The steady creep of crap...

Like rising sea levels, a steady tide of brake fluid, shock oil, and tire sealant laps higher and higher. On it float the carbon fiber fuselages of high-priced industrial flotsam, while the currents of the murky depths carry along the aluminum offerings. Dragged along the bottom is a spreading tangle of cheap steel frames and flimsy mid- and low-end parts. Brand name and no name products jostle in this festering stew.

There never was a dike against it, but if there had been there would be a lone, drowned mechanic with his finger stuck in it. The surge came right over the top. But there was no dike, so there's just me and my finger, which I have been giving to the industry since the early 1990s. I'm still treading water in this great oceanic garbage patch, trying to rescue the few who are not swimming avidly away.

Hey, if you're going to lose anyway, you might as well have some fun with it. I used to find energy in the belief that I could have some wider influence. Fantasy has played an essential role in human survival. It just functions differently under the influence of different eras. We can tap into each other's imaginations like never before in this period of individual social media participation overlapping with professional productions in a range of legacy media and their evolved, evolving forms. As many as a few dozen people might read this essay. That's a bigger crowd than I could draw if I was raving in a public park anywhere within a short bike ride of where I live or work. Good return on my time, says the lazy man.

Bike season is winding down around here. Enthusiasts are still riding, but the frenzy of summer has gone to sleep until next year. By then we will know if we're going to be living in a smog-shrouded theocracy or be zigzagging toward the flickering image of a world where people are trying to get along with each other rather than get on top of one another. Service work still drops in a job or two at a time. The shop converts to ski season as autumn progresses. It's still only cross-country skiing, so we never get mobbed. As long as people can use motors to get them up a hill, that will be their preference. It's true with increasing numbers of two-wheeled "pedalers," too.

A guy in the shop last week said that he was getting an e-bike that would go 50 miles per hour. I figured he was full of sht, so I looked around online. I found quite a few ads for e-bikes that will do 50 mph. It's absolutely not legal, but the police have much more pressing matters to worry about. There are thousands of bikes on the road, and no effective means to keep track of them. This is a good thing in many ways. I don't like the idea of omnipresent surveillance, even if it does permit jackasses on rule-beating motorbikes to pretend they're on a machine that they would ever power by pedaling alone. I figure that they will sort themselves out on their 50 mile per hour mopeds.

Riders with power assistance do present a hazard to path riders, both recreational and transportational. Few act with malice, but insensitivity hits just as hard. Any vehicle operator becomes velocitized. You get used to your flow through the scenery based on the feedback you get through the contact points with the machine. We drive our cars at what seems like a sedate speed, while a pedestrian walking on the side of that road perceives our vehicle as hurtling past them. Riding an analog bike, 15 mph feels pretty zippy. Twenty feels downright godlike. Throw a little power assist in there and you can legally push close to 30 mph. Juice up the moped and you get into survival mode.

Survival mode is sneaky. You are in it before you realize it. You may be within your own reaction time to negotiate the road in front of you as you see it, but have no margin for the unexpected. It happens on an analog bike as well, but almost always on a downhill. The other place you can get into trouble is when larger vehicles are slowed by their own traffic congestion, and a bicyclist is tempted to fly past them or even cut between them at full speed. Filtering is fine, but trying to show off with a power play will get you smacked sooner or later.

As daylight shortens, my bike commuting season comes to an end. I will become flabbier and grouchier (if you can imagine that) as the months progress until next spring releases me to see how much strength my aging body still retains. The problem isn't the darkness, it's the lights. The floodlit behemoths I share the road with blind each other with their headlights and make me disappear. The imperative that motorists have, to pass any cyclist without pausing, means that they will shove through in that tunnel of glare and blackness wherever we encounter it.

There's also a slight uptick in malicious behavior under cover of darkness, but the major issue is insensitivity and impatience.

If I had a good place to park for park-and-ride commuting, I could continue for months, gaining at least some of the advantages of fully car-free transportation. Unfortunately, the local cyclist ghetto, the Cotton Valley Trail, runs off at an angle, so I end up driving almost the whole way to town, or equivalent distance, to intersect it at various points from which to continue by bike. And it's the Cotton Valley Trail: an active rail line masquerading as a multi-use rec path. The rail car hobbyists have the right of way, and some of them can be real pricks about it. Others are kindly ambassadors, but you don't know which is which when you both enter a railed section. On the other end of the speed range, not one single pedestrian is ever glad to see someone on a bike. Add a dog on a leash and your stock drops even further. I'd rather be out on the road with the armored personnel carriers whipping past me. It's much less personal.

Too late this morning as I sit under a cat, but maybe I'll try a few rides from the shopping center three miles out from my house. That cuts off the worst stretch for night riding. But the challenge points up a major issue for anyone with a motor vehicle: where can you leave it? They do lock. They're hard to remove casually. But anyone annoyed at your presence can do a whole lot of inconvenient things short of completely removing your expensive appliance. Pick the right wrong place and you could even lose the catalytic converter. That's become a new hazard at some hiking trailheads in the area.

For now, it's time to displace the cat and finish getting ready to load the car. Driving is so brain-dead easy compared to riding a bike. It's a habit-forming sedative in that way, but side effects include joint pain, stiffness, irritability, inattentiveness, weight gain,... see package insert for full list.

A cyclist's place is anywhere but here

 Have you ever had someone do something that you did not ask them to do and then expect you to be conspicuously grateful for it afterwards?

In the confined space of the Cotton Valley Trail, user groups come into conflict even more than on a more conventional multi-use path. Because of the poor design, with the rails left in place, walkers, runners, and all the different types of bikes are squeezed into a space less than five feet wide for long stretches. People manage to make it work because the trail route is often attractive and sometimes convenient. It's a nice cross-section of this part of the Lakes Region, and if you happen to live within a few degrees of its course, it can serve as part of a transportation cycling corridor. I use it for a small part of my park and ride option. Before COVID-19 I used more of it.

The tight confines of the path mean that people getting out for some fresh air have to squeeze past each other in clouds of breath that might or might not be a problem in the open setting. During the longer daylight I quit using it entirely, because it was full of other traffic. Some people thought that cyclists were massive germ-foggers. Other quick studies seemed to indicate that speed and turbulence would dissipate infectious clouds. But why put up with reproving looks and a tangle of wide handlebars if you don't have to? I went back to my old, old, pre-path road route to leave Wolfeboro.

