Plan B

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This past weekend I had to go to a family party up in Long Valley NJ. It was a late afternoon party so instead of driving up I thought it would be fun to ride up and have my wife meet me there. There are a lot of nice roads up it that area if you don't mind some hills. I planned a nice 55 mile route that would take me on some nice roads. I had ridden in this area in July when I did my ride to Schooleys Mountain and wanted to go back to some of the roads on my own to take some pictures.

Unfortunately the weather was pretty bad on Saturday. I would have done the ride if it was only going to be scattered showers but it was a full out deluge so there was no way to ride. I was disappointed but oh well. I'll do it some other time.

Plan B was to ride with Laura on Sunday but I was tired from the party the night before and didn't get up early enough to get to Lambertville in time. No problem I saw that Ken had a ride out of Princeton going to the Sourlands so I headed out to his ride. The only problem was nobody was there. Although it wasn't raining the roads were a little wet and there was still a chance of some rain so I wasn't completely surprised nobody was there.

At this point I'm on Plan D which meant I was on my own. I really didn't have any route in mind but decided to go to Rocky Hill and start riding towards Round Valley. There were some roads up there that I wanted to explore so that was a good a plan as any at this point.

I headed up Hollow road over the Sourlands. The rain we got the previous day made the stream along side of the road run really fast I stopped along the way and got some good pictures. After getting over the Sourlands I headed north crossing the Raritan River a couple of times.

Some people have asked me if it gets boring when I ride for hours by myself. My answer is always no. For me riding by myself is very relaxing. There is usually some interesting things to see along the way, especially if I am exploring a new area or revisiting a place I had not been in a while. When you ride the roads on a bike things seem to slow down a little. You can heard the sounds of the animals running in the bushes along side the road, see the birds in the rivers or trees and just enjoy the scenery as it rolls by.

Riding by myself gives me a lot of time to think. During rides I have worked through some technical problems at work, planned some home improvement projects, and wondered why Jon Steward does better interviews on his fake news show than most of the real news anchors do (I'm not going to even mention the abomination that is Fox news).

My thoughts on this day, as I rode, turned to Howie who passed away this past Thursday. When I first started riding with the club it was him, Dennis, Don and a few others that really welcomed me into the club and made me feel like part of the group. I became a much better biker because of them and really started to enjoy the social aspect of the rides. That's when riding became fun.

I spent a lot of time on the ride thinking about all the conversations we had about biking, skiing, computers and life in general. I really enjoyed riding with Howie and have a lot of good memories. I hate the fact that I won't be able to enjoy his company any more.

When I got some where around Stanton I started to explore some new roads like Cole and Pinebark which were a little hilly but really nice. I ended up going past Solberg Airport and saw the Met life blimp. From there I headed back south along the Raritan again. By this time I was back in familiar territory and had my route all set for the way back.

That was until I went to cross the Griggstown Causeway. Which was totally flooded which meant an extra 4 or 5 miles back to my car. Nothing today worked out how I had expected or planned so this was just the order of the day. Although I love it when a plan comes together some days it can be just as much fun to roll with the punches.

All Roads Lead to Clarksburg

When I first joined the Princeton Free Wheelers I did a lot of rides out of Cranbury. Even though there are many different routes you can do from Cranbury almost all of them end up with at stop at the Clarksburg Deli. The Clarksburg Deli is not the best Deli around but it has a great location that makes it a convenient place to stop.

I lead the HoneyDo ride out of Cranbury for a lot of years and know almost every rideable road in the area. I learn the roads from riding with Don, Norman and a few others. If you want a nice 40-45 mile flat to rolling ride this is a great area to ride in.

I don't lead many rides out of Cranbury any more. This is mainly because I have been adding more variety to my rides and exploring other areas. The size of the rides, out of Cranbury are also larger than I want lead. The B group can be 25 to 30 people which can make the ride very chaotic and hard to control.

I have seen a few emails recently complaining about pace and leadership of some the rides going out of Cranbury. Some of these are the usual argument about how to keep a B ride from becoming a B+ ride and dropping people who can't keep up or just want to do a "real B pace". These arguments are nothing new and part of the normal ebb and flow of a bike club.

Although there are some things a leader can do it can be hard sometimes to make everybody in the ride happy with the pace when you have a large group.

On thing that would help is if there were more ride leaders. This would give riders more options when deciding which leader to go with based on their ability. Of course people are fast to complain but slow to want to lead. Mostly their excuse is that they don't know the roads good enough. To take that argument away. I have just posted 3 of my favorite routes from Cranbury. You can find them on my ride sheet page for my book. These routes show some of the best rides around Cranbury and will give you a good start to understanding the roads in the area.

So if you don't like the size or pace of the rides going out of Cranbury stop complaining and do something about the problem by becoming a ride leader. It is good for the club and a can be a fun experience.

Quick side note:
I had not ridden past the Clarksburg Deli in a few weeks so after writing this post took a quick ride past it not to see the deli but because I heard the Clarksburg Inn burnt down. Here are some pictures of what the fire did. The fire department is next to the building so they got there quick but it must have spread fast because the entire inside is almost completely gutted even though the wall look mostly intact. It was a historic building that has been around for over 200 years so its too bad they will have to tear it down and build a new one.

Errata

I have been on vacation for the last two weeks and have had a lot of fun but did not get a chance to do any biking. Now that I'm back I'm looking forward to riding again. This past Saturday was the PFW cycling event and it couldn't have been a nicer day. Usually I work the registration desk in the morning then do 50 or 60 miles while taking pictures of all the bikers.

