From the Cafe to the Trail

I had the afternoon off today.  So leaving work, I stopped by Sorelle Cafe near Boston's South Station to relax for a bit with an iced coffee, muffin, and the latest copy of Cyclist magazine.

If there's one thing that's almost as good as cycling, it's sitting in a pleasant coffee shop reading about cycling.

Looking through pictures from the cobbled-classic races like Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders, I felt the urge to ride a different terrain myself.  So arriving home a short while later, I hopped on my bike and rode out to the Neponset River Trail.

I passed by the Granite Avenue drawbridge -- a tiny masterpiece from an earlier industrial age...

...and then onto a section of the trail that has been left unpaved.

It's not exactly cobblestones, but zipping over the dirt and gravel I could at least get the sense of flying over a less-than-ideal surface.  Because that's what it feels like: flying.  Keeping a light grip on the handlebars, it's as if the bike finds just the right way through the nooks and crannies of the dirt path.

Paris-Roubaix in Acrylics

Watching the magical Paris-Roubaix bicycle race on TV inspired me to give acrylic paints a try:

I quickly discovered that acrylics allow you to lay the paint on really thick, which felt perfect for depicting Paris-Roubaix.

For me, the beauty of Paris-Roubaix is how the simplicity of the landscape contrasts with the gritty mayhem of the race.  Take the bikes and crowds out of the picture, and all you have left are cobblestones, land, and sky.  But add the race back in, and it becomes a piping hot stew of dust, noise, angry roads, rattling wheels, and screaming bright colors.  It's as if the sky mirrors all that's happening down below, absorbing the clouds of dust and carrying the vivid colors of the race upwards.

Creating Spring Colors

And then it was spring!

"That sure doesn't look like spring," you may say, "look at all those bare trees!"  I took this photo in Housatonic -- an old mill town in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts.  I was out there on business and brought my bike along with me for a brisk afternoon ride.

How about this photo then?

That's a dam along the Housatonic River, the town's namesake.  I rode along the river for a number of miles as I made my way back to my car in Lenox, Mass.  Still not very spring-like, you say?

Here's another one, again from Housatonic:

O.K, now I'm having fun!  But only a little, because there's something about a bicycle that changes the whole way we look at spring.

Early spring in New England does have a black-and-white quality to it.  It's a kind of quiet interlude between the dark days of winter and the burst color that is yet to come.  But we cyclists love it.  We love it on an impossible-to-explain elemental level, as if the very first bicycle ever created was forged in some dark furnace deep in the hills on a cold April morning, and we're just now reconnecting with our beginnings.

Maybe it has something to do with the simple aesthetics of it all, the image of a bicycle -- a streak of bright color -- set against a monochrome background.  Or maybe it's the idea of the epic ride, the thing all serious cyclists strive for.  Cycling through a grey landscape, I feel like I'm adding my own color to those trees with every pedal stroke.

The pros have the early-spring bug too.  Just think about the great March/April races like the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, winding their way through old WWI battlefields.  Those races would loose their soul if they were held in summer.  You need that film of grey hanging over it all, reminding us that a bike race is a beautiful, peaceful thing in itself.

Even when those racers ride on cobblestone through green fields, it still has a wonderfully bleak feel to it.  Cleaning my apartment the other day, I came across an unfinished watercolor I painted of those cobbles:

Pretty lonely, right?  But we cyclists would like nothing better than to ride that road and make the unfinished painting a masterpiece.

So getting back to Housatonic...

Across the street from the local post office...

... the townspeople have put up a mural:

It's green and cheery, and it reflects the creative spirit that is so strong in the Berkshires.  Very cool!  But on that particular afternoon, I was just as happy to enjoy the pleasant shades of grey.