Journeys: Park the Pickup: Santa Fe by Bicycle

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 28 Oktober 2012 | 17.35

Dorie Hagler for The New York Times

A cyclist in front of Slurp.

THE poet C. P. Cavafy said that a city changes when you fall in love with someone in it. It can also change for less exalted reasons: when, for example, instead of sealing yourself in the personal microclimate of an automobile, you use a bicycle to get around. I happened to grow up in Oxford, England, a city, and country, where biking is a normal means of transport, no more a sport than bipedalism is. But it rains a lot, and I didn't come away with a proper appreciation of the benefits of the bicycle.

But here in Santa Fe, N.M., where I live now, it's a different story. Every day I ride three miles to my office. These days there's an autumn crispness in the air, and an almost detectable scent of frost. Along the way I pass under cottonwood trees, between adobe compounds and past the Capitol building before the morning rush has filled its parking lots, then follow the train tracks for a while along a dedicated bike trail, before reaching the rusty loft where I work. It hardly ever rains, and I have learned to love my bike.

It's a far cry from driving. Something happens to us in cars. In Disney's 1950 cartoon "Motor Mania," Goofy, a nice suburban gent, gets behind his wheel and as the starting motor chokes into life, he simultaneously turns into a raging monster. Yet latent aggression isn't the half of it. It's more about the isolation, the world being reduced to two sterile cubic yards.

America was built for the car, especially out West, where cities sprawl immensely, public transport is a travesty and driving is a way of life. It took me a while to realize that actually, Santa Fe is great for biking. And is only becoming more so. Some city officials and devoted lobbyists have been very busy improving its bicycle credentials. In 2011, Santa Fe received bronze-level recognition as a "Bicycle Friendly Community" from the League of American Bicyclists; this month, the International Mountain Bike Association held its World Summit in Santa Fe; a Bicycle Master Plan was approved in April this year, with the express intention of promoting the bicycle as a means of transport. There are dozens of new miles of bike trails and "bikeways" (bike routes along less-used streets) across the city.

Why is Santa Fe so good by bike? It's a manageable size, reasonably level and very pretty. Its immaculate light has made it famous, as have its sunsets, its glowing adobe buildings and Spanish colonial center, all of which make a great backdrop for the cyclist. Come spring, when the cottonwoods turn bright with leaf, just to be passing through town on a bike, through the blue shade of trees, on any of the bikeways or trails, is a joy. Summer evenings and mornings are glorious for riding, and the fall, with its bright colors, is fine too. Almost wherever you are, you can see the mountains.

The most impressive of the new trails, the Santa Fe Rail Trail, is an 18-mile path that runs across town from the recently developed central Railyard, and snakes into the desert, finally arriving at the railway junction in Lamy, south of town. It starts as a broad, paved track and dwindles to packed dirt, following the rail tracks the whole way. You may even get overtaken by a train that runs nearby. As you move away from downtown, you start to see outlying neighborhoods rolling away over the undulating land. On the ocean, surfers occasionally report seeing dolphins skimming beside them in the waves. Here you may see lizards skipping beside your front wheel, darting off into the sandy shoulder. Chamisa, scrub, sagebrush, pinyon trees, birds and rabbits, and the Ortiz Mountains and Cerrillos Hills on the skyline: it's a different world now. Every so often there's an old wooden girder bridge, like something out of an old cowboy movie.

Near the end, you emerge from between the dry hills, and the whole Galisteo Basin opens before you, copper-colored, broad, with Highway 285 running across it like a margin line on a page.

You wouldn't think you could get lost on a well-marked trail, but once I managed to. I was almost at the end when I found myself riding among daisies and weeds, with no trace of the trail. Finally I had no choice but to ride along the track itself, bumping over the merciless ties. Eventually, I plunged down a dusty bank into a ranch, only to be chased by a furious dog, then saved from it by its owner, who pointed me in the right direction.


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