This year I didn't get a chance to ride because I was doing a book signing with Barnes & Noble. They usually don't do many external book signings but the PFW event was the perfect place to sell the book to bikers so they agreed to come out.

I did sell some books which is good but I also got a chance to talk to some people who had already bought it and were using it. The feedback was very positive which made me feel good since I put a lot of work into the book to make sure it was accurate and useful. Even though I did my best to make the book error free there is always the possibility that I missed something or that some of the roads, or rest stops have changed. This is why I have added an Errata section to the website for the book I have also added an email link so people can more easily contact me and report any errors that they find.

Oshkosh B'Gosh

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Although most people associate Oshkosh with the famous denim overalls, it is also the site of one of the world’s biggest airshows. I’m not a pilot or have any real desire to become one but I am an aviation enthusiast and enjoy the beauty and technology behind manned flight. I usually try to go to one airshow a year just to satisfy my desire to see some cool aerobatics. This year I planned our vacation to Chicago to end the day before the start of the Oshkosh airshow then put my wife on a plane home and headed north to Oshkosh.

The Oshkosh airshow is put on by the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association). This show started out as a bunch of pilots gathering to discuss and show off the best home built planes in the country. The show has been held every year for over 50 years and has grown in leaps and bounds. This year the attendance total will probably top over 700,000 people. This show is not only about home built planes but has become a world class airshow where you can come and see almost any plane that has ever been made. At the show I saw everything from Wright Model B to WWII Mustang to the Whiteknight II from Burt Rutan. If you love airplanes you owe it to yourself to get you ass to Oshkosh at least once in your life to experience airplane nirvana.

There are a lot of different aspects to the Oshkosh airshow. There are talks given on any aviation topic imaginable by the experts in the field, There are 10s of thousands of planes on display that you can look at and of course there is the daily airshow that show cases the best aerobatic pilots on earth. The scope and size of the show is overwhelming. It easily takes a few days to really see everything.

The highlight of the show was the arrival and demonstration flight of the Whiteknight 2 aircraft that was built by Scaled Composites for Virgin Galactic to carry SpaceShip 2 to 50,000 feet and air launch it into a ballistic trajectory to space. In the next 5 years this should allow a few hundred to a thousand people to fly into space and experience weightlessness for around 10 mins. This will be the beginning of the commercial space market and should start to allow the common man to experience space travel.

The other main highlight of the show was the arrival and demo flight of the new Airbus 380 the biggest plane in the world. The plane is huge but as the demonstration flight showed it is very maneuverable. The pilot did some very short turns and had the angle of attack at plus and minus 15 degrees. Nothing you would want to experience during a normal commercial flight but it was amazing how the nimble the big plane really was.

The amazing part of the show was the organization. Even with over 10’s of thousands of plane and 100s of thousands of people everything ran flawlessly. This was one of the cleanest places I have every seen and although it was crowded the wait for food or any other service was never very long. Also the service of every one of the staff from the bus drivers to the food service personnel was always friendly and professional. In fact they would go out of their way to do anything to make the event run more efficiently. For example when the air show let out the buses back to the camp ground (Where I was staying) were really packed as everybody was trying to get back to where they were staying.

Normally this would mean long lines and waiting times for buses but this was not the case. First they had a lot of buses which help but they also learn to run them more efficiently. After every one got on the bus they announced the stops they planned to make and asked who was getting off at each stop. If there were stops that no one needed they changed the route to eliminate that stop and get to the other ones quicker. All the bus drivers communicated to each other so that all the stops were always covered and they never missed picking any one up. It was a great system that was worked well and the most amazing thing was that it was an all volunteer system.

As I mentioned above I stayed in the camp ground. As you can imaged the small Wisconson town of Oshkosh is totally overwhelm by the hordes of people that attend the airshow. It is really hard to get a hotel room. However there is a huge field next to the airport where the airshow is held turns into a extremely large campground. My parents have a 5th wheel camper and were in the area so I meet them and stayed with them for the three days that I was there. The campground is a cross between a refugee camp and an army base. There were over 30,000 trailers, motor homes and tents here. It was an unbelievable site. The makeshift roads had a constant flow of traffic including, buses, bikes, scoters and people walking. It was chaotic, crowded and well organized all at the same time. Again the volunteers kept the camp really clean and their passion to help people was infectious because all the campers were really friendly and helpful. It was like living in a big commune and although I missed having my own private bathroom and shower it wasn’t a bad way to live for a few days.

This airshow attracts some of the best, brightest and even famous people. I attended talks by Sir Richard Branson, Harrison Ford (besides being an actor he is also a helicopter pilot), Miles O’Brien and Burt Rutan just to name a few. The best talk I went to was with Richard Branson and Burt Rutan where they explained how within a few years they plan to be flying people on sub orbital flights to space. I believe they will not only be able to do it but actually make money at it.

The Oshkosh airshow was one of those rare events which I had high expectations which were exceeded by the actual experience. I saw a lot of cool planes and learned a lot about the future advances of aviation.

The only thing that damped my high from attending the airshow was the flight home.. My 225 pm flight from O’Hare ended up leaving over 2 hours late because of bad weather at Newark. So although the future of aviation is bright they need to work a little harder to find a way to make the airlines run on time when it rains.