urban bicycle journeys

Wilmington, Delaware? Why not? I made plans to go up to Wilmington DE and bicycle around for two or three days. I had seen Wilmington DE from the Amtrak car for years but had never visited. I can take Amtrak north with my bicycle in-tow from the Raleigh/Durham area towards Washington DC and the subsequent Northeast. Those in the know realize that the rail line from North Carolina to Richmond VA is miserable. The tracks meander through eastern North Carolina at sub-Interstate highway speeds, taking much longer than driving by car. North of Richmond the situation improves a little, and once north of Washington, Amtrak has electrified lines with almost world-standard tracks and the trains travel at 120 MPH or more.

The highway situation is almost reversed. I-85 from Durham NC to Richmond VA is a breeze, passing through mostly forests. One just points the car north at seventy-five miles an hour. North of Richmond it all changes. Driving on I-95 towards Washington DC is typically a shitshow of traffic and stress.

The obvious solution, which I have been practicing for twenty years, is to drive my car the 175 miles in two and a half hours from my home in the Raleigh/Durham area to the Staples Mill Road Amtrak station on Richmond’s north side. Tootie was using the “good” car so I had to pilot our almost twenty year old Honda Accord we had inherited from her late mother. My Bike Friday was in the trunk. I left home in Chapel Hill NC just after 5:00 AM and arrived at the Amtrak station in Richmond VA in plenty of time to make their 8:20 AM departure. One can carry a folding bike onto the train in one’s arms. Once on Amtrak one can relax completely and watch the world go by out the window.

South and east of Richmond the Amtrak system clearly serves those less fortunate. In the South on Amtrak most passengers just look poor . Boarding in Richmond, and more so further north, people with jobs requiring a spiffy appearance are more ubiquitous.

Amtrak breezed through the dense urban areas of Washington DC and Baltimore. About 1:00 PM I got off the train in Wilmington DE (population 71,000), an hour’s ride north of Baltimore. The Wilmington train station is old school looking but modern inside. In many ways Wilmington DE is just a suburb of Philadelphia, only twenty something miles further to the north.

Why was I doing this? What was the point of this journey? That was still to be figured out. I assembled my folded Bike Friday bicycle trackside and wheeled it’s down to the street. I cycled uphill a few blocks into central Wilmington, looking for somewhere to eat lunch.

Downtown Wilmington is filled with mid-rise buildings boasting the names of major banks. This suggests great wealth but many people walking around downtown Wilmington looked less fortunate, poor even.

Where to eat? On Market Street the one restaurant that seemed open to the pleasant sunny afternoon and also full of people was Stitch House Brewery. They let me wheel my bicycle into the open entrance.

The $14.00 chicken salad sandwich eaten at the bar was certainly delicious but its size underscored how fundamentally broken the American culture of restaurant portions has become. Restaurants above all want to keep the size of the check high so they never hold back on portion size. Obesity in Americans continues to rise. I exercise daily, frantically sometimes, yet I was totally stuffed after just eating half of this sandwich. There was nothing to do but throw away the remaining half.

Near the end of this trip I was to be reminded that the one exception to giant restaurant portions is super expensive restaurants, where the situation reverses itself. More on that later.

After lunch I started cycling towards Newark DE (NOT Newark NJ!) home of the University of Delaware. In a straight line it was twelve miles away but I took a more circuitous route. The Jack A. Markell trail along the Delaware River waterfront started just a few blocks from my restaurant.

After about a mile the trail turns inland across some marshes.

This transitions to a conventional bike trail through a woods and marshes, passing what looks like the giant remains of a landfill.

In about eight miles the trail ended in a lovely colonial town I had never heard of, New Castle DE.

There is a picturesque waterfront in New Castle as well. The town must have welcomed ocean going ships back in the eighteenth century. I was now about twelve miles from Newark DE. The cycle from New Castle to Newark through miles of suburbia was the least enjoyable stretch on this trip. At least the state of Delaware does consistently have wide shoulders on their highways.

There was a bike trail alongside the traffic for a short portion.

The traffic situation continued to be intense but eventually I landed in central Newark DE. On arrival I booked a room at the one hotel I could find actually downtown, the Hyatt Place Newark.

Later on I walked around, looking for somewhere to eat. Newark seems the quintessential college town, with the kind of fast food joints popular with undergraduates.

I ultimately ate German schnitzel outdoors at a table on the sidewalk. Next morning the breakfast buffet at the Hyatt was industrial food, but they get huge kudos for serving everything on real plates and from genuine serving dishes with no disposables in sight.

The Newark and Pomeroy Rail Trail arrives right into downtown Newark. My plan for the day was to cycle a thirty-something mile loop through the rural exurbs of Wilmington before ending the day in downtown Wilmington. I packed up and headed out. The bike path from Newark going north was fetching.

The bike path ended after a few miles but by this time I was in a rural landscape on tiny paved roads.

There was even a covered bridge!

Many but not all of the busier roads had shoulders.

The scenery resembled what I imagine rural New England to look like.

After cycling through this woody landscape for several hours the scenery started to change; rich people were living out here.

Later on that day I passed by the DuPont Country Club. There was a golf course and tennis but pickleball seemed to be the only sport actually being played at that moment. You could hear the distinctive whacks.

I stopped for coffee and a light lunch at Brew HaHa coffee bar in Greenville DE. It was full of prosperous looking people.

