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.