Riding Home
The best way to learn a new city: from a moving bicycle
Picture yourself on Main Street, a quiet road with old brick factories and weird intersections. It’s right next to your new office. This is where you start. You’re seated on your bike, balancing with your foot against a curb. This is your first ride in Rhode Island, where you now live. Your lunch break just started, but you’ve already eaten a can of noodle soup at your desk. You now have a whole hour to yourself.
Launch forward. Pedal up a narrow street, then cross Pawtucket Avenue, wary of distracted drivers. Pass rows of clapboard houses. Turn right on Hope.
“Hope” is a word you’ll hear a lot. Soon you’ll learn that this one word is the state motto. “Hope” is sewn into the state flag. There’s a Mount Hope, and also a Mount Hope Bridge. Now you’re rolling down Hope Street, a major artery through Providence. You’ll soon hear a joke — actually, you’ll read it on a novelty T-shirt — that “rich folks live on Power Street, but most of us live off Hope.”
Imagine a long, gentle hill. Big houses, nice lawns. Stores emerge, then restaurants — a little business district. Gift shops, a toy shop, a shop that sells only olive oil. Soon, you will eat lunch at that Indian restaurant; you will slurp ramen at that Japanese place. You will snicker at the sign, “Rochambeau…
