BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Awesome. And I thought rails-to-trails was a cool idea. A story: About a year or so after the Wall came down I happened to be in Berlin. I was curious and asked people to point out to me where the wall had been (say as we were riding on the s-bahn). Everyone of them deflected the question, in one way or another ("I'm not really sure, it might have been over there"). They all seemed intent on completely wiping the whole thing from their memory. [To be fair, in the city the wall seemed to consist of high concrete walls running down the middle of a street; no real need for access roads like out in the country and easy to wipe off. Still, if you've lived with it there for most of your life...]

It is the weirdest thing for the Iron Curtain to be part of historical memory, to be commemorated with a bike trail. While I was growing up, it seemed as permanent as the mountains. I don't think even in science fiction the triumph of the West and tearing down of the Iron Curtain, including the Berlin Wall, was ever speculated upon. It just seemed to be a part of life. I remember once when I was in Berlin I got on the subway and off at the wrong station. From the decor you could see, this was one of the ones behind the wall. They were completely distinct.

We need a bike trail from Tijuana/San Diego to Matamoros/Brownsville, along the Mexico/US border.

I agree. Oddly, this would not work for the Canadian border. The boundary line is clear-cut, with regular markers, but there's no road and it's not patrolled. The stretches near where I lived had buried vibration sensors. If they detected human-like motion, a patrol would go out.

Paul, I was looking at this last month. It's not completed yet, there's a waterpark at a brownfields site in Bulgaria that won't let the trail have right-of-way to a tiny sliver on the periphery of their property. Some people say, let's take it for the greater good and others reply, that's going back to the OldWays and it seems very complicated. I'm sure they'll work it out eventually and probably have a big party.

^ Ha!

My friend and I were at the Canadian / US border for about 20 minutes before starting the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route before dudes showed up in a tinted SUV. It was a closed border station and they pulled up going like 200 mph. They saw our bike shit and wished us good luck. It was kind of freaky. Sidenote, there was a sign that said "La Canada La Sucks" there.

@Ahlir Just FYI, now the former location of the Berlin Wall is a trail marked with signs (http://www.berlin.de/mauer/mauerweg/index/index.de.php), and next weekend a 100-mile ultramarathon will take place on it (http://100meilen.de/files/PDF/announcement.pdf). I've run/hiked/biked sections of it, and it's pretty neat.

FYI, now the former location of the Berlin Wall is a trail marked with signs That's what was so weird about people's responses. Looks like the experience may have healed over, a good thing.