the Way of the Turtle

WINDY!
16.7 Mile Ride on the Erie Canalway Trail (Utica-Rome) & Around Utica Marsh WMA
Sunday, April 8, 2012

Finally got back out on my bike - and what a day to do it! The Canalway trail heads basically west from N Genesee St, and there was a wicked headwind blasting east... made for very tough going on the way out, though the trip back was fantastic - I absolutely flew along the bike path with that tailwind.

I took a brief detour down into Utica Marsh and along Barnes Ave to the closed bridge. Apparently back in November 2010 an inspection showed that the bridge over the CSX tracks was unsafe and could potentially fail, there was no money and little incentive to repair/replace it, and the city gave the businesses down Barnes Ave (primarily used auto parts aka junk yards) a couple of weeks notice that they had to vacate their property. From the sound of things, the amount of time that's passed, and the fact that just about every structure along the road has been demolished - I'd guess there are no plans to ever reopen Barnes Ave. The landowners were supposed to go into the process of getting reimbursed via the state's eminent domain process. (More info can be found in the Utica Observer Dispatch article via the link, as well as in an earlier article when it was first announced the bridge would be closed.) While I miss the convenient access to Utica Marsh, I'm kind of pleased that it looks like the state is going to simply reclaim the land as part of the floodplain (hopefully after cleaning up the rest of the junk left behind.) The marsh is still accessible from the Canalway trail, and the lack of automobile access seems to have cut down on the number of sketchy characters hanging around down there - I know I wasn't always totally comfortable leaving my car at the Utica Marsh parking lot, and many of the comments I've seen about the closure have mentioned drug deals and prostitution, and at least one of the junkyards was destroyed in a series of arson fires last year.

I had planned to turn around early, possibly at Lock 20, but in the end decided to ride all the way to the parking area on Oriskany Rd before turning around. And as I mentioned previously, the ride back to the park-and-ride lot was a joy - with the tailwind I was pushing 15 mph pretty consistently. Best of all, my legs felt like I could have kept going for another 5-10 miles without too much strain - a reassuring observation, given the riding I've got coming up over the next two months...

JMH