Bike Riders Roll For 16th Rock To Rock

More than 600 cyclists took to the streets and trails Saturday for the 16th annual Rock to Rock event, which started in East Rock and ended with a ​“green fair” filled with food, folk music, and calls to environmental action.

A total of 653 riders showed up to ride (or walk) in the latest annual iteration of the Earth Day-adjacent, bike-filled fundraiser.

In College Woods park at the base of East Rock, tapestries about climate damage lined one end of the lawn, and cut outs of crabs and pufferfish dotted the fences, each bearing a message about saving the seas.

The Urban Resources Initiative’s Anna Ruth Pickett, one of the event’s lead organizers along with Chris Schweitzer of the New Haven Leon Sister City Project, expressed her gratitude for the warm weather for bringing such a turnout. She added that the new five-mile family-friendly biking route garnered 130 participants; the most popular route was the 20-mile one, and had nearly 154 riders.

Rock to Rock riders raised a total of $199,000 for 24 local environmental nonprofits and groups, which Pickett and Schweitzer affectionately call their ​“Rock friends.”

As riders returned from their routes to the green fair, the ​“Rock friends” pitched cyclists on various green-friendly goals. Max Teirstein, the city’s sustainability policy analyst, handed out ​“I Heart My Home” flyers and recruited residents to sign up for free home energy counseling. He said his team has knocked on doors of over 4,000 New Haven homes this year offering to help alleviate residents’ ​“energy burden” by connecting them with relevant city services.

Across the lawn, Haven’s Harvest volunteer Sherill Baldwin handed out free bags of bread from Chabaso Bakery, a sample of the surplus food they collect and distribute in order to reduce waste.

Still in their reflective road gear, many hungry bikers waited for a hard-earned meal from food trucks in the park, where they had a wide range of options from Mamoun’s Falafel to Ethiopian food from Lalibela.

After ​“alt folk rock” band Love n’ Co’s set under the pavilion, Mayor Justin Elicker took up the microphone to honor URI Director Colleen Murphy-Dunning with her own plaque and proclamation thanking her organization for planting 11,588 trees and counting.

Wooster Square resident Paul Proulx, who’s in his 13th year being in charge of event safety at Rock to Rock, said there’ve been no injuries or issues to note this year. Proulx said as the city has constructed more protected bike lanes, the state of biking in New Haven is ​“slowly getting better.”