Once More to Paris!

Me at the finish in 2019.

This picture appeared in a local (French) newspaper.

Once More to Paris!

 

          Two intersecting developments make this a good time to say a bit about Indiana Randonneurs, which is a part of CIBA.

          The first is that Indiana Randonneurs has now completed ten full seasons under the umbrella of CIBA. Our standard cycle consists of rides 200 kilometers (125 miles), 300K (186 miles), 400K (250 miles) and 600K (370 miles). We’ve done that complete cycle this year, but we will have at least one more ride the Fall, a 200K ride from the Major Taylor Velodrome to Story and back on September 30. (See https://indyrando.ridestats.bike/stats/pages/myClub.xhtml;jsessionid=1229DCB9E08361180961838321A85B00 for our schedule).

          The second is that Paris-Brest-Paris, the 1200K (750 miles) ride that comes around every four years, will happen this year, from August 20 to 24. This ride, with a history going back to 1891, is, in important ways, at the center of randonneuring; the customs and rules of the sport are derived from that event and from the organization which oversees it, the Audax Club Parisian. Over 6,000 riders will converge on Rambouillet, France, just outside of Paris, to do this 90-hour ride.

          For me, these two developments are closely related. I began randonneuring in 2009. At that point, I had done the Hilly Hundred for ten years, and the Ride across Indiana (RAIN) ride for eight. Randonneuring was a logical next step in my development as a long-distance rider. While I was slow, I found that I was capable of riding long distances.

          I first did PBP in 2011. For me it was a grueling but joyful experience. It’s kind of a smaller and amateur version of the Tour de France. (In fact, PBP was once a professional race, and the ride we do now wat the amateur component of that race.)  There is bike art all along the route, and people come out to cheer the riders on, sometimes even in the early hours of the morning. (I wrote about my first PBP here: https://bill-watts.blogspot.com/2011/09/my-paris-brest-paris.html.

          Soon after I got back from my first PBP, I started working to create a randonneuring club in Central Indiana. Previously, I and other randonneurs in Indiana had to do our rides in neighboring states—in Ohio, Kentucky or Wisconsin. I try to ride my bike everywhere, and get in a car as little as possible, so it made sense to have rides here. In addition, it seemed to me and others that Indiana should share in the culture of randonneuring.

          Indiana Randonneurs was approved by our national organization, Randonneurs USA, in 2013. In that year, we offered a partial season, with a 200K from the Velodrome to Story and back, and a 300K, from the Velodrome to Seymour and back. I became the RBA—Regional Brevet Administrator—for Indiana.

          Beginning in 2014, we offered a complete series, which included a 400K loop that went from Columbus to Bloomington to Bedford to French Lick to Salem and back to Columbus. There was also a 600K that included that loop, and another loop that went from Columbus to Batesville to Seymour and back to Columbus. In randonneuring, completing a 200K, 300K, 400K and 600K in the same year makes you a “Super Randonneur.”

          We’ve been going steady ever since, offering a super randonneur series each year, except the Covid year of 2020. In addition to our standard rides going to and through southern Indiana, Lydia Trott has added both road and gravel rides around Lafayette in the northern part of the state. And Ted Krischak has added routes around Terre Haute, and recently developed a 400K that makes use of the Nickel Plate Trail and the Cardinal Greenway.

          In general, our rides have been fairly low-key.  The turnout for our rides tends to range somewhere between two and fifteen. One reason is that, for insurance purposes, anyone who does our rides must also be a member of Randonneurs USA, which costs $30 per year. Because of the bureaucratic processes involved, we also charge an additional $10 per ride. And the pool of riders who want to go between 125 and 370 miles in one go is pretty small.

          While we have been a small club, we have had a steady presence at PBP. So far as I know, the first CIBA rider to complete PBP was Don Silas, in 1991. And he came back and told other riders about it. Ken Lanteigne, who lived in Columbus (but now lives in Portland, OR) remembers hearing about PBP for the first time Don. Ken went on to do PBP in 2011, 2015 and 2019. And he’ll be back again this year.

          Ron Selby, from Zionsville, and Matt Dickey, from Zionsville, have also been to PBP. Kenney Smith, from Plainfield, and I finished together in 2015. And in 2019, Lydia and Steve Trott, from the Lafayette area, and I finished together.

          This year, Matt Dickey and I will go to PBP. We will do our very best to represent Indiana Randonneurs and CIBA!

 

 

Warmshowers Is Far Worse than I Imagined

 

It needs to be reformed

Sang, a Korean cyclist who stayed with my family
under the Warmshowers program in 2017, as he rode
across the country. He ate a lot of curry.

 

          

            If you want to learn about Warmshowers and are not a member of that organization’s reclusive board, you need to get them to threaten you with a lawsuit.

          As I did.

          Let me back up a little and explain how Warmshowers, a 501c3 charitable organization, came to present me with a fully-formed libel lawsuit.

          Early in July of 2023, I wrote an essay about Warmshowers in my personal blog (which you presumably are now reading). For me, this blog is a kind of sketch pad where I try out ideas.

