urban bicycle journeys

Where to go next?   “Normally” in January I take short furious bike rides in the cold, because I know once warmed up I will get the chills if I stop.   Sometimes I have taken the airplane to Florida in January for brief trips because biking in sixty and seventy degree temperatures is a delight.

These two January days the weather home in Chapel Hill NC was predicted to be Florida without the airplane ticket.   Friday and Saturday were predicted the be both sunny and warm with a high temperature of about seventy.   The world might be coming to an end but why not enjoy it on a bicycle?

Three hours car driving northeast into Virginia the temperatures were predicted to be just as warm.   Early on Friday morning I put the Bike Friday in the back of the Prius and set out, not really knowing exactly where I was going or what route I would bicycle.

On the way I settled with the almost non-place of Charles City VA because it sits at about midpoint of the very nice and almost new Virginia Capital Trail; a fifty-two mile long paved bike path between Richmond and Wiliamsburg.   I had bicycled the Richmond end of the trail with Tootie a couple of years ago.   This time I would bicycle the Williamsburg half, and then maybe beyond to Yorktown, somewhere I had essentially never visited.

At the Charles City Courthouse municipal complex I parked the car.   There were lots of spaces; I correctly assumed no one would care if I left my car here for thirty hours.

I set out east on the bike path.   I parallels the two lane Virginia route 5 along the north bank of the James River.

Only thirty miles from downtown Richmond; Charles City County is strikingly rural and unpopulated.

From Wikipedia: Charles City County;  population in the year 1790 was 5,600;

in 1960: 5,500;

in 2019: 6,900

Despite the low population the area is dripping with history.   Two presidents (John Tyler and William Henry Harrison) come from this small county.   From all sorts of eras (Jamestown and Pocahontas, Revolutionary War, and the Civil War) important things happened here.   The state historic signs are ubiquitous.

Part of my aversion to all this history is what is leaves out.    It is a huge step forward that this next sign was prominently situated next to the Charles City County courthouse.  In a town this small any gathering of 75 people probably included anybody who was anybody.

The first ten or fifteen miles of bike path passed by several “plantations”  with pretentious names, most dating from the 1600’s, where high value crops like cotton and tobacco had been planted and harvested by mostly slave labor, then exported by the deep water access of the James River.  In 2020 it is mostly woods; quiet and peaceful.  For now there were no tacky subdivisions.

I was almost all the way to Williamsburg when, after crossing into James City County, the bike path finally started to pass subdivisions, gated communities, and golf courses.

Bicycling into metro Williamsburg from the west on Monticello Avenue, there were miles of newer commercial sprawl, Food Lions and Old Navys.   One normally would expect a courthouse to be in the downtown center.  Not here.  Mixed right into the strip malls was Williamsburg’s new courthouse; one of the strangest looking municipal buildings I have seen in a while; putting the “colonial” touch on courthouse utility.

A mile or two further I arrived into the part of town normally referred to as Colonial Williamsburg.  It features the state university that is The College of William and Mary and the restored colonial town.

Backed by private money particularly from the Rockefeller family and starting in the 1920’s, the restored town is not so much historic preservation as historic re-creation.  Over fifty percent of the buildings in the historic area are reproductions.  Costumed actors are hired to look the part.

I grew up an hour away by car in Virginia Beach and my parents took my siblings and me to Williamsburg many times.   They wanted us to know about our country’s history.  Maybe because of all those visits I find this historic re-creation annoying and I have only been back here one other time in the past forty years.  I cannot think of a concrete criticism, so I will pass this as my personal quirk.   It certainly was not a right / left – conservative / liberal thing back in the day. (My mother voted for George McGovern!). But it seems to be like that now.

I had a nice almond milk latte at Aromas Coffeehouse, then biked out of town towards Yorktown.   On the edge of town I was impressed by this modernist motel.

The Colonial Parkway connects Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown, towns that were significant around the year 1776 or before, but the road is much more derivative of parkways inspired by the designer Frederick Law Ulmstead and the bureaucrat Robert Moses.   Begun in 1930 and completed in 1957, the Colonial Parkway was built when car travel still had the now unimaginable promise of being a relaxing and scenic experience.

The Colonial Parkway has freeway-like overpasses and a tunnel beneath Colonial Williamsburg, but a speed limit of mostly 35 or 45 MPH.   I is quite pleasant for bicycling.

Intentionally bumpy road surfaces and brick overpasses under the I-64 freeway do not evoke George Washington but are indeed attractive.   This day there were repairs.

The second half of the parkway to Yorktown parallels the York River.   US Navy installations line the river as well, as these areas are accessible to ocean going ships.   I learned that is why British general Cornwallis used this area as a landing spot for the battle he ultimately lost to George Washington’s army.

The village of Yorktown is at the base of the York River Bridge.

