’m up the hill, for scale.

I’m on the porch of the house where Jeffrey’s mother was born in 1927. Her parents were refugees from Russian persecution. They arrived in America with no money, speaking no English. During and after the Great Depression, their children went to college. Their sons served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War 2.

Now our government declares that refugees and their children no longer are welcome in America.

What a shame.  A terrible, terrible shame.

2 thoughts on “A Seamless Web”

  2. Love the Travelogue. Hoping to see you in the North Country this summer.

    Cheers to you and love to the family. Mimi

    On Tue, Mar 3, 2020 at 7:30 PM Ride for Human Rights wrote:

    > Joey posted: ” Jeffrey connects all our Rides to NYC. He won’t parachute > into a place and consider it part of our tour of the Lower 48 States. Last > year’s Ride to Seattle was relatively short. Floods, gales, downpours, > landslides, a collapsed highway, a logging” >

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