Southern Sojourn

Riding in southern Jersey is different than riding any where else in the state. Its very rural, flat and a little strange. There are a lot of empty roads with almost no traffic. I try to get down south a couple times a year just to explore a little and revisit some of the nicer roads I have found. This past Saturday I decided to do my Fort Mott ride again. This ride starts just north of the Delaware Memorial Bridge so it's easy to get to. I had done this ride a couple of years ago and wanted to come back and explore the area again.

There is really nothing special about this area. It is mostly composed of a lot of farmland an rural roads as well as some wet lands in and around the Delaware. There aren't a lot of towns in this area and the ones that are, like Salem are a little old and run down. Still it is a nice place to ride especially if you like flat roads with no traffic.

From our starting point at Fort Mott State Park it took us about 7 miles to get through the town of Salem and out to the farmlands. Along the way Mary picked up a hugh spike that went through her tire and stuck into her rim tap. Needless to say the tire when flat instantly. At least it was easy to find out where the hole was. A quick tube change and we were on our way again.

Once we got into the farmlands there was a lot of nothing but it was a good nothing. No cars no hills just quiet roads and easy cruising. We had a little bit of a head wind but this was a good sign for the return trip. Last time I rode down this way there was a house that had hundreds of polka dot pots strewn on the lawn. It was one of those strange things you see down here. This time most of the polka dots pots were gone. The weather was a little overcast so I didn't take a lot of pictures if you want to see the pictures from my last trips down here you can see them here and here

Our first rest stop was in the town of Alloway at Bud's deli. It's an old deli but is has all the usually stuff and a nice table to sit at. There aren't many places to stop down south so you don't have a lot of choices.

After Alloway we continued south and ran into some rolling hills. Normally I won't have notice the hills but the flatness of the first part of the ride make them seem steeper then they really were.

We made it down to the town of Roadster (yea, I never heard of it either). This was new territory for me and although I new exactly where I was on my map it felt like the middle of no where or actually we where 10 miles south of no where in to the territory of "where the heck are we"

Once we started heading back we had a really nice tail wind which felt good. The deli/bait & tackle/liquor store that I wanted to stop for the second rest stop was abandon so we just continued on. Luckily about 7 miles later we found a post office/deli to stop at. It was a real post office on the left side with a small deli on the right. When I say small I mean the entire deli was about 10 square feet. You take one step through the door and you hit the counter to your left is a cold case with drinks. On the counter is a box of doughnuts and to the right is a small two person table. That's it. But is was a perfect unexpected stop and after a quick break we were one our way again.

We had a tail wind all the way back which made the return trip back easy. All in all it was a good ride and something I will do again in the future. Maybe in the fall when all the farms are full of crops.

Vacation in the Cascades

I haven't posted for the past couple of weeks because I have been on vacation. We went to the west coast and spent a lot of time in the Cascade mountains between Portland and Seattle. It was a great trip and I got a lot of good pictures. We spent a lot of time driving up and down mountains. It was like one long scenic drive. You can see more of the pictures from my trip here.

I did not do any biking on this vacation but saw a number of bikers while we were driving around and talked to a few. There aren't a lot of paved roads around the Cascade mountains so most of the biking is done on the county roads. They all have wide shoulders so riding with the traffic is not a problem. The view are spectacular as long as you don't mind long climbs of 1000 to 2000 feet.

The weather is very unpredictable it can be 60 degrees and sunny and then 15 mins later its 35 degrees and hailing. So as one of the bikers told me you can't depend on the weather report and have to be prepared for any type of weather whenever you go riding.

Now that I am back from vacation I miss seeing the beautiful Cascade mountain every day as it was almost like being in the Alps. It was a nice change of pace.

After 10 days of vacation it was nice to get back on the bike and start riding again. I went for a ride with Herb, Mary, and George down towards Bordentown and although the I didn't see any snow capped mountains the scenery was still nice. We ended up running into a Rotary club ride and saw a bunch of riders filing by. We ended stopping and checking on one of the bikers who had a fall. He had a couple of bad cuts on his face and some road rash on his arms and legs but he didn't appear to have broken anything. So after he called for the sage wagon we left him with a car that had stopped to check on him and continued on our ride.

Because I was on vacation I did not put in any ride in the book for June so keep watch on the blog here in case I decide to do some off the book rides.

Shades of Death

This past Wednesday I had a presentation and book signing at REI in East Hanover. This is up in north west Jersey. Since I don't get up to this area to ride as much as I want, I decided to take the day off work and do a ride up in the area. I decided to do a ride around Allamuchy since this area is nice and quiet and isn't too hilly. I also wanted to ride on Shades of Death again since I hadn't done this in a couple of years. Although the name sounds bad Shades of Death is a nice rolling road with some good scenery especially by the meadow.

The last time I rode in this area the weather was a perfect 80 degree day with calm winds(see pictures here). This time however the weather sucked. It was an overcast 40 degrees with 20 mph winds gusting much higher. It didn't really rain but there were a couple of times when I got hit with a few rain drops. I event rode through some intermittent pea size hail. If I didn't have the book signing later in the day I would have canceled the ride.

Even with the poor conditions I still enjoyed the ride, which just proves that a bad day on the bike is still better than working. I didn't stop to take a lot of pictures this time because of the weather but I did see something strange that I couldn't help but take a picture of. It was motorcycle made out of logs. It looks like something I would see in the Flintstones.

The presentation at REI went well. The store in East Hanover is relatively new and very nice. They have a full bike shop and more bike merchandise then most big outdoor stores. The store even had a special room just for presentations and events. The staff was great and the bike mechanic was pretty sharp he noticed my stretched chain on my bike almost immediately.

I had around 35-40 people of all different levels of experience. After the talk they had a lot of good questions and even after the presentation was over a number of them hung around. It is always fun talking to other bikers and exchanging stories. It is something I never get tired of.

North west Jersey has a lot of nice places to ride if you don't mind a few hills so I hope to be back up in this area later this year for some more rides.