At the best of times, a rider would encounter pedestrians who expected more than a pleasant hello from a passing cyclist. One time it was Woman with Fluffy Dog, who saw me coming, reeled in Fluffy's extended leash, and gathered the dog protectively against her legs as she stepped out of the railed section on the causeway and stopped.

"You're welcome!" she shouted at me as I rolled carefully past her.

Another time it was an older couple. They weren't elderly in the sense of wobbling on frail legs, but they were definitely toward the silver end of middle age. They, too, went out of their way to clear much more space than necessary, and sprayed that acidic, "you're welcome!" at me as I rode by. And there have been others.

No pedestrian is ever glad to see a cyclist. Most cyclists aren't too glad to see each other in the miles of jousting required by the narrow path. You never appreciate just how little a whole train sits on until you've tried to manage two-way bike traffic with 31-inch handlebars in 56 inches of trail width.

Yep: 56 inches. Actually 56.5, but you don't notice the half inch when two sets of 31-inch handlebars already add up to 62. Mind you, we don't all have 31-inch bars, but lots of upright bikes have bars that are above 25 inches. Theoretically, a rider can put the tires right along the edge and have almost half the width of the bars hanging out to the right, but the poorly-maintained stone dust surface of the path itself can make the edge much less attractive than the middle. In a railed section, a rider doesn't want to risk catching the rail and getting dumped in places where the landing is often a steep and rocky slope.

Every pedestrian I meet on the path looks unhappy about it. The best of them look fairly neutral and might return a greeting. On average, they all look a little aggrieved. Some really have a chip on their shoulder.

On Wednesday morning, in a narrow, overgrown section outside the rails but still squeezed by the uncontrolled plant growth on the sides, I was headed into town as a runner came toward me outbound. He looked to be in his forties at the latest, fit and strong, with some flashy shoes. The path comes out of one of the few slightly bendy bits and into this straightaway slightly below the level of the rails running beside it. I slowed many yards ahead of where we would pass, decelerating gradually so that the approach would not take an awkwardly long time.

The runner stopped abruptly, turned sharply to his left and mounted the small step up to the tracks. He stopped, turned, and snapped, "You're welcome!"

If I hadn't been hurrying to get to work I would have stopped and asked him if he wanted to pull his shorts down before I kissed his ass, but there was no time for extended conversation. I was quite surprised that this new demographic had been added to the "you're welcome" profile. Youngish fit dudes are usually among the most stoic when it comes to putting up with the annoying presence of cyclists.

The very next day provided the perfect counterpoint to the whiny runner. In exactly the same stretch, in almost exactly the same spot, I came down to meet a middle-aged couple walking the other way. For some reason, the woman was walking up on the tracks. Equally unaccountably, when she saw me coming she left that safe perch to climb down into the trailway to walk behind the man, so that we could all experience the inconvenience. Their looks radiated the usual annoyance and resentment with which pedestrians greet cyclists, but we singled out, we slithered past each other, and no one said anything, because we're goddam adults. We all know that the path has this glaring flaw. The best of us just deal with it.

My handlebars are the width of my shoulders. On the Cross Check I take up no more width than I would on foot. When I do walk on the path, I go outside the rails whenever I can, and always give room to riders without any desire for anyone to make a big time about it. On my mountain bike, the bars are wider, but I put them on well before the 31-inch standard became common. They're maybe 24 inches. The fat tires make the bike a little more secure hugging the edge. I've also hopped the rail on it and ridden the rough sides where I could. At no time do I demand any recognition for handling unplanned encounters in a mature and cooperative fashion.

I've heard the stories about highly unpleasant riders ripping through groups on foot, tossing obscenities in response to complaints. The whiny runner might lump me in that category because the only single word answer I could come up with to his sarcastic, "you're welcome" was "smartass." Even as I said it I knew it was inadequate to convey the full spectrum of issues opened up by his absolutely unnecessary and unrequested sacrifice. A variety of other epithets would have applied, but come no closer to defining the exact emotional blackmail contained in "you're welcome."

On the road, expressions of disapproval or demonstrations of asymmetrical power are more variable, because faces are so often obscured, and the vehicles involved are moving faster. I prefer it that way. Decades ago I abandoned the fallacy that eye contact helps. Too often I saw expressions or invited elaborations from a motorist that I would prefer not know about. Now I let the reflections on window glass hide the human occupants and my own sunglasses and helmet form part of an expressionless wall on my face. The style of a driver's passing says enough. While drivers this season have been mostly very good, I still know that they will invariably squeeze past me at intersections and tend to pass at speed, as soon as they encounter me, rather than wait for a safe break in any oncoming traffic.

A driver yesterday illustrated that some drivers don't understand how an obstruction in their lane is their responsibility. I popped out of the parking lot from work onto Mill Street, behind a small SUV. We both had to slow down because a delivery truck partially blocked our lane. A motorist was coming the other way in the unblocked lane. They were absolutely correct in doing so, but the driver of the SUV in front of me laid on the horn with a long blast because she thought that she should have been allowed to swing out around the delivery truck without having to wait. Motorist entitlement squared. These are the people a rider has to function with, along with the anonymous majority who just get on by and don't make a fuss about it.

COVID-19: time trial rules in effect

No drafting. No close passing. That's obvious.

Stay out of snot rocket range. Watch where you spit. What was formerly just a gross breach of etiquette or a grossly humorous mishap could now be fatal to a susceptible rider unfortunate enough to intercept your phlegm projectile. At the very least it would be an inconvenient interruption to someone's training schedule. Of course you're not infected. You're fine! But whoever you landed it on might go through a couple of weeks of anxiety watching you for symptoms. And let's not forget asymptomatic carriers. It also invites retaliation. Who's to say that that other joker is fine?

On the road at any time, cyclists are vulnerable to the bodily fluid assaults of disapproving motorists. Indeed, I once got into a roadside punch-up with a car full of teenagers who had clammed on me as they drove by. That was about 40 years ago, when I could be lured into such a confrontation pretty easily. There have been other spitters since then. It usually just blows back on them because of the wind created by our forward motion. But when you have to worry about micro droplets the risk factor goes up.