          I have 15 followers on my blog. It is called “The Cyclist,” and many of the pieces are about Randonneuring, the obscure, long-distance cycling sport I do. Sometimes I go on to publish pieces from my blog in more visible publications, and sometimes I post them to FB discussion groups (as I did in this case). And, sometimes, I just write these entries to work out my own thinking about something.

          In this essay, I recounted 15 years of mostly happy experiences hosting bicycle tourists in my home through Warmshowers. This had been a free service that matched cyclists with hosts so that they could have free housing, and sometimes meals and other help, as they traveled the country.

          All of this came to an end in June of 2023 when I got a strange query from a potential guest named Max. Max was upset that he had paid $30 for the service but could not find anyone to host him, and he seemed angry at me. He also told me that he was on the run from shopkeepers and the police, who insisted that he keep moving.

          I tried to ask Warmshowers for advice about how to respond to Max, both through the “contact us” function of website, and through the Facebook discussion group. I got no answer. I became upset when I looked at my profile on Warmshowers and realized that Max had my home address.

          Several days later, I got an answer from Tahverlee Anglen, after Max had presumably left town. She answered my concerns about security in a way that I found dismissive, and I wrote a sharp reply (more on this below). She threw me off the Facebook page, and out of the organization.

          Thus, my 15-year association with Warmshowers came to an abrupt end.

          Because I was puzzled about what had happened, I began looking into all of the public documents and discussions about the organization. I found a considerable community of dissidents. Some of them congregated around the Facebook group “An open alternative to Warmshowers,” but there were bits and pieces in Reddit, in preserved forum exchanges, and elsewhere.

          Some were dissidents because they objected to Warmshowers’s charge of $30 for membership in the organization, which began with those who joined in 2020 and after. Others objected to the way the organization abandoned a home-grown phone app, in favor of one provided by a third party. There was an especially bitter group of former volunteers who had worked on the app and felt betrayed by the organization.

          And some people complained about Tahverlee Anglen and claimed that they had been kicked out in a manner similar to what I had experienced.

          So, I wrote an essay entitled “Warmshowers Is Not What It Seems,” in which I argued, as I put it in the subtitle, that the organization had been taken over by “private interests.”

          In this essay, I focused on Anglen. In Warmshowers’s 990 tax filings for recent years, she is the only paid employee who is named. She was paid $73,738 in 2021 for 20 hours of work each week.

          She is also in many ways the face of the organization. She hosts a series of podcasts, mostly focusing on experiences of riders and their hosts. She moderates the FB page. And she appears in many on-line interviews representing the organization. And she kicks long-time members out of the organization.

          She also has a presence on the web well beyond Warmshowers. She is a self-proclaimed witch and is identified as the high priestess of Moon Temple School. In her capacity as High Priestess, she offers a variety of courses to the public on topics ranging from magic to spellcasting to alchemy. These courses range in cost from $79 to $3000, and many of them involve sizeable monthly payments. Sometimes she runs specials, though, and it is possible to purchase one of these courses at a reduced price.

          On her Linked-in page, and in some of her interviews, Anglen describes herself as a “social impact entrepreneur.” In my essay, I critique this concept, and suggest that we see a similar entrepreneurship in her witchery and in her management of Warmshowers.

          In Warmshowers, this is evident her approach to the FB page and the podcasts as marketing tools, always putting a positive light on the organization, and minimizing or dismissing any of the problems of the organization.

          My criticism was sometimes sharp, but supported, I thought, by the evidence available publicly. I described Anglen, for example, as a “hyper-capitalist witch,” and suggested that sensibility was at odds with the altruistic principles on which Warmshowers was founded.

          Clearly, parties within Warmshowers disagreed with this characterization, and with other claims in the piece. But disagreement is the beginning point for discussion and debate. Not libel lawsuits.

          I posted this essay on the “Open alternatives” FB page, stating that it was a draft, and that I was interested to hear suggestions and criticism. I had, in fact, intended to revise it, and soon after I posted the piece, someone offered to collaborate with me on a revision of it for print publication.

There were about 35 responses to the FB posting from about 20 different people. Many agreed with the piece and thanked me for it. Some thought the passages addressing Anglen’s witchery were irrelevant or overstated. Others defended those very passages.

    Four days after I posted the essay to FB, I received a “cease and desist” letter from a Colorado law agency, Baker Law Group. This letter was accompanied by an eight-page complaint accusing me of libel. The complaint was formatted as if it were ready to file in Colorado District court and carried the license numbers and names of two lawyers, Robert Harper (#48454) and Andrew Lang (#53929).

The letter was harsh and threatening. It began with this paragraph:

I [Andrew Lang] write today to provide notice that your false and defamatory statements discussed herein regarding Warmshowers and its personnel have caused damages for which you have incurred liability, and for which you will continue to incur further liability should damages continue to accrue. To mitigate your liability in part, Warmshowers hereby demands that you immediately retract any and all false and defamatory statements you have made or published concerning Warmshowers and/or any of its personnel, and that you cease and desist from issuing or publishing further false and defamatory statements or otherwise causing additional damages. Your failure to do so will result in legal action.

