The Blog Page

News, commentary and humor about bicycling and other topics of the day

 

Edwardsville Intelligencer speaks out on cyclists

The Edwardsville Intelligencer says there are a lot of reasons to ride a bicycle, but the newspaper on Thursday spoke out against cyclists who break the law.

Edwardsville always has been one of the most bicycle-friendly communities in the St. Louis metropolitan area, as evidenced by all the trails that go through the community. There were considerably fewer trails in Edwardsville 20 years ago when I lived there, but I had few troubles riding on the streets of the city and the rural roads that surround it.

I just hope cyclists heed the warning so the city will maintain its bicycle-friendly reputation.

Roger 0 comments 12:57 AM

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Katy Trail article in Post-Dispatch

The eastern 11 miles of the Katy Trail from St. Charles, Mo., to Machens, Mo., remain unfinished. The Post-Dispatch takes a look into the reasons for that delay in its Sunday edition.

Quoting from the article: "While momentum has been building over the past several months to get the trail extended from its westernmost point in Clinton to Kansas City, the effort on this side of the state to complete the trail to Machens has moved in fits and starts. The section of trail has long been depicted on Katy Trail maps as a dotted line."

Roger 0 comments 10:17 PM

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Time for catching up

Forgive me readers. It's been 12 days since my last blog.

Last week, I spent Wednesday and Thursday in beautiful Duluth, Minn. to visit the Duluth News Tribune for some job-related business. The News Tribune and the Belleville News-Democrat are Knight Ridder papers, and I spent time talking with editors and observing the News Tribune's operations. The News Tribune is a good newspaper, and it is seeking ways to become a better paper.

Duluth is a pretty city along the shore of Lake Superior. The leaves were starting to turn, and the temperatures were just right, at least as far as I'm concerned. It seems pretty vibrant for a city of about 83,000 people, and undoubtedly it is because of its importance as a port and tourist city. And, it is hilly!

The big news in Minnesota last week was Northwest Airlines filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. That indirectly affected me because Northwest is the only airline serving Duluth.

The flight to Duluth was relatively uneventful except for a pleasant surprise shortly after checking in at St. Louis-Lambert International Airport. I arrived at the gate half-asleep when I heard someone call my name. I looked around, and I saw Laura Buss, who works in the News-Democrat's pre-press department and is married to News-Democrat business writer Will Buss. It turned out Laura, her father and her sister were on the same flight to Minneapolis. While I would be catching a connecting flight to Duluth, they were on their way to Vancouver, British Columbia, for a cruise along the Canadian and Alaskan coasts. Lucky them!

The flight back were more eventful because the impact of Northwest's bankruptcy were starting to kick in. They had to merge two flights into one from Duluth to Minneapolis, which meant I left Duluth earlier than scheduled. The bad news was that I had to wait more than two-and-a-half hours in Minneapolis until the scheduled time for my connecting flight to St. Louis. To top that off, that flight took off 40 minutes late because we had to wait for a another late flight that had passengers heading for St. Louis.

There was no rest for the weary. On Friday and Saturday, I had to plot and map the route for the Belleville Area Bicycling and Eating Society's Ravissant Winery Ride. I found a program that saves me time -- and gas money -- in plotting the route. The Google Map Pedometer is designed for people plotting walking and running routes, but it works well for cycling routes as well. I found the numbers to be pretty accurate, and it really helps when you're developing cue sheets for the ride. My knowledge of QuarkXpress and Photoshop also help, and you can see the results on this PDF file.

Yesterday, I got on my bicycle for the first time since Sept. 11. I rode the Schoolhouse Trail up to Glen Carbon. It's not officially open because an overpass at Illinois Route 162 between Troy and Maryville isn't finished and the trail to lead people through the busy roads near Cottonwood Mall isn't finished. Instead, I turned off the Glen Carbon Heritage Trail and took it all the way to Silver Creek. It will be great when the trail is finished to Marine, and it will be even better when the trail is paved with asphalt. Right now, it is an oil-and-chip surface. Oil-and-chip surfaces can be OK for road bikes if there is enough vehicle traffic to pack it down, but oil-and-chip is not appropriate for bicycle trails because there isn't enough traffic to pack down the rock, making for some hazardous cycling.

I promise to blog more often. For my penance, I will read Emily Priddy's 26.2 for 66 blog and Kristen Foht's Kommentary by Kritter blog.

