Cold War Research and Cycling

The two can go together. Three examples. When I did research for my dissertation, in Berlin in 1996, I rode a rented bike to the archive in Lichterfelde, first from Kreuzberg, where I was staying with friends, later from Spandau. The latter rides were near epic: January in Berlin, and I was on the road around 7:30, riding part of the way through the woods, getting some breakfast 45 minutes in, at a bakery in Zehlendorf (where I'd also pick up some rolls for when I'd get my lunch-time pea soup at the Freie Universitaet, a ten minute ride from the archive). After lunch, you'd look out the window around 2:30 and see it beginning to get dark again. And so the ride "home" to Spandau (cheap room, though!) was also in the dark. In case you wonder, it certainly was cold on those rides. A few years later I worked on a project for which the material was at the U.S. National Archives at College Park, Md. That's only a stone's throw away from Greenbelt Park, where they have training races every Wednesday night. This, conveniently, is also the day the archive closes at five. So on those research trips (during the summer!) I'd drive over from Milwaukee (including stops in Pittsburgh on the way out and back to join PMVC on their weekend rides) with my bike in the trunk. Then, while in D.C., I'd drive over to Greenbelt Park once or twice during the week either to race or to do an hour of loops around the course by myself. The races were the best, of course, but after sitting on your butt the entire day working your way through box after box it wasn't exactly a chore to ride there all alone. The third example comes from last week, when we drove to Bonn so that I could do some work at the Archiv der sozialen Demokratie at the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. We found a hotel at the foot of the Venusberg (it says "berg," but it's really just a good hill). On the map, there were two roads that looked like good vehicles for an hour to an hour-and-a-half of exercise after a day spent with the files: the Bergstrasse and the Annaberger Strasse. I did them both, and can report that in Pittsburgh, the former would be a candidate for both Danny Chew's Dirty Dozen and Oscar Swan's ever growing list of ghost roads (a pretty steep grade, enough to give my arms a real work-out on the 39x26 while the poor surface forced me to stay seated). The latter proved to be excellent for hill repeats. It is a beautiful road through the woods that is closed to regular car traffic, and it too is quite steep, especially the first part, steep enough for me to reach for my 24 there. The climb is just about a mile long, and if I did my best, I could do it within six minutes. You do that several times in a row, and you really can get a worthwhile workout in a little over one hour. I was going to write next about the interesting stuff I found in all these archives, but I just remember yet another example of Cold War research-related cycling: Abilene, Kansas. Yes sir! Actually, when I spent two weeks there at the Eisenhower Library in the early '90s (1992, I think, staying at the long since disappeared Forester Hotel for under $35.-- a week, across the tracks from the also sorely missed Texas Cafe), I did have to get in the car for the two excellent rides I remember doing there, but it was worth it. On the advice of a friend over in Lawrence, I drove over on a Saturday afternoon to the Tuttle Creek Lake area, the site of a recent state road championship. They were indeed good roads, but what I remember most is just staying clear of a huge charging St. Bernard dog early in my ride on Green Randolph Rd. near Olsburg. (If that section had been uphill, I don't know if I'd be writing this today). The other drive was in the opposite direction, south into the Flint Hills to Council Grove. I had picked this course myself, having once done a race from the Prairie Chicken Capital of the World (Cassoday, but you probably knew that) to this historic town. The road between there and Strong City/Cottonwood Falls may well be my favorite in all of Kansas, and it was no chore at all to do an out-and-back there. The follow-up research for last week's work may well have to take place at Germany's Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, not a bad place for post-research riding, either. I'll keep you posted.