Ambler Ramble

This week in my exploration of Philly I joined the Philly Bike Club for their Ambler Ramble. This is one of their most popular club rides like the PFW's Cranbury ride. The is a nice 45 mile ride that starts at the Art Museum and makes it out to the country in back. Like most of the rides in Philly it was a combination of back street neighborhoods and park roads.

One of the thing that makes this ride possible is the large number of streets with bike lanes and the lots of little parks sprinkled through out the city. There were a few busy streets along the way but this route has been perfected to over time to reduce the need to do much urban riding.

Of course a good ride would not be complete with out a decent rest stop and when we got to Ambler there was a nice little sandwich shop with good food and comfortable tables both inside and out.

After the rest stop the group broke up into a fast and slow group. I headed back with the fast group as we wound our way back into Philly. The last 10 miles were along River Road and the Schuykill River. There were still signs of the flooding of the past weeks and people were still cleaning up but at least the roads and trails were clear. The last 5 miles were on MLK Drive which is closed to car traffic on Saturdays and Sunday. It's pretty cool to ride on the empty MLK Drive with all the other bikers and made the last part of the ride a lot of fun.

Biking in Philly is a little harder than the outlying suburbs because of the traffic and congestion of the city but what I have learned in my travels here is that with little determination and careful route planning its not to hard to find a good route to enjoy here. If you're interested in trying the Ambler Ramble I suggest you join the Philly Bike Club some Saturday morning or you can do it on your own with the route posted here  http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/448390

Lake Nockamixon

Although my vacation was great it feels good to be back on the bike again. I was planning to do the Suburban Cyclist Lake Nockamixon ride last weekend but decided against it because of the approaching hurricane. I managed to get out during the week for a couple of short rides but finally got back on the road again this Labor Day weekend and did some longer rides.

On Saturday Laura, Cheryl, Jeff and I joined me as I explored and mapped out my Lake Nockamixon ride. We started from Peace Valley on the other side of Doylestown and made it to Lake Nockamixon and back. I pasted the route together from the cue sheets from previous Lake Noxkamixon rides and some guesses after looking through Google Maps. Although I planned a 52 mile ride it ended up at 58 mostly because we put some extra miles exploring the actual park around the lake.

Nockamixon State Park is a hidden gem of a park. Not only does it have a large 7 mile long lake with a real marina but also has a swimming pool with a couple of slides and lots of place to picnic, hike, bike and ride horses. It even has some cabins you can rent. We spent a little time by the lake watching all the sail boats then made a quick stop by the pool and snack bar before heading back out on the roads. You can see my pictures from the lake HERE

There is some strange stuff on the roads around lake. On Clymer road it started out with a bunch of houses where every house had a motorcycle and guy with long hair and beard (Hell's Angle Hideout?). Pass that there was a place called Rock Ridge(after the town in Blazing Saddles?) that looked like a retirement home. Next to that was a couple of wellness centers where I'm sure homeopathic witch doctors try and milk the old people in the retirement home out of their money. Then just down road from that a big white building with large columns that looked like a greek temple. All in all a strange road.

When we got around the south side of the lake we saw a bunch of cars off the side of the road and wondered what they were looking at, then we saw it. It was the dam and spillway that forms the lake. The spillway is like a terraced waterfall. We stopped for some pictures then moved made our way back home.

We ended up going through the town of Perkasie where the downtown area streets are layed out and named exactly the same as downtown Philly. Laura was calling out the name before we got to each street. The last few miles were slighly uphill and we were getting tired but made it back in decent shape.

Although I had not been on 80% of the road we did ,this turned out to be a good route that we all enjoyed so I will definately be doing this one again.