May is National Bike Month. But thanks to the International Festival of Arts & Ideas and Elm City Cycling, June is gearing up to be our local one, with community ride after community ride exploring New Haven and beyond.
The festival’s kickstand springs upward the morning of Saturday, June 13, when an opening round-trip ride takes the Farmington Canal Trail to Cheshire, visiting a pair of surviving canal (not bike) locks.
Hours later, the festival’s second ride shifts closer to home, touring community gardens at a time when their future’s in doubt.
A ride the next morning confronts a more direct challenge: “mixed surfaces,” i.e. terrain types that give pause to “even the most seasoned rider,” to which this ride will navigate in order to learn how to navigate them.
Later in the day, the West River Greenway gets taken for a spin from its north end (the Pond Lily Nature Preserve) to its south (in Edgewood Park), with a second leg (involving the Shoreline Greenway, heading east along the Sound) for those who still have the legs.
That Wednesday, June 17, a ride from the New Haven Green to whatever ice cream shop the riders democratically choose will have them dripping sweat while trying to prevent their cones from dripping.
Having already gone north, south and east, the festival signals a westward turn (albeit, ironically, under the heading of “East Coast Greenway South”) on Saturday, June 20, with a morning ride from New Haven’s Long Wharf to Milford’s Silver Sands.
A ride that afternoon tunes up a “Bike-Shop-O-Rama”—a tour of people and places that can tune up your bike, including storefront mechanics and DIY workshops.
A ride the next morning follows a track that’s still just a gleam in someone’s silvery bike bell: the Crosstown Greenway, a proposed “high-quality, protected east-west route” meant to help keep flat and clipless pedals safe from gas ones.
That’s followed the same day by a ride that somehow drafts off of New Haven’s decades-long engagement with the Sister Cities initiative, a national “citizen diplomacy” program that’s seen New Haven declare eight global cities its siblings.
A ride the following Wednesday, June 24, stays here in this city, focusing on the “Mill River Greenway”—assumedly the same thing as the Mill River Trail, an underway recreational path intended to connect East Rock Park to the harbor.
On Saturday, June 27, the aforementioned Shoreline Greenway, “a project to build a trail and connect communities in a 25-mile corridor from New Haven to Madison,” gets its own dedicated lane, though not so dedicated as to make you pedal all the way to Madison.
Helmeting (as in capping) off the two-week schedule are two seeking cyclings on the festival’s final day. The morning ride focuses on “contemplative spaces”—“quiet spots in the city” conducive to feeling present. The afternoon ride focuses on feeling out the past, with a city history scavenger hunt masterminded by the new local history museum Lost in New Haven.
And with that, you should now have a handle(bar) on the 2026 festival’s bounty of bike rides—including, again, that meta “Bike Shop-O-Rama” one, whose stops can help you do something about your actual handlebar.
Written by Dan Mims. Image features The Devil’s Gear bike and skate shop, a probable stop on the “Bike Shop-O-Rama” tour. Readers are encouraged to verify times, locations and other details—and to officially register—before attending festival rides.
