Roebling River Ride

I am always on the look out for new places to ride in the area so a couple weeks ago when big Joe asked if any one wanted to join him for a his river ride I decided to join him. This rides starts in Mercer County park and heads south to the Roebling and Florence where you ride by the Delaware for a few miles. I had actually never ridden through Florence so this ride gave me a chance to explore a few new roads.

Even though Joe has done this route a number of times he still had to check the map a few times since little Joe wasn't there to guide him. We also had to shorten the ride a little since Herb had to get home by noon.

This all resulted in trying to find a few short cuts to get home on time. Some of our short cuts caused us to have to ride on Rt 130 and 206 a couple of times. We ended up getting back almost on time and including riding into the park I ended up with 70 miles.

Except for having to ride on Rt 130 and 206 for a couple of miles it actually ended up being a nice ride and not as urban as I thought it would be. After I got back from the ride I mapped out where we went and came up with a new route that I rode this past weekend. It is similar to Joe's ride without riding on any major highways and returns through the farmlands of Columbus.

Although this has a few urban spots its actually a pretty nice ride and a route that I will definitely do it again. It's always a nice surprise when you go exploring and actually find a new route. I have posted the ridesheet here for those interested in trying the ride.

Mapping My Rides

It's been a couple of weeks since I made a post mostly because I was on vacation for a week in Bermuda. I didn't doing any biking there but did get some nice time on the beaches which are absolutely beautiful. You can see my vacation pictures here.

I also have been speeding some time getting familiar with a new piece of software for mapping out my rides. For the past 10 years I have been using the different versions of Street Atlas USA. Its a pretty good program that allowed me to map out routes and create ride sheets but recently I upgraded to Topo USA, another mapping product from Delorme. Topo USA is very similar Street Atlas USA but adds topographical information to the normal detailed street maps. This is a nice addition especially when I plan rides in the hillier areas of the state and want to decide which hills to take.

For example I am planning a ride to Schooley's Mountain in July. The first thing I do when planning a ride is take a look a NJBikeMap to get a quick look at the best roads to take. I then start mapping out the ride in Topo USA. This involves setting the start and stop location of the ride as well as adding way points to get the route to follow the road that I want to ride on. As I do this I get a good idea of how long the ride is going to be and can easily adjust to route to get the miles I want.

Once I get the route the way I want it I can export the directions to a text file which I can turn into a ride sheet. With Street Atlas USA this was all I could do which was fine but with Topo USA not only can I generate a ride sheet I can also get an elevation profile which tells me how much climbing I am going to do and the grade of each climb. You can see a sample below.





What's even cooler is that I can overlay the street maps with satellite images and get a really good idea of what I will see along the way. I use to use google maps to see the satellite data which was ok but it required me to switch between Street Atlas USA and google maps which made it a little cumbersome. Having the satellite view inside the mapping program makes it easier to get the complete picture.



Of course maps and satellite images are no substitute for doing the actual ride but doing the planning up front gives you a better idea of what to expect once you are on the road.

Some people don't want to bother to do a lot of planning before a ride and prefer to just improvise along the way. I respect that approach but for me I actually enjoy doing the planning and with tools like Topo USA planning a ride is a lot easier.

Rain Rain Go Away...

My planned ride this weekend got rained out. I did managed to get out for a few hours Saturday afternoon as there was a small window where the rain stopped so it wasn't a total loss. Since then the rain has been almost non stop with no sign of letting up.

On rainy days like these I like to curl up with a good book. One book I would highly recommend would be my book Road Biking New Jersey. Ok maybe its not this years hot novel but it will help you plan your next bike ride once if stops frigging raining. The book is finally available and is shipping from amazon now. The funny thing is that the new book is priced at $11.51 where as used version of the book (which are at most 3 days old) are going for $32. Its nice to see that that the book only gets better with age :-) So not only is the book a great read it's also a great investment (End of blatant self promotion)

The truth is that the rain has given me some time to get familiar with a new piece of software I recently bought for planning my rides. This software lets me combine street maps topographical and satellite data all on one map. So even though this week is looking like a rain out I should have some new routes mapped out when roads finally dry out.