For now, our noses run because the weather is cold. About the time the weather warms up, our noses will run because of all the pollen. Always assume your nose is loaded and point it in a safe direction.

Commuters are time trialists more than pack riders. Some of that depends on your area and work schedule. Around here, only a handful of people commute by bike, and that includes every direction leading into town. I almost never see any other riders on my commute. Schedule makes a difference too. The other commuters seem to have to arrive earlier. They're already finished before I come through, and they've headed home before I get out at the end of my shift.

For any part on the rail trail I will encounter other riders, but far fewer of them when I head out in the evening than coming into town in the morning. And there's no way you can stay six feet apart when you're trapped between the rails. Even a lot of the path outside the rails is too narrow to keep a safe distance. That will become a factor as the weather warms up and the trail dries out. Walkers would have to step out and down the crumbling banks of the causeways to keep their proper distance from each other. Riders can't do that. Even the most talented mountain bike trickster would find it slow going to hop along the embankment for yards at a time. It's not a realistic option if you have to be somewhere at a particular time.

More anti-cyclist infrastructure on the Cotton Valley Trail

As if riders didn't have enough to handle at the rail crossings, now they've added these slalom gates. Gossip says that the intent is to guide riders to the exact crossing point. The goofy yellow paint and the "no shit Sherlock" arrows are more unhelpful attempts to deflect liability by belaboring the obvious.

I will say that I have observed riders winging through the crossings at stupidly oblique angles and foolishly high speeds. The ones I saw managed to pull it off, but they obviously had no idea how lucky they were. So the gates prevent a rider from slicing off the corner. But they constrict traffic during heavy use periods, when the path can be a log jam of pedestrians and riders. And any minor error in alignment -- that you might have been able to correct -- risks catching a pedal on those orange posts. They're springy, to reduce the chances of impalement, but not so floppy that you could hook a pedal and just ride through it.

At least one crossing also has the heavy wooden sign post inconveniently -- not to say dangerously -- close to the crossing itself. Cyclists dismount indeed. That crossing is further out, closer to Bryant Road.

The intent is always to get riders to dismount. A rider who isn't riding isn't bothering anyone. That's true on roads or paths. But it isn't really true when a knot of pedestrians and riders tangles up in the confined space of a crossing that was already too small before the addition of the slalom gates.

The drive-to-ride crowd can drive somewhere else. Mountain biking has become entirely drive-to-ride. As dedicated trail networks proliferate for purely recreational forms of cycling, large blocs of the pedaling population are neatly removed from the traffic mix and feel less need to advocate for the freedom to ride everywhere.

Long distance transportation cycling isn't highly practical for the vast majority of people, but infrastructure should still be built to accommodate riders no matter what. A rider might make short hops on a long road, and long distance riders have rights, too. Most attention gets paid to built-up areas with denser populations. This compartmentalized approach is as wrong as wildlife management plans that focus only on one species, or too small a piece of habitat. Any trail that connects two relatively major points of interest needs to be considered from the transportation as well as recreation angle. Any trail that can be connected to the rest of the transportation network is part of that network.

The last thing anyone wants to see

On a trail or the open road, the last thing anyone wants to see is a cyclist.

Picture your bike here:

Photo credit: Cotton Valley Trail Committee

Riding in on the Cotton Valley Trail on Sunday morning, I studied the faces of the pedestrians walking toward me, or glimpsed from the side as I tried to overtake them courteously in the extremely narrow confines of the poorly designed trail. Nearly every one of them displayed annoyance. I've seen the same thing every time I encounter walkers on the trail. Some are relatively cheerful about maneuvering past each other. Others radiate hostility.

The previous day, the station area teemed with railcar users, queueing up to roll out toward Wakefield. They eyed me as if they knew I was the one who had written critical blog posts about the trail for all these years. The first one, in 2009, got some blowback. Now they either don't see or don't bother to swat the fly that can't hurt them.

On the narrow sections of the Cotton Valley Trail, whether constrained by the rails or hemmed in by unkempt vegetation and eroded or overgrown edges, I'm not too happy to see a cyclist either, and they don't look too happy to see me. We can't even share a commiserating glance, because we each have to focus exclusively on holding a straight, smooth line while we teeter next to a rail and a dropoff.

The non-cyclist answer to any situation in which the riding is dicey is to tell the rider to dismount and walk. In their vision, the bike vanishes as soon as the rider is no longer on it. On a wider trail, a rider would have room to walk the bike, but a wider trail would also allow the rider to stay mounted and still give more clearance to walkers and other pedalers. When traffic is heavy on the path, a rider would be on and off the bike more often than a cyclocrosser in training. And a rider next to a bike essentially becomes two people walking side by side. The only way to fit in a narrower space would be to pop the bike up on the back tire and wheel it in front of you. That might look alarmingly aggressive to the more sensitive pedestrians, especially dog walkers.

At the first railed section toward Wolfeboro from 109, I heard the motor of one of the small rail cars. As if to prove a point after my post on August 13, the club suddenly got the urge to make a foray on the section they hardly ever use. I had nipped onto a pretty side trail for a brief personal errand, so I simply delayed my re-entry onto the main path until the motorized overlords had passed. Unlike on most multi-use paths, where cyclists still yield to everyone, but pedestrians are the top dogs, on the Cotton Valley Trail, all non-motorized users are playing on active rails, where the trains have precedence over all:

It's right there in the Rules of Engagement:

These rules mean that anyone who gets caught in the middle of a causeway or other railed section -- a cyclist towing kids in a trailer, a family pushing a stroller, a handicapped person on their electric scooter or muscling along in their wheelchair -- is required to get off and scramble down the embankment or reverse rapidly so as not to impede the passage of the motorized vehicles that are the primary trail users. So that bottom line on the rules, stating that no motorized vehicles are allowed except for motorized wheelchairs, is actually untrue. Only competing motor vehicles are forbidden. All other users are subordinate to the motorized rail cars.

These are the rules. You don't argue about the rules. Just understand the agreement you have accepted. These terms of service are a lot shorter and more clearly stated than the average agreement we all check off blithely to download free apps or sign on to secure websites that handle all of our finances. You're playing on the railroad tracks. Trains are rare, but they are also not required to follow any kind of fixed schedule around which you can plan. Be ready to dive into the swamp or scramble down the rocks when required.

