Prince St. It's a standard block long and is on a slight hill. Traffic is one way down the hill but I rode it twice, both times, up. Since there's essentially no traffic on this road, it wasn't an issue. It's hard to tell by the pictures but the stones that make up this road are not laid in any sort of pattern and they aren't uniform in height or size. They very in size from pebbles filling in gaps to rocks larger than softballs. Riding up this street definitely sucked. Racing it would be a nightmare as you sort of have to just let your front wheel bounce and find it's way. To the couple taking your engagement photos as I bounced my way up this street, sorry I ruined your obviously awkward moment. Hopefully you had many more as a stranger with a camera kept directing you to kiss. To the lady watering her flowers on the sidewalk, thanks for not even looking up to acknowledge some idiot was riding his bike the wrong way up your street. I'm guessing your lack of reaction means I'm not the first one you've seen.
We'll call this sector 2 as I'm pretty sure it doesn't have a name. I found this alley and decided to give it a go. It's far less maintained than any of the others with grass, roots and a water system run off up towards the top. Obviously that middle brick section would have been smoothest but if I was looking for smooth rides I wouldn't have gone on this little adventure. I rode this alley three times, twice on the left and once on the right. The right side was a lot smoother. Overall suck factor was pretty high.
You can see that this alley which is relatively smooth leads to the 4th section above it. Even though these were "smooth" and put together like a puzzle they still vibrated you quite a bit. These you could basically ride just like a regular road, it was just a bumpy, teeth chattering road. Suck factor was pretty minimal. The cook from one of the restaurants that use this alley was not amused with my riding past while he was enjoying his smoke break.
This last section came just across the street from the previous. I wanted to link them up at full speed but there was the occasional car so I had to at least slow down enough to make sure it was clear. The stones in this section were a lot like Prince St and less like the previous alley, except there were big sections that were just missing and had been filled in with sand. As you bounced off a big stone and hit a sand section big enough for your tire to roll through your speed would plummet and then you'd be bouncing across the next section and a much lower speed. Carrying speed all the way through was almost impossible and I felt like at the top I was using a lot of body english to try and pick some sort of line, but I don't think I was really dictating where the bike was headed much. I rode this section twice and the first time I startled a couple runners who were stretching in a parking lot about 3/4 of the way up. They exchanged suspicious looks. The second time they wondered out loud what was wrong with me. Which is weird, because you know, they were running.
Those were the only sections I could find that were long enough to bother riding. There are a couple of other half alleys that are laid with bricks but I figured they weren't worth the effort. I saw a picture that I thought was taken in old town of a cobbled climb however, I couldn't find it. I'm sure the pave of Paris-Roubaix can't be compared to the stones in Old Town, but, it was fun none the less.
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