To Grandmother's House We Went

Growing up I was lucky enough to have both sets of grandparents in my life until well after I finished high school. My father's parents lived down the shore in Brick Township and my mother's parents lived in the country in Belvidere in the north west part of the state by the Delaware river. So we called my father parents were seashore grandma and grandpa and my mother's parents were country grandma and grandpa.

While growing up I spent a lot more time with my seashore grandparents then my country grandparents because we had a boat docked at their house that we used most weekends in the summer. So to me going to the country was more fun because it was something I didn't get to do as often.

My country grandmother lived next to her sister's farm which has a some fun places to explore. My grandmother's house was at the top of the hill overlooking the farm and orchard and had a nice view. I remember that there was always a set of binoculars by the back door to look at all the deer and other animals that roam through the field.

The main crop produced on the farm was apple and peaches but they also grew corn in their fields. As was typical of the small farm at the time they also had some animals including chickens,  sheep, and a few horses. If was a cool place to roam around as a kid

My grandparents and her sister pass away many years ago so I haven't been up to that area in a long time which made a perfect excuse to take a bike ride in that area. I was close to that area last year when I rode/walked up Fiddlers Elbow. Its a hilly area so there is no avoiding some tough climbs.

I started from Milford and was lucky to have 7 people crazy enough to join me, Laura, Ron, Jackie, Jack, Jim and Lynne who I hadn't seen in a while. Although I said the first part of the ride would be flatter then the last half we started out with a couple of climbs to get out of Milford. I could of went around the hills but that would have added some miles to the ride and the gang chose hills over miles.

The climbs weren't bad but there was a really steep down hill on Shire that had most of us squeezing our brakes all the way down. From there is was mostly rolling as we went around Merrill Creek Reservoir and came dangerously close to the bottom of Fiddlers Elbow before heading down towards the Delaware to ride along the river into the town of Belvidere. We had a nice stop in at Skoogy's Deli which had Gatorade, bathroom and decent food which is all you need from a rest stop.

The town looked somewhat familiar although one of the things I remember about the town when I was there as a kid was there some of the buildings had gutter pipes that when from the roof away from the building over the sidewalk then down into the curb of the street. I didn't see any on our tour through town so I assume they found a better and safer way of keeping water away from the buildings.

Once out of town we past my aunt's farm and grandmothers house. The barn and grazing area, for the horses that was  across from my aunt's house was gone but the house, farm and orchard were still much as I remembered them. It is now called Stoneyfield Orchard and is preserved farmland.

My grandparent house was up the hill from my aunt's farm and the hill was as steep as I remembered it. The house was mostly the same layout but they had replace all the doors and windows and made the landscaping much nicer.

I took a few pictures of the house and area to show my mother and then we all headed on to the climbs. To get back to Milford when had three long climbs ahead of us the first one was to get us to the top of Merrill Creek. This was a long 3.5 mile climb. There were a couple of flat spots and a couple of steep spots but I slowly grinded my way up the hill while every asked "Is this the top yet?".

During the climb we heard the cicadas in the distance. Eventually we did reach the top and enjoyed and nice long downhill on Millbrook before heading up over the second climb over into Asbury where we rode along the ridge with some great views of the hills and valleys. The view never comes out in pictures but I tried again anyway.

We had one last climb to get us back. Tunnel road is where the train tracks go under the hill. It is a long shallow climb that is not real hard but is it one of those hills that never seems to end so at the end of a ride when you're tired of climbing it is a little rude.

As we started to spread out up the hill I saw Jack stop. The I saw it. A bear. It was lumbering across the road. I pulled out the camera and zoomed in to get a few pictures. I managed to get a picture of it's backside and it going over into the woods. It was cool seeing a bear.

The payoff for doing the climb is going down Sweet Hollow a nice gentle 3 mile down hill. There was a bridge out sign about half way down but there is usually always a way around if you're not a car so we kept going only to find that the bridge was totally out with no way to easily get across. If we would have been on flat ground we would have doubled back and found another road to get us home however doubling back would have mean another 400 foot climb which nobody was going to do at this point. We ended up fording the river and walking a 100 ft through the woods. It was a little dicey but we all made it through unscathed. The only side affect was wet shows and clogged speedplay cleats.

4 miles later we were back in Milford looking at bear pictures.

Going back to Belvidere brought back a lot of memories of my country grandparents. The best way to describe them was that they were good simple folks.

My grand father was a retired mail man and a very reserved and quiet person. He enjoyed college football and just sitting by the bay window smoking his pipe. My grandmother did a lot of volunteer work for the church and the community. She spend a lot of time in the hospital volunteering as a candy striper delivering patient's meals and mail and generally helping out the nurses. After my grandfather retired they traveled a lot in a VW micobus.I think they made it to every state except for Hawaii and North Dakota. They never had a lot and had a very simple life but they always seemed happy. I learned a lot from their examples. 