People tend to be more sympathetic to families with kids. But if you are an individual adult rider, expect no courtesy, even if the railed section is short and you clearly established yourself in it before the rail car arrived at the lower exit to it. And even a trailer full of offspring or a stroller similarly laden is no guarantee. According to the rules, they owe you nothing.

Unnecessary dangers of the Cotton Valley Trail

Now that the Cotton Valley Trail is complete from Wolfeboro to Wakefield, bike use has increased steadily. It was already a popular ride, but now it actually goes somewhere instead of just out into the woods.

The Cotton Valley Trail has always had more problems than the typical multi-use path, because of the rails left in place for use by the rail car club. The rail car club beat out the non-motorized users when the right of way became available, so all other uses have to bow to them.

Due to the chronic lack of funds for things that actually improve the quality of life for ordinary citizens, there was never enough money to upgrade the trail corridor to safely and pleasantly accommodate the incompatible uses of walkers and riders sharing space with motorized conveyances that of necessity hog the entire width of the rails. In many places, the space between the rails is the only improved surface.

When I was a kid, we used to play on railroad tracks, including bridges. We understood all too well that if we got ourselves killed out there we would be in big trouble for interfering with the smooth operation of the railroad. And if we interfered with the trains and didn't get killed, we would wish that we had. But those were real working railroads.

For years we had noticed that the rail car people seldom put their vehicles on the tracks on the section that runs from Route 109 east down into Wolfeboro. The tracks were removed completely from the mile-long Bridge-Falls Path from downtown Wolfeboro to Center Street in Wolfeboro Falls. From there, the path was sited next to the rails out to the public boat launch at Mast Landing. The path goes between the rails at that point and stays in that nerve-wrackingly narrow space all the way across the first causeway to Whitten Neck Road. After a brief, enjoyable diversion a few yards away from the rails, the path goes back between them for the second, longer causeway across a section of Lake Wentworth.

When you asked the authorities in charge of the trail what could be done to make the crossings safer and the railed sections less stressful, you'd get a mumble of excuses about how the rails had to be there because they were there and to shut up and be grateful. Meanwhile, injuries have piled up, ranging from abrasions and contusions to broken hips, cracked ribs, and the occasional collapsed lung. And the rails almost never see a rail car. In the latest raft of excuses, we were told that the rails are there so that the rail car people can help with mowing and maintenance. The rarity of those work details hardly seems like it's worth the price in damage and injury to bicyclists. But bicyclists come at the bottom of any hierarchy, whether it's on the road or on a path like this. The message is, "suck it up or quit riding."

On Sunday, I left my car at the Allen A Beach parking area and walked to work. It was a rainy day and I didn't feel like riding, but I didn't want to drive into the chronic gridlock of Wolfe City in the summer, or take up scarce parking in our little lot. The walk gave me a chance to document just some of the many unnecessary dangers and inconveniences of the Cotton Valley Trail. It could be entirely great if these were addressed. If some of them aren't addressed, we could lose the whole trail to erosion exacerbated by the presence of the unused rails.

The latest Cotton Valley Trail brochure actually states that rail cars are only used from Fernald Station out to Wakefield. There are many other ways to mow and trim a trail. It is time for the rails to go, and for the trail to be widened and graded for safer use and better drainage.

Look carefully at this first picture. On the left you can just see the rails, buried in vegetation that has been neither mowed nor trimmed in a long time. Imagine that as usable trail width. And this is on a relatively wide section.

At the River Street crossing, the trail moves to the left of the tracks. Again, imagine the generous space available if the rails were gone or buried beneath well-packed fill. It would double the available width. The right of way is already there. The brochure claims that the right of way is 66 feet wide. That much space is never used for the trail.

Sam, you made the ties too wide: These two pictures show the first examples in which the trail is reduced by the protruding tie ends, sometimes covered by vegetation, in other places just hanging out there.  It gets worse.

Oh wait, what's that? Did someone drop something? A hat? A bandanna?

Nope. It's a rock. Someone kindly painted it orange. It protrudes because the fill has settled or washed away. Spray paint is cheaper than actually doing anything about it.

This picture shows how much trail width has been lost because ground covering plants have not been controlled. I suppose this is better than having it lathered with carcinogenic defoliants, but then a wider packed trail surface would achieve the same thing without poisoning anyone.

Even if they didn't remove the rails, the trail would be half again as wide if they just filled and packed up to the near rail.

Here's how much width they would gain if they got rid of the useless rails.

This section of protruding tie ends coincides with a retaining wall. An outbound cyclist, trying to accommodate oncoming traffic, can only fade to the right as far as the ends of the ties. An already narrow trail becomes even narrower. Those rude cyclists! Why do they insist on riding?

Two-way traffic has to get past each other in a space easily spanned by my short little legs.

Not much farther out, tie protrusion is much worse. Lots of dirty looks from pedestrians there, when the oncoming cyclist doesn't scooch right up against the rail to make room. When it's two cyclists passing, one or both equipped with the currently fashionable absurdly wide handlebars, you have to wonder why they don't get tangled more often. They should dismount, right?

What do you call a bike rider who dismounts? A pedestrian.

Approaching Mast Landing you get another good look at wasted space and more protruding tie ends. The rail crossing at the boat ramp has been considerably improved. They filled it in so that the rails are flush with the pavement. This makes them useless to the rail car people, but still slippery when wet for the riders. Non-skid tape is applied occasionally... it's one of the better crossings, and yet it wouldn't need to be there at all if the unused rails were removed.

Just past Mast Landing, the trail goes between the rails to traverse this little residential section. Residential or not, the right of way could support a comfortably wide trail with the rails removed, and it wouldn't turn into the "Cotton Valley Canal" after a heavy rain. Cotton Valley Canal sections are common between here and the Allen A. The rails hold water in the trail bed, just like an aqueduct. If you get there soon enough after a heavy rain, you can ride in water inches deep for many yards. Many, many yards. Riding it during a downpour last week, I was pedaling up a flowing stream for miles, not mere yards.

Welcome to the jungle. These shade-tolerant shrubs, well-watered by the irrigation provided by the Cotton Valley Canal, are flourishing under the conspicuous lack of maintenance.

This shot shows how much trail is lost to the plants. My right foot isn't quite at the rail that indicates the already inadequate width of trail available without the incursion of the foliage.

