Urgent: I-81 Exit 150 Public Comment — Affects US Bike Route 76

***Repost of a message on the Virginia Bicycling Federation blog.***

Please submit a comment and help support bicycle accomodations in this project as is required by official VDOT policy. Bike Route 76 was established in for the 1976 US bicentennial and runs all the way to the west coast.

Urgent: I-81 Exit 150 (Roanoke-Cloverdale) Public Comment — Affects US Bike Route 76

via Virginia Bicycling Federation by admin on 3/13/12

The existing I-81 Exit 150 redesign project at Cloverdale does not include bicycle accommodations. This is a critical interchange for cyclists. The project includes portions of U.S Route 11 which is heavily used by local cyclists as well as by cyclists on U.S. Bike Route 76 to access Roanoke and other accommodations. The only opportunity we have to request that the project include bicycle accommodations is for you to comment by e-mail BEFORE MIDNIGHT THIS COMING SUNDAY, MARCH 18, which is when the public comment period closes. Comments must be submitted to saleminfo@vdot.virginia.gov and must include the subject heading "Interstate 150 Exit 150 Public Hearing Comment". You may use the following suggested comment if you wish:

Route 11 is heavily used by bicyclists traveling between Roanoke and Botetourt county and is also used by bicyclists traveling on US Bike Route 76 to access Roanoke and other accommodations. The present design does not provide any accommodation for bicyclists despite VDOT's policy that it should.

I request that representatives from VDOT meet with the Bicycle Advisory Committee of the Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Commission, and other stakeholders, to discuss how bicycle accommodations may be included in the I-81 Exit 150 project.

Thanks to Dave Harrison of the Blue Ridge Bicycle Club for this alert.

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The GAP

No, not the store. The Great Allegheny Passage, a rails to trails project that connects Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland. So if you're looking for a review of a pair of khakis and a polo shirt, this is the wrong blog post for you.

Anyway, there was a good write up about it in the Washington Post travel section about it this weekend which I read over my lunch break at work today. The reviewer did credit card touring, staying in hotels and B&Bs. While a bed and climate controlled environment would be nice every once in a while on a long tour, I'm more interested in bringing my tent with me and camping out most of the time.  Fortunately, there are lots of opportunities for camping along the GAP, too.

(From the Washington Post slide show associated with the article linked to above)

Now the nice thing about the GAP, of course, is that it connects with the C&O Canal Towpath in Cumberland, which runs all the way to Georgetown and the heart of Washington, DC. The other nice thing, as the article points out, is that all the climbs and descents are at railroad grades, meaning generally 2% or less. That makes the trip up and over the Appalachians a lot easier.

I went on an overnight bike trip on the C&O from  Alexandria, VA to around Harpers Ferry last summer. I stayed at the Huckleberry Hill hiker-biker campsite, right about milepost 63 of the C&O. That put me about 1/5 of the way to Pittsburgh, which is about 320 miles of trail riding from  DC. I hope one day to do the whole ride from Pittsburgh to DC or vice-versa. Allowing time for a little sightseeing along the way, I think that would make a very nice week of riding and camping, don't you?

The Original Rails to Trails?

Now that's what I call riding the rails! (from Strange Cosmos)

A novel approach to cross-country bike touring!

We Are the Tide

There's exciting news, and then there's exciting news!!! This falls into the latter category.

Blind Pilot's new album, We Are the Tide, is set to be released September 13. That much I knew. I was already excited, but thought I had to wait a couple more weeks to hear the whole album.

New album to be released September 13

But now, thanks to the great folks over at National Public Radio, the new album is now available for streaming in its entirety in the First Listen section of NPR. 

I'm streaming it now as I work on some readings for classes, and I'm impressed. Their last album was really good, and this album, while a tad slower at times, is solid. The music is really good. I strongly recommend checking it out. That $5 credit to Amazon mp3 that I have is definitely going towards the purchase of this album!

So, why does this great news make it to my cycling blog? There is a very direct connection here. As NPR points out, they

have logged thousands of miles' worth of touring on bicycles, even after Blind Pilot's audience grew well beyond the West Coast [...] With its broad appeal and good-natured grace, We Are the Tide stands to keep them off the bikes and in buses for the foreseeable future. Environmental impact aside, that can only be a good thing.

That's right, they toured on bicycles, instruments in tow. That's how I first heard of them... they were that band that had toured from Seattle to San Francisco, going from gig to gig by bicycle. And they're coming back to DC! I saw them last time they came through, and I hope to be in the audience for their next DC concert, even if they didn't ride their bikes all the way here from their native Portland, Oregon.

When I First Conceived of Bicycle Touring

Last month I went on my first overnight bike camping trip. I rode roughly 75 miles on back-to-back days, riding out to just past Harpers Ferry, WV and back. It was something I’d thought about doing for some time; I’d started thinking about doing this specific trip a couple months after I first started riding again a few years ago.

  

My bike and tent set up on my recent overnight bike trip on the C&O Canal

In a larger sense, though, I think the very first inklings of such a trip were born when I was still a teenager. I remember going to the beach with my dad in the Sandbridge area of Virginia Beach. At the southern end of Sandbridge, the paved road ends at Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge. South of that is False Cape State Park, which sits on the border with North Carolina.

View Larger Map

According to the state parks' official website, there is “[n]o vehicular access.” (By “no vehicular access” they mean cars. Bicycles are technically vehicles, just not motor vehicles, but I’ll let that little legal technicality slide for the purposes of this post.)

Anyway, back to my story. My dad and I went on almost yearly father-son camping trips from the time I was a little kid through the end of high school. Our camping trips were always car camping trips. We went to local state parks in Pennsylvania when we lived there. We went to places in Virginia, North Carolina, and later in upstate New York and even Québec.

False Cape State Park is not accessible by car. That meant our normal car camping modus operandi would not work. False Cape SP is, however, accessible on foot, on horseback, and by bike. I think it’s maybe 10 miles or so to the camping area. I had the idea that my dad and I should sometime take our bikes to Sandbridge and ride to the park’s primitive camping area by bike.

(Primitive Camping and Beach Views at False Cape State Park, from official Flickr page)

I didn’t figure out any specific logistics and I wasn’t yet hip to the world of racks and panniers and all the things that can make bike travel easier and more convenient. But we each had a mountain bike, and I figured for an overnight trip we could probably get everything we would need (a tent, a few cans of food, toiletries, and maybe some water) in a couple backpacks. Incidentally, the tent I thought we could use for the trip is the same one as in the picture above. I’ve had that thing since I was probably eight years old. Still works! That’s all we’d need.

While I know it probably would have worked, that trip never did materialize. That’s probably because by the time I had the idea, I was already in high school and working summers. It may have been one of the summers that my work schedule kept my dad and me from taking a camping trip altogether. Even if it wasn’t I don’t think I ever mentioned the idea except perhaps in passing. Now, though, I realize that what I have come to know as bicycle touring or bicycle camping is something I wanted to try almost twenty years ago. And even if it took nearly two decades before I actually took a trip involving a tent and a bicycle, I’m glad I finally did it.