I'm glad I got to visit my grandparents house again. It was fund to reminisce about them see what the area looks like now. It was a tough but fun ride with some memorable moments of its own. I know the bear sighting and river crossing will probably be one of those things we will be talking about for a while.

Work, Life, Bike Balance

This was a tough week as I had a lot of important tasks vying for my attention. There was a reorg at work. This is normal occurrence in the corporate world and usually happens every year or two as companies try to improve efficiency. Although this reshuffling did not directly affect me it did affect other people and teams I work with more than usual so I spent a good part of the end of the week dealing with the repercussion of the reorg. This reorg also came at a bad time as we are trying to release a new version of our product so this reorg made a stressful time even worse.

For me biking is a way to relieve stress so I try and make sure no matter how hectic life is that I find time to ride. It is important however to balance this against the responsibilities to my family and friends. We all have duties like home repairs or some family event that compete with our desire to ride. For me Saturday is usually the day I ride and Sunday is usually when take care of things at home. Sometimes, like this weekend, I had a yard beautification project that could not be completed in just one day so I promised, my wife, that I would take some time from biking to help get the yard in shape.

I considered doing a quick ride on my own but it was going to be such a beautiful day that I wanted to do as many miles as I could get away with. I ended up on Laura's Round Valley ride even through I knew it was going to be a little long.  I ended up leaving the ride about halfway through in an attempt to get back a little quicker. I did end up making back home with enough time to get most of the work done I promised I would get done then spent all of Sunday finishing up our yard beautification project with out a lot of time for relaxing.

As I write this I still have to take care of a few emails from work before I can get to bed. I do enjoy my work, life and biking but some weeks it hard to find the perfect balance so that they can all peaceful coexist.

Pedal to Preserve

This past weekend Chris, Ron and I spent a few days around Lancaster PA. We went mainly to do the Pedal to Preserve Ride on Saturday but decided that as long as we are going to travel out for that ride we might as well spend some more time exploring the area.

We went out on late Friday morning and got to the area around 1pm. We decided to do a ride called the Climbers Delight. The terrain out in this area is mostly rolling hills with no really big climbs but this ride hit some of the longer rollers. It was a nicely designed ride because you go up a series of easy roller over over 5 miles then have a nice mile long down hill. This happen a few time during the ride. The only issues was the 90 degree heat which made the 37 ride feel a little longer.

This area is nothing but farms and rolling hills which is a scenic place to ride but when it is 90 it is a hot place to ride. It also don't smell so good in the heat. When we pull out of the parking lot where we started we were hit by one of the foulest stenches I have smelled. It smelled like a cross between a rotting deer carcass and a overflowing portal potty at Woodstock.

As I looked to the right I saw the source of the smell. I saw a large tank being pulling a couple of horses spewing out brown liquid on to the field. So what we were smelling was literally hot shit being spread to fertilize the field.

After the ride we headed to the hotel for good shower then out for a family style dinner. If you like meat and potatoes there is a lot of good food here. Dinner usually does come with salad and a few other vegetables but the main meal is fried chicken, roast beef, sausage, potatoes, stuffing. The food was good and we had a nice conversation with the other people at the table. 

Saturday was the Pedal to Preserve ride. This was a 51 mile ride that again had a really nice route. It was less hilly than Friday's ride and cooler since we started early in the morning but it got hot quick. My only complaint about the ride is the rest stops didn't really have any food. They had apples at one stop and bananas at the other but that was about it. I had hear the rest stops didn't have good so I had brought enough stuff with me.

The food at the end was very good though. They hot dogs, ice cream, cookies, and omelets and a lot of other stuff. We spent about an hour relaxing after ride before heading back to the hotel. Since we started early we were back to the hotel by 12:30 pm. We spent the afternoon in the town of Lititz where they have a chocolate factor, a pretzel factory and the oldest Moravian church the country.

We when to a buffet for dinner and stuffed ourselves again before calling it a night.

On Sunday we did a quick 30 mile ride around the Lititz area. The was again more rolling hills and farms. The only point of interest was a building that was built to look like a 13th century castle but it really wasn't that nice looking.

This was a nice area to ride and I learn a little more about the Amish and their way of life. You can't ride along the road with out seeing one of the buggies or some of them on scooters. The Lancaster Bike Club has a nice set of cue sheets with a lot of scenic ride in this area. If you are out this way you can use it to take some good rides on your own. I'm sure I'll be back in this area again hopefully when the weather is a little cooler.