Here's some trailside erosion on the Crescent Lake causeway. If a rider moves right and wants to put a foot down, it's a long way down. And this is a minor example of erosion compared to the next causeway, across Lake Wentworth.

Imagine this part of the causeway without rails. There's plenty of width for more trail as well as the trailside benches and fishing spots that users already enjoy.

And then there's this. The erosion is undercutting the trail. The rails may be holding it in, but their long-term, barely utilized presence has prevented anyone from properly stabilizing and grading the causeway for longer-term survival and usability.

Beyond Whitten Neck Road, the trail takes a fun little up-and-over, leading to a level section with some sweeping bends. Nice! Except when it rains.

 See the rails over there? They're on a built up level with ditches on either side. And basically no one uses them. The path, meanwhile, is over here, with a little swale to the left and a slope to the right, channeling runoff into it.

At the end of this stretch, the path kinks left to launch riders into another section between the rails.

When I walked the path on Sunday, I saw riders coming toward me as I approached that crossing. As a rider myself, I knew what I would want a pedestrian to do. I walked up to the right of the rails rather than stepping between them exactly at the crossing. I had barely taken my first step on the tie ends right next to the path when I felt a burning pain in my left calf. A wasp stung me, because there was a ground nest in the tie end right next to the path.

That tie end, right there. The pale one with the crack in it. Don't forget your epi pen.

Next causeway, new erosion issues. Here you can see that the fill has actually started to wash down from between the rails. That can spread quickly. 

Here's the outlet and its little gully.

Here are another couple of shots of nasty things for a cyclist to land on if an encounter with oncoming traffic goes wrong. It also shows more of the deterioration of the causeway structure itself.

Looking back toward the causeway, this is just another example of space wasted on the unused rails. On heavy traffic days, riders fan out onto the grass to gain a few places before they get squeezed between the rails again.

This sandy road crossing is usually quite unstable. When the sand is dry, it's very fluffy. The shape of the path going through the crossing does not help a rider set up a good, square angle of attack.

 On the plus side, the rails are often covered by the sand, so they're not as much of a crash hazard. On the minus side, on the rare occasions when a rail car user has come through, the rails are freshly dug out and protruding, and the sand is still soft and treacherous. If the rails are only dug out for "maintenance" operations on the non-motorized facilities of the trail, the danger they present is not worth the benefit they confer. That could be achieved in better ways. This spring, trail crews didn't use rail cars. They drove their personal vehicles in and half-blocked the path with them.

Here's more encroaching vegetation on the approach to the diversion into the Allen A Beach parking area.

I call this Pinch Flat Bridge. The edge of it protrudes more and more as fill settles and washes away. It gets refilled maybe once or twice a year. You get used to it.

The diversion into the Allen A isn't wide, but it's fun. For some reason it just works. 

When traffic is heavy, a rider can stay on the dirt road outside the trail, dive through a few yards down there at the corner, and bail into the beach parking lot itself to reach another dirt road on the far side.

Just watch out for Thumpy Stump, just before the corner. Thumpy Stump has been there for years. You get used to it. But it does suddenly reduce the available space to maneuver past each other.

The parking lot has a big gate in this fence, which is never closed. The path goes in this little gap. It was supposed to serve some purpose at some time. Now it's just another meaningless obstacle, as far as I can tell.

This fallen tree hasn't become a landmark yet, but it's been down for more than a week.

Because I didn't walk any further, I have no pictures beyond this point. There are railed sections between the Allen A and Route 109, all of which would be improved by the removal of the rails. They're just short bridges, but the sharp turns to get between and move out from the rails make them dangerous. The rails protrude when the fill settles, and minor crossings are more likely to be overlooked in a big list of maintenance tasks.

I do like the zigzag maneuvers that relieve the tedium of straight-ahead riding so common on rail trails. In a rail-less environment, I wouldn't mind seeing the ghosts of the crossings left there just to break the monotony. The trail could still be wider and smoother than it is, with the occasional chicane for entertainment. A wider trail would benefit all non-motorized users in and out of the railed sections.

Beyond Fernald, riders are still stuck with the rails for the foreseeable future. You take what you can get. Bike riders represent a much larger demographic than the rail car club, providing a more consistent economic engine. Accommodating them and encouraging them would make financial sense. But maybe a cost/benefit analysis would show that the returns wouldn't be worth the investment. As the trail is currently built, it does send business to the local hospital, and sometimes all the way to Boston, if the injuries are worth the air lift. We just have to work on attracting riders with good health insurance.

For Whom the Bell Dings

On the noisy streets, a bicycle bell is just about useless. An air horn and a flamethrower would be good. But on multi-use paths a bicycle bell is apparently an important social convention.

I have ridden sections of the local trail for years, announcing myself to pedestrians simply by speaking to them, or with the routine noises of tires on crushed stone. At my job, I hate being summoned by a bell. It seems so peremptory and condescending. You ring for the servants. You don't ring for a respected professional or craftsperson. I thought people might prefer the human touch. Funny that: I'm not very fond of talking to strangers. And I'm not trying to strike up a  conversation when I make a human sound to warn them of my presence.

The response was almost always faintly or overtly hostile.

So I finally got a bell. I don't like little dingy bells, or cheesy, staccato ringers. Even the one I settled on was ultimately just good enough. I'd prefer something with a deep enough tone that it is more felt than heard, but it would probably have to be made of bronze and weigh a thousand pounds. That's the gong I want at home, too. I want some enormous temple gong that groans out an earth-trembling tone that makes the villagers in the next valley lift their heads.

On the bike, I have something that goes "ding!"

Of Lezyne's offerings, this one had the lowest tone. The least highest, I should say. And it sustains fairly nicely, though not as nicely as the one a customer came in with last week. He said he needed it to ride on a path in Canada, where they are required equipment. His bell had no brand markings at all. Its tone was higher than I want, but it sustains forever. It launched me on the hunt for something with a deeper voice, and similar duration. And by the way, it needs to fit on my already crowded handlebar.

The Lezyne attaches with elastic bands, so I can transfer it from bike to bike easily. As shown here, it is riding on top of a Planet Bike Beamer that I use as a front blinky and supplemental short-range light. It'll do for now.