To construct the eight-page formal complaint, the law firm had combed through the FB exchanges, and provided the most trivial and spurious examples of my purported libelous falsehoods. They accused me of falsely stating that Anglen was the only employee of the organization (but no one has named another one). Strangely, they also accused me of calling for an IRS investigation of the organization. This was completely untrue. And, like many of the actions described in the complaint, it would not have been illegal or libelous for me to have done so.

          Much of the complaint focused on what I had written about Anglen and accused me of “mocking her sincerely held spiritual beliefs.” This is not what I saw myself doing in the piece, but, even if it were true, this would not be libelous.

          Over the next two weeks, I armed myself for legal battle. I did not think there a shred of merit in the complaint, but, like anyone addressed as a "defendant" in a document designed for the court, I was anxious about the fact that considerable resources, in the form of two attorneys, a paralegal, and the support of a whole office were being thrown at me. A suit like this is calculated to scare the bejesus out of its target and overwhelm them with legal verbiage.

I researched Colorado state law and prepared to file a motion to dismiss the suit under the state’s Anti-SLAPP statute (Strategic Lawsuit against Public Participation). This statute is designed to stop this kind of lawsuit, which is calculated impair free speech. I felt confident that I would succeed.

In the meantime, a volunteer from within the organization reached out to me to try to find an informal resolution to the matter. This person told me that there was more going on in the organization than was visible publicly. There was work on a new website that would address some of my concerns. In particular, the organization was addressing some of the safety concerns I had raised and was working on a plan to stop listing members’ home addresses by default in the system.

I had already offered to take down my web post in order to negotiate a resolution. This person suggested that I also apologize to Ms. Anglen.

There is one part of this whole affair that I do regret, and I could easily apologize for. In my sharp email message, I had addressed Ms. Anglen as a “blood sucker.” In the message itself, I made clear that I was using this metaphorically; I wrote, “You are a kind of corporate raider of non-profit organizations. You take them over, and then suck them dry for your own benefit. You are not a cyclist, and you only pretend to care about this community.”

Even though this was written in a private message and could not be considered libelous because it was not published, and even though I meant the term metaphorically, I actually did want to apologize for it.  No one deserves to be called a “blood sucker.”

I also apologized for “anything in my blog post that seemed to mock your religion,” but I could not apologize for the substance of what I had said.

As a result of these negotiations, the lawsuit was withdrawn.

While I am relieved, I am also left with many troubling thoughts as a result of this unhappy experience.

First of all, my theory that Warmshowers has been taken over by private interests was only strengthened by this incident.  This lawsuit served private, not public interests.

Secondly, I have learned that Warmshowers is a secretive and non-transparent organization. Throughout this period, I asked for a list of the current members of the board of trustees, and never received one. An organization that will not even make public the members of its board would seem to have a lot to hide.

          I also asked for, and did not receive, a statement from the board president, Lance Bickford, that this was a legitimate action of the board, and not the illegitimate action of some rogue element of the organization. And I asked for, and thus far have not received, the bylaws that would help me to understand how the decision to take legal action against me was made.

          As a 501c3 organization, Warmshowers is required to file and maintain bylaws. Many organizations post these on their website in order to be transparent and show how they operate. And they should make these bylaws available to anyone who asks for them. Warmshowers does not.

          Frankly, I don’t know if it would be worse if this action were an official one of the board or the action of some rogue element within the organization. If it were a rogue element, then the organization is not being governed by the body that is legally responsible for it. The board is negligent.

          If, on the other hand, it were a legitimate action, then the board is seriously deluded about its mission and its legal responsibilities to the organization. The board is negligent.

          Charitable organizations, especially those enjoying 501c3 status, occupy a position of trust in our society. They can solicit and receive donations, with the understanding that the donors may deduct the donations from their taxable income.

          In this way, 501c3 organizations are indirectly supported by our government. And they serve a public, not a private interest.

          I don’t know how much money went into the legal complaint against me, but it clearly involved many billable hours. It might have been $3,000 or it might have been $10,000 or more. In any case, it was a lot.

          And the funding for this lawsuit came from donors and from fees paid by members.

          In my opinion, then, the threatened lawsuit, and the money that went into funding it, is a betrayal of the public trust that Warmshowers enjoys.

          I have never denied that good things happen under the Warmshowers umbrella, or that good things will continue to happen. There is something magical that can happen when hospitality is freely given and received.

          But the Warmshowers organization itself is sick and needs to be reformed. It is being operated more as a private, closely held corporation than as a membership organization serving the public good.

          One thing that can happen to charitable organizations over time is that the board can become ingrown and develop views that are cut off from the membership it serves. This is especially the case with self-perpetuating boards, like Warmshowers has, where the board itself chooses new members, without an election or other public process.  The board is not held accountable by anyone.

          In my opinion, some of the energy that is now being directed toward alternative organizations should, in fact, be directed toward reforming Warmshowers. Warmshowers has an infrastructure and public recognition that would be hard for a new organization to replicate.