Roger 0 comments 9:53 AM

Friday, September 09, 2005

Tour de Stooges T-shirt brings joy

Jim Mashek, a sports columnist for The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., no longer has a home thanks to Hurricane Katrina but he does have the finest in Tour de Stooges wear. When Mashek heard about the ride he insisted on having a T-shirt. The FedEx package that came the next day brought a big grin to this homeless Stooge. "Can I get one of those T's," Mashek asked? "Why soit-en-ly," he was told. In fact, "pick two!"

That was the cutline information I received from Brad Weisenstein on Thursday night hours after Sun Herald sports columnist Jim Mashek received his Tour de Stooges T-shirt. FedEx picked up the package about 6 p.m. Wednesday, and the shirt was in Jim's hands Thursday morning. I really was amazed Jim got his shirt that quickly, given the situation around Biloxi and Gulfport.

"He was ecstatic. He was so freakin' happy, he couldn't believe it," Brad said in a message he left on my answering machine.

As I mentioned yesterday, a Tour de Stooges shirt seemed insignicant, considering how many necessities -- food, water, building materials, etc. -- are needed.

But not to Jim.

"That was the happiest I've seen him since I've been down here," Brad said during a phone conversation Thursday afternoon. "And that's real important right now."

Roger 0 comments 2:32 AM

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Powerful stuff from Biloxi, Miss.

A lot of good journalism has taken place in the week and a half since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. Much of it is being done by the papers in the cities hardest hit by the storm.

The Biloxi (Miss.) Sun Herald, a Knight Ridder newspaper, needed a lot of help from sister Knight Ridder papers throughout the country. Belleville News-Democrat Assistant City Editor Brad Weisenstein and reporter George Pawlaczyk heeded the call.

It's been nearly 25 years since I first met Brad when we were attending journalism classes at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and Brad has remained one of my closest friends from that experience. While in Biloxi, Brad has edited copy and moved copy onto the Sun Herald's Web site.

Brad is sharing some of his experiences in Biloxi on a blog that's appearing on the Belleville News-Democrat's Web site. Here's some snippets from the accounts he's written so far:

• 'Words don't cut it': Hit Biloxi about 4:30 a.m. Thursday and find out the directions are wrong, or we got them wrong. Drive around, worried about martial law, but National Guardsmen were kids from Alabama who were just bored. No one hardly on the roads as we drive through city that should be renamed Bosnia. Get to the casino district, where we suspect the paper is, and they look like the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City after the bombing. Other casinos the same. Cathedral across the street virtually untouched.

  Only light is from the hospital, where thrum of generators is heard. Driving past twisted metal, brush and limbs, swerving around downed traffic lights and power lines dangling in the middle of the road. Along the coast road, sand has been scraped away like snow, as early light comes up. Talk about being on the line between heaven and hell. Beautiful Gulf with sun coming up on one side while city's been turned into a huge landfill on the other. Lots of pines down, but live oaks survived and some streets still look like the drive into Tara. (Just don't look at the plantation house.)

• Feds aren't getting it done, but the regular folks are: Sunday was about as strange and diverse a day as I've had.

  It began in the office with a call from a helicopter pilot who was here with six others from Texas and Florida, plus four choppers. They were mad at the relief folks and National Guard for wasting their time Saturday by letting them sit. They called the newspaper to find out where the need was so they could help someone. I sent them to western Hancock County, a rural area past the devastated Bay St. Louis area. People are living in the woods out there and have next to nothing.

  Also got a call from a nurse with a big U-Haul she filled with food, water, clothes and personal hygiene items. She couldn't get anyone to tell her where it should go, so she too called the newspaper. Again, I sent her to the west and gave her a backup spot at the hospital out there. Others called and I told them to contact their churches and have them contact churches here. The feds aren't getting it done, but the regular folks are.

• So much hope and hopelessness all mixed together here: We asked everyone we met whether they needed anything. One guy took a box of MREs, but his neighbors were fussing at him, saying he didn't really need it. Military trucks and kids with M-16s all over the place, and lots of supplies evident. Went through Waveland and saw a television crew from SIUC (Southern Illinois University Carbondale). They said Oprah Winfrey hired them through a service and had filmed her show in front of a house that still had some of its second story supported on beams, but the first floor was gone.

  We found people with lots of items and a stockpile of water in front of one house. We stopped and did a story about a woman named Patricia Green, who has 24 people living on her home lot, but not in the flood-damaged, moldy house. They've gathered the necessities and are making survival an art. They can't go in the house for long because of the mold. They cook on a gas burner used for shrimp boils, but I left my Coleman stove and three canisters of propane when Patricia talked about really wishing she had a two-burner stove. Their home was a tarp and a porch, but they had their sense of humor. They refuse to leave, not being able to see a life outside their home, even though they are outside their home.