On the first evening commute with it, I came up behind two people. When I got close enough to figure I could ring and pass in a smooth, concise maneuver, I gave it a ding. The pedestrians leaped aside and stood almost at attention. No dirty looks. No snide or snarly comments. Wow.

A little further out, on a causeway with water on either side, I had the opportunity to ding again. The walkers practically threw themselves into the lake, again without visible irritation.

Talk about conditioning. Ding! Leap! The results have been roughly the same on each ride since the first.

Oncoming pedestrians still look like they consider me a nuisance and an affront. I have not yet tried dinging at them to see if it transforms them abruptly into obedient robots. I don't want power to corrupt me.

Commuting like your life depended on it

As a person ages, regular exercise becomes more important to keep the body moving and the mind engaged. Well before you reach the point where someone is holding your elbow and guiding you gently across the carpeted floor of the nice facility in which you spend your last days, you'll get around better if you do as much as you can under your own power.

Wolfeboro is full of old people. The median age in New Hampshire is rising in general, but certain towns attract retirees, meaning that the population is not only aging in place, it's recruiting people who have left the work force. This provides a lot of subjects to observe.

As I watch the retirees through the years, I see that the active ones  -- not surprisingly -- do better than the inactive ones. The local working-age commuters also enjoy an automatically better fitness base. Because of my foolish life choices, I'll be in the work force until they dump my body in an unmarked grave. So it's vitally important to me to stay in shape and save money. Transportation cycling, even for half the year, makes a critical difference.

The bike path system in town draws the largest percentage of locals who pedal. Anyone not fortunate enough to live within a half-mile or less of an access point is very likely to drive to the trail, unload the bikes, perform their obligatory exercise, and drive off to whatever is next. This is also true of many riders who are not yet retired, especially in tourist season. The Cotton Valley Trail is about to be completed all the way from Wolfeboro to Wakefield, fulfilling a plan published back in the 1990s. This makes it a destination journey for people who like to drive around, sampling different paths and trails.

The trails also attract walkers, some with dogs, some with strollers. During peak usage periods, riders have to negotiate this crowd, and the non-riders have to put up with the cyclists.

Walking is actually the best way to get around the tight center of Wolfeboro. I use the bike to get to town, but for any errands right in downtown I will walk, making better time than anyone on wheels when the traffic is at its height. Even when traffic is sparse, a cyclist will have to negotiate left turns and hills, and then find a secure place to park. If the distance is a half-mile or less, hoof it.

On trails or on the road, the vast majority of riding is done for recreation and exercise, separate from the utilitarian needs of daily life. A tiny handful of people use bikes for transportation. Most of them have an athletic background of some kind. We slip through Wolfeboro's legendary summer traffic with ease, but the prisoners of internal combustion all have their reasons to stay sealed in the can, barely moving on a really bad day. They're right: the blockage only lasts for a little over two miles at its worst. Then they can rip along, formation flying with their fellow motorists, far faster than some sweaty idiot pushing on bike pedals.

In the winter, I do not push bike pedals. With access to the cross-country ski trails, and a love of winter hiking and mountaineering, I have always set aside the bike when icy roads and encroaching snowbanks made it an unfair imposition on the road users who really truly can't get around any other way. Loggers and tradesmen need trucks. People who have to cover a lot of distance need to go faster than 15-20 miles per hour. We're all in this together. Yes, many road users could benefit physically and economically if they left the car home and pedaled on the errands on which you see them out there, but a lot needs to be done to make that easy and inviting. Right now it intimidates them.

In winters with little or no snow, the roads are as clear as in summer. Then I will ride, because I am not fenced in by a snowbank.

At some point, even a fit and healthy person starts to get physical problems. A slowing metabolism means that the pounds pile on much more quickly when the exercising stops. If people have walkable and bikeable routes to routine destinations, they have the option to leave the armored wheelchair in the garage, and get a little more conditioning without having to think about it. They'll never believe that they could change the traffic mix in their favor if they all just went for it. They stay in their vehicles, scaring themselves and each other so that only a few at a time ever give it a shot. And then it scares them, so they go back into the car.

Some people love their cars and would never consider getting around by bike. And they don't automatically rot away after age 70 as a stark warning of the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle. Some people manage to live long lives of happy smoking. There's no guaranteed formula. But the odds favor someone who remains active. I feel decrepitude eagerly hook its claws into me when I'm forced to be inactive. Even though the commute sometimes just feels like a treadmill grinding me toward my anonymous death, I know that it is helping me.

A mess of unreliable Styrofoam

This morning's park and ride started out promisingly enough. The dirt road had thawed and frozen numerous times, creating such continuous bumps that the video I shot is basically unwatchable. But it was firm and fairly fast.

I figured with heavy snow to end November and a couple of fresheners on top of it that the local snowmobilers would have been up and down the Cotton Valley Trail, packing it to concrete. We've had a lot of warm and wet weather as well, but the snow was so dense and the sun is so weak that the cover is still thick and durable in most places. If past snow seasons were any guide, the motorheads should have been out with the enthusiasm and loud buzzing of the first mosquitoes of springtime.

I figured wrong. The Cotton Valley Trail had one set of ATV tracks on it, making a pair of awkwardly spaced ruts down through the crunchy, collapsible snowpack. The ruts were each too narrow to ride in. Only a little wobble and I would catch the edge. The center wouldn't support my weight,...except when it would. The center was also narrow enough that my waggles as I tried to grunt my way down the unpacked snow would dump me into one of the ruts again.

I dismounted and tried running with the bike for a while, to see if conditions improved. They did not. I turned and ran the bike back to the paved road so I could grind my way back up to the car.

I'm not sure a fat bike would have fared much better. The stiff, crunchy snow would provide plenty of support, but the ATV ruts would be just as much of a nuisance. The fat tires might even make it worse, being more prone to catch the sides. I don't have access to a fat bike to test it, so I have no way to be sure. Because fat bikes have become something of a status symbol, I fear reviews will have at least a bit of bias. I prefer to do my own testing and draw my own conclusion.

I would not commute on anything that did not have lights and fenders. The already bulky fat bike becomes even more cartoonish when you start accessorizing. And then there's the expense, especially for a set of studded tires. It might extend the commuting season considerably, but the big challenge to the park and ride has always been the park more than the ride. If I'm going to ride all the way from home I might as well use one of the bikes I already have.  And I'm not going to ride all the way from home in the dark and the iciness with a bunch of half-hibernating drivers.