          But members cannot help to reform the organization if they are effectively locked out of it, not even knowing who is currently on the board, or how to place new members with a different perspective onto the board.

          So, it is my hope that somehow, some way, people of good will can find a way to open up Warmshowers in order to make it more transparent and more responsive to its members.

          This, then, is what I learned through Warmshowers' threat to sue me.

 

The Low Lows of Randonneuring Make for High Highs

 

          Not every challenging ride is epic. But near-epic rides matter too.

          I relearned this lesson on this year’s Small Town 300K, on May 21, 2022, an out-and-back from Indianapolis, where I live, to Seymour, about 90 miles to the south. This ride did not register as high on my scale of difficult rides as the time I rode through a tornado at the end of a 600K in Wisconsin or that time on London-Edinburgh-London in 2009 when the temperature dropped to the upper 30s in Scotland (in July), and it rained so hard that I could not see for hours.

          But it did register.

          The first unusual thing about this ride is that there were only two of us on it. I am the RBA, and developed the route almost ten years ago, and have ridden it almost every year since then. For various reasons, no one else in my club signed up to do this ride. Sarah Rice had driven down from Chicago the night before to do the ride. I had never met her before.

          Sarah turned out to be one of the more remarkable riders I have ever met on the road. She had only done a couple of randonneuring rides, but she had been a Category 2 racer, and has a string of criterium victories. And she is working on the support crew for Phil Fox’s Ride Across America (RAAM) race this summer.

          My first impressions of Sarah were of someone completely immersed in the world of cycling. She punctuated every other sentence with the exclamation, “Dude,” and she was full of details from her own racing and from Phil Fox’s upcoming ride.

          In addition, Sarah had the ability I have often encountered in serious athletes to talk about the physical aspects of the sport in frank terms. She referred to her seat-post bag as her “beetlebutt,” and she could talk about the virtues of different chamois dimensions, and how they affected one’s undercarriage, in very direct ways. Endurance sports require one to confront the body, with its strengths and weaknesses, ugliness and beauty, but my Protestant reticence prevents me from speaking so directly. I admire people who can.

          But, as we rode along, I learned that Sarah also has a Ph.D. in Biophysics and had been a professor in the medical school at Northwestern University. Five years ago, she left her tenured position to become a Physical Therapist. She seems mostly to have made this radical career transition out of a desire to help others more directly.

          One of the pleasures of a long ride, I find, is peeling back the layers on other people’s experiences and attitudes and discovering the complexity you might initially have overlooked.

          We were an odd pair on the road. I am an experienced randonneur, having done three consecutive PBPs (Paris-Brest-Paris), beginning in 2011, but I have never raced a bicycle. I come out of the plodding tradition of commuting and touring. My riding motto comes from friends in Seattle, “Relentless Forward Motion,” and I have never aspired to win a contest on the road.

          Sarah could have left me in the dust at any moment and finished the ride hours before me. I think she stuck with me because I knew the route, and because we knew there would be some challenges ahead.

          I knew in advance about the first challenge, but I wasn’t sure how to get around it. A bridge over a creek was closed for reconstruction 75 miles into the ride, and the official state detour took you onto Interstate 65. That wasn’t happening, and I thought there might be enough left of the bridge for us to get over it by bike.

          When we got to that point in the ride, however, two motorcyclists told us the bridge was completely closed, and they directed us on a three-mile detour. This part of Indiana is quite lumpy and circumventing a creek crossing means climbing up onto a ridge, with 18-20 percent grades. The detour was completely manageable, but it is not the sort of thing you want to do often on a long ride.

          After this detour, we had smooth sailing to the turn-around point, in Seymour. After we turned around, though, we watched the sky grow increasingly dark. The storm hit about 10 miles into our return.

          We did not ever get the sort of helmet-thumping rain that thunderstorms sometimes bring, but it did rain moderately for a couple of hours and there was some lightning. More importantly, though, we went through the kind of massive headwind that threatens to throw you off your bike until you shift your weight and adjust your direction. If I had not experienced what actual tornadoes look and feel like in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, I might have thought this was one too.

          Eventually, we turned north, and the wind abated. From this point on, however, the road was strewn with branches and downed trees. At many points, we passed places where tree trunks had been freshly cut up to clear the road, with logs stacked up on both shoulders.

          When we got near the place of our earlier detour, a sizeable tree lay across the road, and a crew was working with chainsaws to clear it. Sarah and I managed to hoist our bikes over the tree trunk and its many branches {see first picture}.

          As we were climbing over the downed tree, I asked a member of the crew, who turned out to be conservation officer with the Hoosier National Forest, if there were any other way around the closed bridge. He told me that the only other way around the bridge was longer and hillier than the way we had come. BUT, he said, we could probably make our way through the construction site, as sandbags had been placed in the stream.

          And, so, that is what we did—we forded the stream. (See second picture.} At one point, Sarah put her whole shoe in the stream, and our passage was quite muddy. For the rest of our ride, we looked as though we had been through a moderately wet cyclocross race. But we made it.

