Tag: westchester county

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Nice Ride Anyway

A friend asks: Have I been on the bike at all during our trip east? Yeah, I have. But it has been strange. After months of riding hard and getting neurotic about whether I was riding hard enough, now I’m deliberately trying to ride just a little — enough so that when I get to France and this 750-mile ride kicks off, in eight days, I will have maintained the fitness I built up over the spring and summer while not having exhausted myself. (In other words, it’s something else to get neurotic about.) So the riding I’ve done since leaving Berkeley has been a little sporadic and mostly not very intense: half a dozen rides, five states*, only once more than an hour; that’s just enough to remind my legs what they need to do.

Tonight, we’re staying with friends in a little town in Westchester County, on the Hudson just north of New York City. This afternoon, looking for a ride to do, I headed up the South and North County Trailways; they’re paved paths on the right-of-way of an old commuter railroad that used to run up to Putnam County, the next one north of Westchester.

The paths were mostly great,, even though they run close to a couple busy roads most of the 16 or 17 miles north that I rode. The paving was a little rough in places, but there weren’t many other users, the strip of land the path runs along was beautiful, and given how hilly the country is, the route was very flat (that figures, having been a railroad grade).

One thing I discovered is that folks using this trail apparently shun all contact with strangers. I probably passed a couple hundred people in 33 miles — mostly other cyclists, but also a few shaky looking in-line skaters and a handful of runners and very determined-looking walkers. Only one guy I passed acknowledged my wave as I passed; a couple people responded when I told them I was passing them. Mostly I got blank looks — sometimes because people were wearing headphones and listening to iPods, mostly from people who were just disinclined to respond in kind. Strange and oppressive and off-putting, this isolation people take with them out into the world.

Nice ride anyway, though.

*The five states: Nevada, Colorado, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York.

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Tuesday Notes

Speaking of new neighbors: The New York Times reports that wildlife biologists from Cornell are doing a study of the apparently large and relatively new population of coyotes moving into Westchester County, just north of the city. Coyotes have an apparent taste for small dogs of the dust-mop variety: “… a Mount Pleasant couple reported that a few years ago a coyote hopped a four-foot fence, snatched their Lhasa apso and jumped back over — in plain sight of the husband. In June 2006, a Croton-on-Hudson resident, Herbert Doran, was walking his bichon frisé at night when a coyote lunged at the dog. ‘He tried to muscle me out of the way with his body to get to her,” Mr. Doran said in a phone interview. “I came down on his head with a flashlight. He was stunned for a second and then he stepped back. We had a stare-down for four or five seconds and then he took off.’ ”

Places not to get lost: Oregon ranks high on the list. Two or three weeks ago, Bay Area papers were reporting on two locals who had gone missing while on a trip to the Portland area. Investigators and family members speculated that the pair, a Jesuit priest and a longtime friend, had run off the road somewhere while touring the region. Well, it turns out the speculation was right — the missing people were found dead in a car wreck off the side of a northwestern Oregon highway. But that’s not all. It turns out that another motorist witnessed the June 8 crash, took careful note of the location, and then left the scene to find a phone and call 911; he reached dispatchers just minutes after the accident but he had no information on the potential victims’ condition and didn’t return to the scene.

After some initial confusion about which jurisdiction should respond, police arrived at the reported location. They looked around for awhile, and after about an hour called off the search. As The Oregonian reports, the families of the dead tourists are pretty unhappy: “We want to find out what skill levels and communication go on in Oregon,” said Rosemary Mulligan, [driver David] Schwartz’s sister. “The individual who called 9-1-1 was so detailed that my 16-year-old daughter could have found the car. For adults not to find it is pretty inexcusable.”

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