I had not realized that Yorktown was so small.   Current population is 190, and it was not much of a town even back in the day, although now suburban sprawl and military bases are nearby.   There are two or three bars and restaurants on the waterfront.   I stopped by the Yorktown Pub for a beer.  Not touristy at all, the other patrons seemed to be all talking about boats and fishing.

Sitting at the bar I searched on my phone for somewhere to stay.    The best deal seemed to be an actual B&B, not an Airbnb, the Marl Inn, just a couple blocks uphill.   I called them on the phone.  Yes, they had a room.  I biked up there, they had patriotic decorations outside.

The room was clean, spacious, and comfortable.   There were lots of patriotically labelled things lying around.    Also, when I turned on the TV it was already tuned to Fox News!

Dinner was back at the Yorktown Pub; I bicycled down the hill in the dark.  Tootie and I go to New Orleans a lot and places like the Yorktown Pub have been disappearing down there;  loud, informal, and reasonably priced small family run seafood restaurants.   Here is Yorktown I came back to the same seat at the bar while there were people waiting for tables.   I started with clam chowder. Virginia is far north enough for clams, and I love clams.   A bowl costs only $ 1.50 more than a cup, so why not?

Rockfish is common around the Norfolk area but I had not known of it until my sister Jane introduced me a couple of years ago.   Here they allowed for half orders and I got it broiled, with a side of rice.  I came with a plastic thing of tarter sauce (old school!)

I was still a little hungry and here they had gumbo!   It is NOT a typical Tidewater Virginia dish but here it was spicy and delicious for $ 6.25 a cup.

The bartender was a real pro.  It was fun watching him work while I ate.

I skipped dessert but ate some chocolate covered nuts in my room.    The next morning I biked around the tiny settlement of Yorktown.   They are trying to make a mini-Williamsburg of this.

Among a very small number of businesses is a nice locally owned coffeehouse.   I got my usual light breakfast; roll and a coffee.

I’d like to say a took I took a different route for the forty miles back to my car, rather than just doubling back. However in suburban areas, outside of the street grid of major cities bicycling can be dangerous.   I did not want to bicycle, even on a Saturday, on crowded four lane highways.   Except for one portion through Williamsburg I bicycled back the same way that I had come, on Colonial Parkway and then the Virginia Capitol Trail.   It was all good.

One final note:   Bicyclists bring business.  Charles City County Courthouse, where I had parked my car, is not even a real town.   It is a newer municipal office complex in a rural area adjacent to a major bicycle trail. There is a restaurant occupying an old house.  On this warm Saturday at 2:00 PM that restaurant was completely filled with bicyclists.  Many were eating outside.

My car was still there.  I drove back to Chapel Hill in time for dinner,  stopping at the Starbucks in Petersburg VA for something to sip while on the road.

I set out to walk Richmond, Virginia from one end to the other.   This was not a bike ride.  If I do many more walks instead of bike rides I will have to start a new blog!

Richmond VA has a genuine city feel and is close to home.   This was an urban hike:  point to point.   We started in Church Hill, a Richmond neighborhood east of downtown, the site of St. John’s Episcopal Church,  where Patrick Henry gave his famous 1775 “give me liberty or give me death” speech.    I am from Virginia Beach and my father grew up in nearby Norfolk.   We had always snickered at the supposed snobbishness of the Richmond elite.  “These” people have traditionally lived on the west side of town.  Why not walk from Church Hill on the east side, to the temple of the upper class on the west side, the Country Club of Virginia, a place I had never seen?   This would be our route, starting in the bottom right corner of the map below.

Accompanying me was my friend John Ripley.   Among his many talents is that he has been a successful professional photographer for forty years.  John gives me photography advise sometimes.  The pictures in this blog are mine, as you can see from the incorrect focus on the picture below.   Even on his own time John cannot stop himself from taking pictures.  He brought his super-expensive camera.

We live near each other in Chapel Hill / Carrboro NC.    We chose to drive to Richmond in less than three hours, take our walk, and drive back, all in the same day.   We parked the car on the street in Church Hill.

Yes, I agree that Confederate monuments are morally and politically problematic, but if someone tries to take down all the Confederate monuments in Richmond it is going to be complicated, to say the least.    Here in Libby Hill Park on Church Hill we saw our first.

The park sits on a cliff above the James River.   Richmond has gradually and quietly become a very cool place.   Whom I guess to be VCU art students were taking pictures of themselves wearing various outfits; they brought along a portable changing room.

John took pictures of the view of downtown.

Church Hill is a lovely older neighborhood, kind of off to itself.

As we walked down the steep hill towards an area called Shockoe Botto.  Some historic homes have survived.

Main Street Station has been visually assaulted ever since I-95 was built in the 1960’s but the station still looks good on a sunny day.