            That was not the end of our adventure, however. About ten miles up the road, we came to a place at the top of one of the longest climbs where a tree had come down across the road and had taken down a live electric line. A police officer was stationed on the road to turn everyone away from the danger.

          Because I have a long history of making my way through apparently closed roads, I asked the officer if there were not some way to get around the closure. She said “no.”  She had a gun. We obeyed.

          And so we went back down the hill we had just climbed, and took a second detour of about six miles, which again entailed quite a bit of climbing. It was a beautiful road, but it was not entirely pleasant to do those extra miles. Again, though, we managed.

          During the detour, Sarah began to worry that we might not finish the ride in time. She said she was willing to cut her time in the two remaining controls to a minimum. And, she went on to say, even if we did not get credit for the ride, the experience would still be valuable.

          Because I knew that we would soon leave the heavily forested section of the ride, and would experience less road debris, and because we had nearly three hours in hand before the detour, I knew that we were not in any real danger of failing to finish the ride in time. Unless another massive storm came through.

          When we got to the next stop, in Nashville, the two overnight gas stations we have sometimes used for controls were both closed. Sarah spotted an ice cream place across the street that was open, and so we went there for water.

          It turned out that the ice cream place also had real food, and by this time Sarah had realized that we had plenty of time to finish. So, we sat down for our only real meal of the day. I had macaroni and cheese with pulled pork and Sarah had a chicken sandwich. Both were excellent.

          These are the moments I cherish most in randonneuring: You’ve endured some period of difficulty, and then enjoy some period of pleasure. I remember once riding through a difficult night in Germany and coming to a bakery in the early morning. The bakery didn’t open for another hour, but the baker saw us peering longingly through the window. She opened up the shop and gave us our choice of the wonderful pastries ready for the new day. It was delightful.

          In randonneuring, we journey from islands of stress and despair to islands of comfort and joy. And the comfort and joy we feel are all the greater for the stress and despair we endured.

          Life itself is like that too.

          The rest of our trip was uneventful. A light tailwind gave us a push home, and we finished with more than two hours to spare, pleased to have endured the trees and detours this ride had thrown at us.

          Beyond the usual lessons of perseverance in the face of setbacks, this ride also reminded me of the value of companionship. I belong to the “solitude is not loneliness” school, and, because I am at the slower end of the spectrum, I am used to riding hours and days on my own. And I generally enjoy that.

          But it is also good to get to know other people, and to see how they deal with the challenges of the road. Early on in the ride, I realized that I had lost a screw on one of my cleats, and this was making it difficult to click in and out. At the first control, Sarah opened up her beetlebutt and revealed a Russian-doll-like system of interlocking bags and boxes. She handed me a box containing various small parts, and enough spare screws for several cleats.

          Sarah told me that she was even better equipped for medical emergencies. She probably carries a defibrillator in her small beetlebutt.

          In addition, Sarah projects no fear, and she took each of the challenges of the ride in stride. Massive wind and lightning? No problem. Climbing over fallen trees and fording streams? Piece of cake. Unexpected detours with additional climbing? Let’s go!

          I, too, try to lead a life without fear, and this is one of the values I appreciate most in randonneuring. But it’s a lesson that one must continually relearn, and it does not always come easily.

          For this reason, it is always inspiring to see others model the kind of behavior we hope to achieve.

         

         

 

                

Flèche Report

Sagamores of the Wabash, 2022

 

For the Indiana Randonneurs team, “Sagamores of the Wabash,” the 2022 Ohio flèche was a wonderful blend of old and new. This was the fourth time we sent a team to Ohio under this name*; four of our six members are veterans of both the fleche and PBP and two are new to the sport.

Steve and Lydia Trott piloted a tandem, affectionately known as “Champaigne Storm.” Lydia and Steve did their first flèche and LEL on that same tandem in 2017, and they both finished PBP in 2019 on single machines. In recent years, Lydia has introduced randonneuring to northern Indiana, and has brought the club into the Gravel Age.

Kenney Smith finished PBP in 2015 and has been a member of all four of our flèche teams. Kenney is world-famous for his cycling adventures in sub-freezing temperatures, and for his bottomless box of spare parts. On a previous flèche, Kenney saved a team member’s ride by producing just the right-sized chain-link from this box in the dead of night.

I (Bill Watts) finished PBP with Kenney in 2015 and with Lydia and Steve in 2019. The four of us have had many adventures together and get along well with one another.

This year, we were joined by two new team members, Ted Krischak and Joe Van Denburg, both from Terre Haute, on the western edge of Indiana, along the banks of the Wabash River. Ted has single-handedly gotten the club’s electronic life in order and has already developed permanents and brevets for the club. In his relatively short time with the club, Joe has shown remarkable mechanical dexterity and an equally remarkable concern for the well-being of his fellow riders.  While this was their first overnight randonneuring event, Ted and Joe are both strong riders.