The ultimate utility bike would be a fat bike with an alternate set of wheels set up for wide 700c tires. But you'd still have to choose which set to mount that day. You could carry the alternate set along, but that goes way beyond ridiculous.

All the shenanigans on the bike meant that I did not get to work until after the Three Stooges had broken a light fixture in our clothing department and showered more debris down on the workshop as they smashed up a couple of bathtubs with sledgehammers. The rest of the day was pretty quiet.

Dog crap and dirt bikes

The Cotton Valley Trail has become outlaw country. Tracks reveal that dirt bikes -- the motorized kind -- have been cruising it regularly now that the permitted users have thinned out to nearly none.

The dog walkers have quit picking up after their pets. The way a knobby tire flings the feces must be rough on the dirt bikers. It explains why the tracks show them riding side by side rather than one following directly behind the other.

I'm grateful for my fenders. However, I did grab a big handful of dog dookie that was stuck to the down tube when I hoisted my bike onto its hook at work.

Dog crap is much more of a path problem than a road problem. Dogs seldom stop for a squat on a road. They might hit the gutter or the sidewalk, but not usually the travel lane. But I constantly encounter dog crap on the fat tires of people's path bikes. It's an occupational hazard. And when I ride the path I'm in the same minefield.

Today I saw something else to think about.

This morning, about a hundred yards out from the first bridge I cross on the trail, I spotted a dark-clad figure on it. It was suddenly joined by another, and another, the way a flock of wild turkeys will file out of the woods. As I got closer I could see three cheap bikes and assess the attire of the bearded young men. They looked like they might be living under that bridge. Homelessness looks different in a rural area, where the dispossessed can disperse to many more unobserved campsites than in an urban setting. Or they could have been a few dudes out groovin' on the woods on the only bikes they can afford.

If people are living under that bridge it could make the ride in the dark a little creepier. I have sympathy for the down and out, since I fully expect to end my days among them. But I also don't like to meet new people by headlamp on a dark trail by myself.

Guess I'll find out tonight.

Halloween tricks

Heading down from my parking spot this morning I was shooting a short video of the scenery when I spotted heavy equipment up ahead. I left the camera on for the pass.

Stuff like this illustrates why I use the mountain bike for these commutes. The Cross Check could handle the majority of conditions, but when I'm on a schedule I want to be ready for any likely complication.

Close in to town I came to the next trick for the day, this fallen tree.

The real trick is that it was still there at dusk. It had sagged lower, so I couldn't fit beneath it while pedaling. Probably no one will ride in the dark, but if they did they would pile into this thing for sure. I wrestled with it for several minutes trying to figure out some jujutsu that would let me shove it aside, but I got nowhere. Someone else's efforts may have lowered it from its morning height.

On the ride out as dusk deepened to darkness and I left behind the two or three other human beings I'd seen on the path I got a solid whiff of brimstone. Nice touch. No idea where it came from.

I rode undisturbed by human or wraith until I reached the long straight stretch of track leading to Bryant Road, where I leave the path to head up hill. Far ahead I saw a white light. I could not tell whether it was on my side of Bryant or beyond. Below it I saw a strange shimmering. I was headed toward it anyway, so I knew I would get a better look. It held my gaze the way a light in the darkness does. The upper light was no doubt someone's headlamp, but what was that wavering business down below it?

Finally I was close enough to tell that the shimmery bit was the legs of a dog walking in the edge of the high intensity light, fur gleaming silver as the legs moved. Cooool.

Wet leaves

After shooting a few hours of boring video of commute after commute I quit using the helmet cam again. On the path I come face to face with pedestrians. The camera seems extra intrusive after I already intruded by riding through anyway. And it wasn't capturing the essence of the experience. But I should have had it on Saturday morning.

After four days of rain and wind, wet leaves littered the ground, drifted into piles and shoals in some places, swept away in others. I entered the path with due caution, crossing a rail because the path runs between them there. The rails were wet, but the ground was clear.

The path exits the rails a few hundred yards down. Wet leaves were piled on the slimy wood of the crossing platform. I slowed way down and shifted my weight to stand the bike up for the tight, low-speed crossing. Ordinarily, when the rails are the primary obstacle, you cross by leaning the bike to the outside of the turn, cutting the front wheel as far as you can in the space you have. Shift your body weight to the inside of the turn as you enter it and bring the bike after you. It's a fluid snap. Too fast and you can't articulate the bike properly. Too slow and you wobble, unable to maintain the proper angle.

Add wet leaves and it's a whole new game. Doing a reasonable speed to cross rails, even wet rails, I never even reached the rails. When I cut the front wheel to the left the bike kept going straight down the track out from under me. I had already projected my weight into the turn, preparing to twitch the bike through the crossing and resume speed. Instead I ejected as the bike went its own way.

Helmet cam and at least one external point of view would have captured the maneuver for enjoyment over and over.

Without knowing how I did it I landed on fingertips and toes, unharmed. I picked up the bike, also unharmed, and continued my journey.

I made this video tonight in the garage to try to analyze the rail crossing waggle. It's a pretty standard low-speed turn. You have to imagine a slightly protrusive rail at the apex of it.

I'd already spent a couple of hours trying to draw illustrative cartoons of the procedure. It was harder than I thought, even to doodle a crude rendering of the positions. I'll keep fooling with it, but not tonight.

As darkness falls

Last night I headed out under cloudy skies in summer-like heat to ride the path and back roads back out to my car.

The path is not totally deserted yet, even in the outer reaches, but away from town other users are getting pretty scarce. So I might see the occasional dog walker or I might not.

I saw something. It was way out ahead of me. Dusk was not too deep yet, but against the backdrop of forest this black animal was hard to make out. Ordinarily I see a black animal without a white stripe and I figure it's a bear. They're pretty common. But when I got a profile shot this looked doglike. I thought I could see the downward sweep of a canine tail. But it was a hundred yards away in failing light. It was not near a house. It was not accompanied by a human. When I got to where it had entered the woods there was no trail. It had simply melted into the vegetation.

Here I am, unmauled and not even inconvenienced. But I wondered, not for the first time, what I don't see when I'm riding in full darkness the whole way.

