My Trusty Baja

You need more than a good bike to be a serious rider. There is a lot of supporting equipment needed like spare tubes, tires, and an assortment of tools. You also need special clothing and shoes for each season and many other incidental. If you have to drive to where you are going to ride it also helps to have a good way to transport your bike.

When it comes time to buy a new car I always take into account how well it will work for carrying bikes since transporting bikes and people is part of almost every weekend for me. In October 2002 I bought a Subaru Baja as it seemed like a good car for everyday use as well as a great car for hauling me and the bike around.

Ten years later and I'm still very happy with the car. It's a fun comfortable car to drive and gets good mileage (25 MPG). Having an pickup bed in the back has been very useful for hauling, plants, dirt, wood and other dirty things that won't fit or are too dirty for the back of a normal car. The bed also easily fits 3 bikes with a custom rack I made.

This car has been able to do everything I have needed it to do. It is a little smaller than my last car a Ford Ranger pickup but it has been able to do everything my small pickup did and has a better ride and gas mileage. Its also has been very reliable car and at 80,000 miles it seems to have a lot of life left in it.

When the Baja first came out Car and Driver didn't think it was a car that Subaru needed to build. They didn't understand why some one would by a Baja when they could get almost the same utility from an Outback wagon. They were right of course and three years after the Baja came out Subaru discontinued it for lack of sales. For me however I'm glad they did build the car because it has been the perfect car to get me, my bikes, and my friends to our many bike adventures.

After the storm

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Its been almost two weeks since Hurricane Sandy came through and things are mostly back to normal. Most people have their power back on and there is no problems getting gas. There are still some down trees and debris laying around but most of the damage has been cleaned up.

Down the shore it is a different story. We have a small condo in Avon, just north of Belmar a block off the beach. We are on the 4th floor of a strong stucco build that weathered the storm well. We didn't have any damage but down on ground level its a different story. At the height of the storm there was probably close to 3 feet of water in the streets in front of our condo. This flooded the first floor of the condo which is a couple feet below street level.

When we arrived in Avon we saw the sand once we got a couple blocks from the beach. After the storm there was probably a foot or two of sand lying in the streets. This has been plowed to the side like snow and people were still digging out the sidewalks in front of their houses.

The front doors of the main lobby, of the condo, were destroyed by the storm and they were already working on ripping out the carpet and sheet rock on the first floor. This is not the first time this has happened.  About once every 10 years the first floor of the condo floods but this time the water was a lot higher. Although it will probably take a couple of months before the first floor is back in shape the rest of the building is fine.

If you take a walk on the beach you can appreciate the real power of the storm. There are some small parts of the boardwalk still intact but most of it is broken and bent or just plain missing. There are several buildings like the lifeguard station that got knocked off its foundation and are a total. loss. The worst damage is the public bathroom which came off it foundation and flipped upside down. It will take many months before they will be able to clean this up and start the rebuilding process.

We tried to get to Belmar to see the damage there but the area by the beach is only open to residents and it looked like they were still working on getting power back to parts of the town.

I can't imagine what Seaside looks like since that got hit a lot harder than Avon or Belmar. There is no doubt that this storm will leave scars across NJ for years to come.