The six of us made a cohesive and good-spirited team. We had no mechanicals on our ride together—not even a flat tire—but we did have one significant challenge: the wind. The wind was out of the northeast and east for all of our ride, and we were riding east and sometimes north. For long stretches of time, the wind was at or over 20 mph, and it never fully let up. Even when the wind blew against our shoulders, rather than our faces, it was a struggle.

But this is also where the team shone. At our first control, fifty miles in, we made some rough calculations and realized that if the wind remained so strong (and it did!), we might not have enough time to finish. When we returned to the road, we instinctively formed a double pace line, protecting against wind that was at about 10 o’clock. After working together against the wind for a few hours, we had no real concerns about time. It was beautiful.

Our route for this year, as in past years, made maximal use of off-road trails. We took the Fall Creek Trail out of Indianapolis, and later joined up with the Cardinal Greenway, which runs from Muncie to Richmond, on the Ohio border. Once we got to Dayton, we entered Ohio’s wonderful system of connected trails, through Xenia and most of the way into Columbus. I especially enjoy trails on the fleche, as they take away the worry of traffic and allow you to enjoy more fully the company of others.

We did, however, have one moment of excitement and alarm. Just as we were about to enter the trail in Dayton, we saw a police officer take down the rider of a motorized trail bike with a taser. The rider landed on the asphalt with a loud bang and was immediately handcuffed and carried away. As we entered the trail, a police officer warned us to be careful. He said that motorcycle riders had taken to riding the trails at night  without lights.

For a few minutes, I worried that we were entering Mad Max territory, and that, at any moment, a motorcycle would slam into us in the dark. But our subsequent ride proved peaceful and uneventful. And, to its credit, the team took it all in stride.

Thus, we arrived in Columbus, a little tired and a little weary of the wind, but grateful for our time together and satisfied with our accomplishment. We were immediately embraced by the warm hospitality of Lucy and David Buzzee, and enjoyed meeting up with friends, old and new.

I rode my first fleche with David Buzzee on a team organized by Toshiyuki (“Toshi”) Nemoto in Ohio in 2014. I have long admired David’s enthusiasm for randonneuring in general, and for this event in particular. In 2018, he rode the event on another team with Toshi, and then was back at his home to greet other teams when they finished. David’s dedication to sustaining the fleche in Ohio is stellar.

But this year, I got an even better appreciation of the extent of David’s generosity. The transmission failed on the 18-year-old vehicle I left in Columbus to transport myself and the Trotts home. While we were discussing the logistics of getting ourselves home, David offered to drive the three of us and our bicycles all the way back to the start in Indianapolis. And he did. And that was part of the beauty of this year’s flèche.

During a time when pandemic, war and fascist movements roil our country, the fleèhe gave us a moment of tranquility, ease, and fellowship. Let us bottle that feeling and drink again next year.

 

*”Sagamore of the Wabash” is an honorary title conferred by the Governor on citizens of note in Indiana. “Sagamore” is an Anglicized version of a Native American word for “chief,” and the Wabash is a celebrated river in Indiana. The “Sagamore of the Wabash” award is Indiana’s version of the better known “Kentucky Colonel.”  While the Governor of Indiana has not yet recognized our team, we think he should.

Who Owns the White River?

Who Owns the White River?

         With its recent, quiet and unilateral decision to build a rock ramp dam across the White River in 2021, Citizens Energy Group, which now runs the Indianapolis water system, may have opened up a battle royale over the future of the river.  I hope that there will be a vigorous public discussion of these plans, and one that will consider the White River not simply as a drinking water and sewer system, but as an integral part of the social, political, economic and environmental fabric of our city.

          Citizens Energy’s decision to build the rock ramp dam is the result of a cascading series of causes and effects.  As part of its “Flood Damage Reduction Project” in Indianapolis, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer built a gate across the canal, just upstream from Butler University, that could be closed in the event of a flood. 

Because the Canal is crucial in providing water to the City, Citizens Energy abruptly closed the Canal Towpath for several months in 2018 in order to build a water intake station north of 30^th St.  This intake station would allow Citizens Energy to pump water from the White River into the canal in the event that the canal were closed upstream.

But these plans to keep water flowing in the city were disrupted by the breach of the Emerichsville Dam, south of 16^th St., in October of 2018.  The Emerichsville Dam, a low-head dam that allows water to flower over its top, was built in 1899, and made the portion of the river upstream from it deeper, slower and wider.  Most notably, a wide stretch of the river, known a Lake Indy, at around 25^th St., between Riverside Park and Coffin Golf Course, was the direct result of Emerichsville Dam.

With the breach in the dam, the White River become much lower, and flowed more sporadically through the Rieverside area than it had for the previous century. Some began to refer to the White River as a creek.  Lake Indy virtually disappeared.  And there was insufficient flow to the intake station that Citizens Energy had built.

Initially, Citizens Energy tried to repair the dam.  It’s not clear how extensive these efforts were, or why they abandoned them, but sometime in 2019, Citizens Energy decided instead to construct a new “rock ramp dam” across the river  Unlike the previous low head dam, this rock ramp dam not form a solid wall, but would be a system of rocks that would allow water and fish to flow through it.