John tried to capture the same photograph.

From Shockoe Bottom we walked uphill towards downtown.

My brother Alex has counseled me that iron front buildings were the first stage of the skyscraper revolution in the latter half of the nineteenth century.  I had not known Richmond had one of these.   We walked by the Stearns Iron-Front Building, from 1869.

The Virginia State Capitol, designed by Thomas Jefferson, completed in 1788.   The side wings were added in the early twentieth century.

This is John photographing my namesake, built in 1929.  I am not related to the famous Chief Justice.  Although the owners kept the famous sign, it is now apartments, not a hotel.

A fascinating novel about Richmond is The Shad Treatment, written in the early 1970’s.   Along with lots of Virginia politics, it describes the places in Richmond where its elite congregate.  The novel changes all the names.   We walked by the Commonwealth Club, a downtown club that is well, just a club.  No golf course.   In The Shad Treatment it is called it the Confederate Club!

Further uptown walking towards VCU there is a mix of the old and the not-so-old.

Very much like what was done with Moore Square in Raleigh, Monroe Park in Richmond has been recently redone.   It looks very nice, surrounded by attractive buildings on all sides,  including this 1920’s theater.   It used to be politically incorrectly named The Mosque, now renamed after a tobacco company, The Altria Theater.

VCU, or Virginia Commonwealth University, has been mushrooming all over surrounding neighborhoods.   John and I stopped for lunch at this coffee house. We found the menu to be all-vegetarian.  We split a tofu based sandwich;  delicious.   John took a picture of the place while I photographed from the other side.

A large area spreading west of the VCU campus is colloquially called The Fan, miles of late nineteenth and early twentieth century row houses.   John stopped to take a picture of this artfully growing vine.

I have a heavy coffee table book called Great Streets, one author’s selection of his favorite twenty urban streets in the world.   It includes parts of Paris, Barcelona, and Rome.   Amazingly it includes Monument Avenue in Richmond VA.  It is indeed a lovely street.  Statues of Confederate “heroes” appear every two blocks.  On the eastern end it begins with J.E.B. Stuart.

Two blocks later rides in Robert E. Lee

In the current discussion of whether to remove Confederate statues, I do believe there are gray areas; discussions of tone, place, and content are appropriate.  Two blocks after Robert E. Lee the monument honoring Jefferson Davis crosses the line further than any Confederate monument I have ever seen.  Every time I come here I am shocked at the extended creepy verbiage about the valiant lost cause and Davis’ underhanded full arm salute.

John and I were so grossed out by Jefferson Davis that we headed off Monument Avenue for a parallel street.   Before leaving we admired and photographed this row of houses.

The walk continued.   There is actually street life in The Fan.

The further west we walked the newer the buildings became.   I guess these houses are 1930-40’s.

We walked across I-195 and as the houses became newer they were more set back from the street, with larger yards.

Owning a 1990’s Volvo station wagon makes a certain kind of style statement.  John my co-walker owns three, if you include the one he passed down to his adult son.    Here in Richmond we passed by someone who evidently also owns three, and chooses to park them on the street!

The further out we walked the less pedestrian friendly these wealthy neighborhoods became.   There were many spots where there were no sidewalks.   There are lots of dead end streets.   Walking became difficult at times because there was nowhere to walk.

John was not tired.  He can walk all day at high speed.   He was confused, however.   “Why are we doing this?” he asked.  Walking on a narrow near-highway was not fun.   I encouraged him to press on. We finally found better streets to walk on.  We had set out with a goal, we had to complete the mission, to walk to the Country Club of Virginia.

Just before arriving at our destination we passed St. Catherine’s School.   I had heard of this place all my life but had never seen it.   It was, and probably still is, where the elite of Richmond send their daughters.   It is definitely referred to in The Shad Treatment, I cannot remember what the author changed its name to.

We had to hustle across some traffic filled streets but finally found a dead end road that led to our destination.   We had arrived, we had completed our ten mile walk.

One inspiration for this Richmond walk was a conversation I had had six years ago on one of my bicycle trips.  I had found myself eating dinner at the bar of the nicest restaurant in Staunton VA, about a hundred miles from Richmond VA, talking to a man who was maybe just a few years older than me who was overnighting on a business trip.   Unprovoked by me he started baring his soul, talking about regrets in his life.   He described himself as a successful lawyer in Richmond.   He had lived in Richmond for thirty years but was originally from New England.   He loved golf.   He expressed regret that he had spent the prime years of his life in Richmond because he said he was never accepted there by the locals.   The worst stain was that he had never been asked to play golf at The Country Club of Virginia.   Not even once.  What could I say?  I just listened.

John and I walked inside the club for a brief moment, then called an Uber.    The Uber guy took us back to our car on the other side of Richmond.   We were home in Chapel Hill NC in time for dinner.