October is spooky because the nights are getting longer while leaves remain on the trees to make the darkness darker under forest cover. Once November gets well established spooky just turns to dismal.

If something does come after you on a rail trail you can only flee in one direction or the other. The Cotton Valley Trail is so narrow in many places you wouldn't be able to reverse course anyway. I'll load up on garlic, silver bullets and whatnot to get through the next few weeks.

Cotton Valley Trail bastards

I'm going to go ahead and kick a hornet's nest and throw it into a feces tornado.

If you ride the Cotton Valley Trail in Wolfeboro you are already familiar with the treacherous rail crossings and the dicey two way sections where bikes have to pass each other in the space between the rails. The reason for the rails is rarely evident, but they're there because rail car hobbyists use their little cars on the old line.  They would only permit the trail to exist if they got to keep the rails.

We coexist. They've done a lot of work out there. Some of them are actually cool about it. But a car this morning came straight at me with no intention of slowing, stopping or backing up, even though I was moving fast, down grade, and had both a blinking and a steady high intensity headlight on.

Obviously some of the rail car people consider themselves the primary users out there and they're willing to draw blood to verify that claim. I bailed to avoid the collision while the two dubs in the rail car looked straight out the windshield of their motorized conveyance, sunglasses on, as expressionless as a couple of terminator robots.

So, Wolfe City riders, watch out on the Cotton Valley Trail. The terminators may be out. By their own edict and willingness to inflict harm on non motorized users,  THEY HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY. If these people with their motorized toys are going to pretend they are train traffic on an active rail line, they put every other user at risk when a cyclist or pedestrian gets caught between the rails in one of the long stretches.

Turning heads

For various reasons I have made my autumn conversion from full road commutes to park-and-rides. This puts me on the Cotton Valley Trail, aka the DERT (Disappointing Example of a Rail Trail) for almost six miles each way.

The DERT was built with the rails in place. Long sections run between the rails, giving inadequate space for comfortable, safe passing when bikes meet from opposite directions. The fill varies from firm packed mineral products to loose granules that are only secure to ride on after a soaking rain gives them temporary consolidation. Numerous rail crossings challenge the rider throughout the trail's length. There have been many injuries. In spite of these statistics, the rail users responsible for its shortcomings are quite defensive of their role in its construction. Such ironies seem to make up much of life.

For me it boils down to this: I get the best use out of the path when cold weather has driven nearly all other users off it. I can deal with the crossings at my own speed and nearly never have to accommodate oncoming bike traffic. It angles away from my regular route, so it doesn't tempt me in the warmer, lighter months unless I take a fun but lengthy detour over a mostly dirt road. I used to ride that detour a lot. Now I want the time more than the pretty, traffic-free route. But in the dark and chilly end of the commuting season I can salvage bike miles and save some gasoline by resorting to the path.

Only the first mile of the ride home uses streets. For those I run the whole light array in all its flashing splendor. Once on the path, however, I don't need all the flashing lights because no motor vehicles are going to mow me down. If one does, the operator has to be pretty messed up to get on the path in the first place. The only somewhat likely candidate would be a dirt biker or someone poaching the path on an ATV.

By reducing my lights to the single head and tail light powered by the generator I present a more vehicular aspect. I've noticed cars slow way down when they're on a road that crosses the path and I'm coming up to the intersection in the dark. I wonder if I have been reported as a motor vehicle on the path. One car that slowed almost to a stop while crossing was far enough along to have passed without the slightest risk to either of us. Only the strength of my headlight drew their eye and sparked their curiosity. Coming out of a dark path where they probably expect no one at this time of year makes it particularly conspicuous.

The Rails Run Parallel and the Parallels are Interesting

Members of the Cotton Valley Rail Trail Club found my post about injuries on the trail and started chewing on me in the comments.

One point in particular stood out. The aggrieved rail car operator pointed out that bicyclists could ride in a great many places, but the rail car drivers can only operate on a couple of lines in the entire region. Enthusiasts drive hundreds of miles with their rigs on trailers to run the Cotton Valley line.

While I'm no fan of recreational burning of fossil fuels, I have an open enough mind to accept that not everyone will see the sense in that point of view. People like what they like. I don't know what went into the negotiations when the trail was conceived, but it seems generous of the rail buffs to try to accommodate other classes of user.

Viewed in this way, one must describe the Cotton Valley Trail as a rail line that pedestrians and bicyclists get to use rather than a bike-ped trail strangely hindered by vestigial rails. It's the rail club's separate but unequal piece of rail because they CAN'T go play on the big-boy tracks with the real trains. They've been run off to a segregated venue where they won't interfere with the real business of transportation.

Wolfeboro Rail Trail Sends More Victims on Express Train to ER

Over the weekend, Wolfeboro's problematic recreation trail claimed at least two more victims, sending one of them to the emergency room with a broken hip. That rider is one of the leading kidney disease researchers in the United States. The other victim would have gone to the emergency room, but said he was vacationing with a relative who is a doctor, so he would get patched up by her.

Earlier in the week we had repaired a hybrid bike for a rider who said the rear tire jammed in one of the rail crossings while she was towing a trail-a-bike. Apparently the bike sufferd the serious injuries in that case. The rear wheel was ruined.

Dr. Kidney is a very benevolent human being and an experienced road rider. He and his companions usually ride the road when they visit. For some reason he decided to check out the path. We did not know he was headed that way, or we would certainly have warned him about the trail's peculiarities.

I've joked that we should cross-promote with the hospital when we do bike rentals. We could offer a discount coupon or a gift basket of first aid supplies. But Dr. Kidney's injuries are no joke. He has been extremely helpful to people near to me who are in research studies for polycystic kidney disease. He and the other study doctors can't do anything about the fact that we have no health coverage, but it somehow feels a little better just being able to talk to him.

When we heard about the crash a couple of us really felt like heading over to the tracks with sledge hammers. It wouldn't fix the many treacherous spots designed into the trail, but it would help us pound out our frustration at it. It's basically a tantalizing trap, an illusion of a trail. We warn every rental group.

Wolfeboro's trail is certainly one of the best examples of so-called biking infrastructure that is actually harmful. We make do with scraps of money and awkward mergers. In this case it's a rail car club that insisted the rails be left or the trail could not be built at all. Perhaps one or more of their members should be required to pull a shift every day to help evacuate the injured.