According to Dan Considine, the manager of corporate communications for Citizens Energy, the company’s original plan was to construct the dam just north of 30^th St., near the new intake station.  In response to neighborhood concerns, though, the company is also considering a site nearer to 25^th St., which would cost slightly more but would restore part of Lake Indy.  In a private conversation with me, Mr. Consodine stated that the company is not considering placing the new dam near the Emerichsville Dam because that would be too expensive.

As I write this article, on Feb. 12, 2020, Citizens Energy has not made any public announcement of its plans.  Instead, it has met representatives of neighborhood organizations in the area. 

Circulation of these plans has inspired a movement within the Riverside community either to restore the Emerichsville Dam or to construct the new dam near that site in order to increase the flow of the river through the Riverside area.  Two residents of the area, Derek Tow and Ronald Rice, spoke of their concerns on a show on WRTV channel 6 on Feb. 11.  They also created a Facebook page entitled “Keep the River in Riverside” to rally support for their position.

As part of their argument for restoring Lake Indy, or something like it, Tow and Rice point to the recently completed masterplan for Riverside Park (https://www.riversideparkplan.com/).  In one of his FB postings, Tow says that this ambitious plan depends on having a “usable river,” with the implication that the Citizens Energy plans would render the river unusable.

I have three distinct and contradictory responses to these developments.  At the risk of trying the patience of my readers, I want to lay out all three.

On the one hand, I do not want us to allow anything to interfere with the progress of the Master Plan for Riverside Park.  This plan takes in more than 800 acres along the river, and could make the park a treasure for the entire community.

Moreover, I think we must restore Riverside Park as a step towards social and racial justice in our city.  I say this not simply because the Riverside Park area is largely African American, but also because the former private Riverside Amusement Park, north of 30^th Street, was a notoriously racist institution, and the public park itself was off-limits to black citizens until the 1960s.  We can make a modest step toward a more justice community by improving Riverside Park and making it more accessible to all citizens.

On the other hand, however, many of the claims of Keep the River in Riverside are exaggerated, and, quite possibly shortsighted.  The standing headline of the FB group states, “The River Will Be Gone Forever Unless DPW & Citizens Rebuild the Emrichsville Dam.”

While it is perhaps possible to bury an urban stream, as the history of Pogues Run suggests, no one is talking about eliminating the White River. It might be different in the future, and it might not be as wide and deep as it once was through Riverside Park, but it will still exist.

And it will be “usable,” perhaps in better and more sustainable ways.  I have occasionally seen speedboats navigate Lake Indy, and it is not a pretty sight.  I could imagine that, even under Citizens’ current plans, canoeing and kayaking might be better, and fishing too.

On my third hand, I wish that we were considering the possibility of removing dams altogether from the White River.  I understand that this is not consistent with Citizens Energy plans, and would probably be equally unpalatable to the champions of Riverside Park.  And perhaps it is impractical.

But I do think we should consider un-damming the White River.  Flooding on the Mississippi and elsewhere has shown us that dams can, in the long run, do more harm than good.  And if our aim is to restore the White River to something like its original form, removing all dams would be a good place to start.

Beyond the question of where and how to dam the White River, I am astonished that we, as a City, have ceded authority to decide these questions to Citizens Energy.  My strongest sense about this is that this is a political question, and should taken up by all citizens of the city, including their elected mayor and city counselors.  While Citizens Energy is, in theory, a “public charitable trust,” they tend to act more as the Corporation that is now part of their title—which is to say that they do what is in their own best interest, and not necessarily the best interest of citizens of the city.  Moreover, I just don’t think they are in a good position to consider the complex political, social and environmental issues at stake here.

In short, Citizens Energy Corporation does not own the White River, and should not be allowed to make decisions that might determine its shape for the next century.  This is a profoundly public matter.

And, while I do not agree with all of the claims of Keep the River in Riverside, I do agree with their assertion that this decision should not be considered in economic terms alone.  Apparently, Citizens Energy is unwilling to consider placing its new dam at 16^th St. because it would cost more to do so. 

That decision is surely short-sighted.

Ratepayers in the city are paying more than $2 billion for sewer infrastructure that should make the river cleaner.  If the Riverside Master Plan is realized in any responsible way, it will cost tens of millions of dollars.  In that context, it seems to me, we, as citizens, should consider paying more for a better system of managing the river.

At the same time, though, I wish we would also reconsider our relationship to the river, and what goes into our efforts to make it “usable.”  Partly, I think that this means accepting the fact that the White River is seasonal, and it rises and falls with the rain and snow.  Even when the Emrichsville Dam was intact, portions of the White River could be impassable by canoe during dry periods.

In order to restore balance with our natural world, I sometimes think that we need a reformulation of Kant’s categorical imperative, which calls on us to treat people not as the means to some end, but as ends in themselves.  I think that we should think of elements of our natural world, including our rivers, not in strictly utilitarian terms, but as entities that deserve our respect, admiration and stewardship, regardless of how we might use them.