I had thought this was the only location but I now know Brew HaHa is a Delaware chain of NINE locations, all in the metro Wilmington area. Avocado toast was nicely prepared with meticulously thin sliced radishes. I washed it down with an iced oat milk latte, large, with two packs of sugar. I sat and read my Kindle, the Walter Isaacson biography of Elon Musk. Musk is a complicated guy; successfully developing save-the-world technologies in record time while displaying personal decorum like a total asshole. I am just getting to the part where he buys Twitter.

I had sat outside to be alone, but two well-dressed-in-a-casual-way forty-something women sat down close to me and talked loudly about real estate.

I still felt relaxed in the shade alongside a suburban parking lot but I eventually got back on the bicycle and cycled a few miles over to Brandywine Creek State Park and its paved path. In my travels I see many trees but I cannot recall seeing a forest with such a preponderance of enormous old-growth looking trees.

I cycled the few miles up this paved path through the state park to where the pavement stops, near the Pennsylvania border. I retraced my route and headed back towards central Wilmington, passing through a leafy neighborhood called Forty Acres.

I crossed over I-95 but needed somewhere to sit and regroup. I stopped in another Brew HaHa, which occupied the ground floor of a downtown bank building.

Where was I going to sleep? Hotel prices in America have gone through the roof. The Hyatt in Newark had been nice but had cost way more than two hundred dollars. I needed some way to keep the price down. I have been creeped out in cheap hotels but almost never felt out of place or unsafe in an Airbnb. You just have to read the descriptions and reviews carefully. Sitting at the Brew HaHa I booked an Airbnb on my phone for “only” about a hundred dollars total including tax; described as being a room in a nineteenth century neighborhood about a mile from where I sat. I cycled over there through city streets. There were lots of kids getting out of school.

The Airbnb was in this house.

The proprietor named Joel had texted me a code to get in the front door. He does not live in that building but obviously close by. He let me take his picture the next morning.

There was only one other person staying in that large Airbnb house, a regular who stays there several days a week as a visiting professor at an art school nearby .

Dinner! Where to go? There was indeed a selection of restaurants five blocks away on Market Street, one of the main drags. I had put the bicycle in Joel’s basement and started walking towards Market Street. I somehow got turned around and walked in the wrong direction. In the warm Indian summer evening groups of people stood on the sidewalks; young men in white T-shirts. There was a decrepit looking house with an older woman visibly upset and screaming frantically at someone in the street. I felt out of place and mildly unsafe, even though no one seemed to have had paid any attention to me. It took me a few minutes to correct my route. I ultimately ended up on Market Street, mildly flustered.

Welcome to America. After walking through groups of obviously poor people hanging on the street I ate at an insanely expensve and self-indulgent restaurant in almost that same neighborhood, although in hindsight the restaurant seemed totally worth the money.

I sat at the bar of somewhere called La Fia. This restaurant underscored my observation that portions are huge at American restaurants except the most expensive. Here at La Fia they were tiny. My server said they were having a special week at a group of Wilmington restaurants, and that the only menu available was a $55.00 flat price three course menu. This took me by surprise. It was more than I wanted to spend, but since I was already seated and drinking a beer, why not?

First course was grilled octopus arm, something I have had only once before. It was amazing. Years ago I unsuccessfully tried to make it at home. Talking to my server, she said the octopus arm was first marinated, then pan fried in butter for a few seconds, then grilled on a very hot fire for one or two minutes. The small purple rounds are potatoes. I treasured each succulent bite.

This meal also underscored a thought about New Orleans, my second home, and a city that I love. What is that connection? Sure, restaurants are not the total description of a city, but the famous quote from likely the 1960’s by Tennessee Williams is that “the only cities in America are New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.” I grew up in a place way less important than Cleveland, the dual cities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach. There were not great restaurants there when I graduated from high school in 1974. Locals did even go to restaurants very often; when we did it was a cafeteria. I am sure that there was nowhere in the gritty industrial town of Wilmington DE in the 1960’s and 70’s that served expensive grilled octopus arms. The restaurant scene in New Orleans is still great today but the differences between it and the rest of America are not like it was before 1980. In a totally good way, America has almost caught up in the sophistication of its eating.

One no longer needs to visit New Orleans to get food like my second course here in Wilmington DE, braised oxtail ravioli. It ate just like it sounds, lucious stringy beef wrapped in dough, covered in a buttery sauce with onions and a few raisins for a twinge of sweetness.

My dessert was the Japanese and Italian named Yuzu Semifreddo Olive Oil Cake. And a decaf.

It was all really great. I finally stumbled home, taking time to re-check my route before leaving so I did not get lost, I did not see many people on the street.

For the morning I had booked a 9:20 AM train to go back to my car parked in Richmond VA. The Wilmington Amtrak station was only about a mile away through city streets but I left the Airbnb about 7:45 AM to do a longer one hour bike ride, to loosen up the joints. I bicycled out on that same riverfront path I had taken two days before. It seemed like a long time ago.

Several miles from downtown the bike trail passes by a jail or prison. Once again, welcome to America.

I biked back to downtown and stopped at Riverfront Bakery to get something to eat on the train. (Always bring your own food on Amtrak!) I pushily asked them which items were more freshly baked, they referred me to the apple turnover.

A few minutes later I stood with my bicycle at the track 3 platform of Wilmington Amtrak station, waiting for a train. It showed up on time, and I arrived Richmond about 1:00 PM. I drove the Honda home at a comfortable pace.