  On the way back we saw a sport biker on the side of the road, about halfway in from his commute to NASA's Stennis Space Center. He's a SeaBee who drives and is a mechanic for boats that deliver Navy Seals to shore. His 1991 Suzuki had a tank full of what looked like Italian salad dressing, so I suspect some son of a gun sold him watered down gas. We siphoned out the old gas, gave him some new and followed him back home to Gulfport.

Brad called me Wednesday morning to ask me a favor. One of the Sun Herald's sports columnists, Jim Mashek, is a Three Stooges nut. Kind of like me. Brad thought it might be a good idea for me to send him a T-shirt from the Tour de Stooges if we had one available. Jim wanted a 2XL, but we only had an XL and a L left. Although the shirts were sold out, the man who wanted the shirts never sent the money, so I figured the shirts were fair game.

I went over to the Gateway Council of Hostelling International's office in St. Louis to pick up the XL shirt and sent it FedEx to Jim in Gulfport, Miss.

I suppose in the big scheme of things, a Tour de Stooges T-shirt doesn't mean much when people need food, water, gasoline, medicine and a place to stay. But I'm hoping Jim will get some joy from the shirt. Even in the bleakest times, joy is needed to keep hope alive.

Meanwhile, on the home page of this Web site, I've posted links and listed phone numbers for the American Red Cross, Catholic Charities USA and The Salvation Army. If you haven't done so already, please make a donation.

Roger 0 comments 1:17 AM

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Bicycle route proposed for Route 66

The League of Illinois Bicyclists wants local governments to get behind a plan to create a bicycle route along historic Route 66 all the way from Chicago to St. Louis.

Ed Barsotti, LIB's executive director, told the Pontiac (Ill.) Daily Leader on Tuesday that "of all the requests we receive for route suggestions, Route 66 is number one. Bicyclists from Illinois to Europe are interested in Route 66."

The Daily Leader also published a story Wednesday about the Route 66 bike route in Lexington County, Ill.

"The Route 66 project consists of two separate stages," Barsotti noted in response to an e-mail inquiry from the Daily Leader. "First is to identify a 'best available route' that cyclists (and others) could use NOW. The second is a coordination of local agencies to plan for Route 66 improvements that would be implemented over time. We (League of Illinois Bicyclists) are working with IDNR (Illinois Department of Natural Resources) and local folks (agencies, citizens) on the first stage.

"The output will be a touring guidebook detailing the route and all its turns; accommodations like motels, food, etc.; and some brief info on interesting Route 66 attractions along the way. We've already created similar guidebooks for the "Grand Illinois Trail" (www.bikelib.org/trails/git) and "Illinois' Mississippi River Trail" (www.bikelib.org/mrt).

"The audience we're focusing on are average adult bicyclists who are fairly comfortable on roads, as long as the traffic volume is low enough. The vast majority of the route will be on-road, plus any off-road bike trails that presently exist (such as in Lexington). The preference is to use the existing historic signed route. Where traffic is above a certain level, we'll use alternative paved roads."

Of course, the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, which used to carry Route 66 drivers from St. Louis into Illinois, is now open to bicyclists and pedestrians. Much of Madison County Transit's trail system is roughly parallel to Route 66 between the bridge and Illinois Route 157 (also part of old Route 66) between Edwardsville and Hamel.

It will be interesting to see the route LIB comes up with. I'm particularly interested in how cyclists will be routed from Joliet to the eastern end of Route 66 in downtown Chicago.

Roger 1 comments 1:07 PM

Friday, September 02, 2005

BABES winery ride set for Sept. 18

Join the Belleville Area Bicycle and Eating Society on Sunday, Sept. 18, for our first-ever ride from the Ravissant Winery in Belleville, Ill. We are planning three routes ranging from about 15 miles to 35/40 miles. Meet at the winery at 11:30 a.m. and take off at noon. You'll return in time to listen to the sounds of Raven Moon, a bluegrass/acoustic band that will be playing at the winery from 2 to 5 p.m. The winery is at 5950 Town Hall Road in Belleville. From St. Louis, take Interstate 64 east across Poplar Street Bridge to Interstate 255 South to Illinois Route 15 east (Exit 17A). Go about 5 miles to the Frank Scott Parkway West exit. Turn left off exit, then turn right on Town Hall Road. In addition to wine, the winery has items like cheese, crackers and sausage. You may bring picnic baskets and coolers with food, but alcoholic beverages purchased outside the winery are prohibited. If you are planning to attend the ride, please RSVP ride leader Roger Kramer at babes@rogerkramercycling.org by Friday, Sept. 16. Ravissant will reserve parking and table space for us.

Roger 0 comments 1:51 PM