Thus, as we begin this public discussion, I hope that we confine our deliberations to how the White River can serve us.  We need also to ask how we can serve our River.

On the Horizon, April 2019

An Occasional Column about Cycling in Indianapolis         

            It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the development of cycling infrastructure and culture in Indianapolis, which had such momentum when Greg Ballard was mayor, from 2008 to 2016, has stalled, at least temporarily, under the Hogsett administration.  Indeed, Austin Gibble wrote an article in a local blog in September of 2017, not long after Joe Hogsett became mayor, under the headline, “Indianapolis Loses Its Bicycling Mojo” ).   He notes in his article a steep decline in bicycle commuting, and a disjointed approach to the development of bicycle infrastructure.  He argues for a number of remedies, including better budgeting for bicycle infrastructure, more protected lanes and bikeways, and other provisions to make cycling more safe and convenient.

          It’s not that nothing has happened in the first three years of the Hogsett administration.  The protected bike lane along Michigan Avenue, in front of IUPUI, has changed my life for the better, and I am grateful for it every time I pass that way.  But it has been very difficult to see a strategy for developing bicycle infrastructure in any kind of systematic way in the city.  In the Ballard years, you could go on a city website and see plans for new bike lanes and trails by timeframe—some were planned for the next two years, others for the next five years, and still others for the next ten years.  There appears to be no such plan now, and the development of infrastructure has seemed sporadic and haphazard.

          But it seems that we are about to leave this listless period, and enter a more dynamic period, with a series of very exciting cycling projects on the horizon.  In this column, I will provide an overview of major projects scheduled for completion in the next two years.  In future columns, I will go into more detail about some of these projects, and how they will connect and open up new parts of the city to cyclists and pedestrians. 

          Before I get to my overview, however, let me mention a related development which, in my view, has the potential to improve cycling in the city in tangible ways.  In recent years, the City has contracted street sweeping out to a private company.  Now, the city is acquiring its own fleet of sweepers, and will take over this job.  As part of this project, it is acquiring a sweeper designed and sized for bicycle lanes and paths.  Beginning this summer—and possibly as soon as May—there will be a dedicated sweeper out cleaning bike lanes and paths.  Those of us who regularly ride the city know that broken glass is a constant pain in the tread; I have sometimes had three flats in one week.  This sweeper will surely not eliminate the problem, but it could make things a whole lot better for many of us.

          In putting together this list of projects due for completion in the next two years, I am beholden to Joshua Tharp, the Operations Manager for the Pacers Bikeshare, who keeps excellent minutes for the Indianapolis Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council (IMBAC), which meets monthly.  I have included in this list major projects to be completed in 2019 and 2020.

1.   A multi-use trail around the grounds of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  This trail will partly solve the problems caused by the closure of the grounds to pedestrians and cyclists three years ago.  There will also be a Pacers Bikeshare Station on the campus.  The cost of the trail is about $1 million, with the Art Museum and the city sharing the cost. To be complete in 2019 or 2020, depending on the Art Museum.
2. Widening of Monon from 10^th to 96^th St.  This project is scheduled to be completed in 2020, and will involve closures and detours for those using the Monon.  The cost is about $3.5 million.
3. Enhancement of three sections of the Pleasant Run Trail at a cost of about $2.1 million.  Scheduled for completion in 2020.
4. Construction of the Monon bridge over 38^th St.  This is scheduled to be completed in 2020, presumably in conjunction with the widening of the Monon.  Cost: about $4 million.
5. Extension of the Canal Towpath from 30^th St. to Burdsal, due to be completed in 2020 at a cost of $1.6 million.  This will reclaim an overgrown section of the historic canal, and will bring infrastructure to an underserved corner of the city.  It will also connect the Canal Towpath to the extended Fall Creek Trail (see below), and to the bike lanes on Burdsal.
6. Extension of the Fall Creek Trail from 10^th St. to Burdsal.  Due for completion in 2020 at a cost of about $2.5 million.
7. Cold Spring multi-use pathway from 30^th St. to the Velodrome, due for completion in 2019 at a cost of about $775,000.  This will connect with the existing bike lane on Cold Spring Road from Lafayette Road to 30^th St.
8. Buffered bike lanes and sidewalks on 22^nd St., from Capital Ave., near the White River Trail, to Dr. A. J. Brown Avenue.  This is part of a road resurfacing project scheduled to be completed in 2019 at a total cost of about $2 million.
9. Resurfacing of the existing Fall Creek Trail, which, in many places, is broken up by tree roots.  The project will be divided into two parts, with the north half to be completed in 2019 and the southern half in 2020, at a total cost of about $2 million.

In my view, this is an impressive list of projects, and suggests that there will be nearly $20 million of investment in new infrastructure over the next two years.  It also brings infrastructure to some areas that have been underserved.  It is also worth noting, however, that only one of these projects, the improvement of the Pleasant Run Trail, is on the south side of the city, compounding the neglect of that area relative to the north.  I will write more about this later.