Stupid is as Stupid Does

We did some stupid rides this year and it seems like we haven't gotten rid of the stupid yet. Today I decided to do Laura's ride out of Pennington. I knew it would be in the Sourlands and knew there would be hills but with the winter approaching I know that there won't be many more days I would be able to do these types or rides. I also wanted see the gang again.

It was a cold day in the high 40s but sunny. At Pennington to my surprise both Mike and Larry showed up for the ride. I haddn't seen bike since he bought a sail boat in the early spring. A few others joined us before Jim and Laura rode up. Once we found Mike a helmet we were on our way. Laura wanted to do something different from her normal ride to Lambertville so she had some surprises for us.

The first surprise is that we made a left out of the school instead of going right. We never do that. I had a few more "we never do that" moments as we made our towards the Sourlands. The worst surprise for me is that we were going up Province Fucking Line Rd. I had decided to ride my Feather today because I thought Laura would take it easy on us since it is late in the season and we are no longer in peak shape. I guess this is payback for some of the hills I made her climb this year.

I really don't have a problem doing Province Line on my Feather on a nice day in the middle of the season. Except for Dutchtown Zion Province Line is probably one of the harder ways up the Sourlands. Its actually not one continuous climb but a series of hills over a few of miles so it is long grind. Today wasn't a good day for me as I struggled up the hill and almost went aerobic and had one of my annoying stomach cramps. But once I got over it I got a second wind and was fine.

The only saving grace of going up Province Line was that I got the usual shot at the bottom of the last hill. Its not as pretty as it would had been a month ago when the leaves were at peak but it is always a good view.

From the ridge we made our way to Lamberville with a couple of more "we never do that" turns to our usual stop at RoJo's. Then out of Lamberville we made the ultimate "we never do that" turn up Rt 179. There is no shoulder on this four lane road for the first mile or so but there was light traffic so it wasn't too bad. It also turned out to be one of the easier ways to climb back up to the ridge of the Sourlands.

I was feeling better after the break so the climbs didn't bother me although some of group was feeling a little tired so we got a spread out. Our way back to Pennington was different than the normal route and the ride ended up being 49 ish (longer than I was expecting) but it was good to get out for hill ride this long late in the year.

The sub theme to the high point ride theme for the year was doing stupid things and even though we are done with the high point rides I think stupid is here to stay for a while.

Winter Project

Although I did get out on Saturday for a windy ride out of Cranbury with Tru, Mary, and a few others the days are getting shorter and colder and so will my rides. Since I won't be doing any epic rides or bike trips for the next few months this gives me times to work on some other projects. This year one of my winter projects will be improving my office at home. My current job has me working from home. Some people prefer an office environment but for me in my current role as a software architect who deals with people and teams spread across the globe working form home is very natural and efficient.

Since I stare at a computer screen for most of my day it is important to have a good work set up. This includes a large monitor, ergonomic keyboard and trackpad and of course a good chair and desk. My work requires me to have a couple of different computers (i.e. a Windows PC and a Mac) as well as an IOS and Android device. To organize all these machines I built a rack to store all these devices and hide most of the ugly cables to connect them all to my keyboard and monitor. This gives me a cleaner place to work and more desk space.

The rack similar to once you would find in most computer rooms and allows me to stack all my computers including my personal Windows PC and have them connected to a single monitor and screen using a Belkin KVM switch. The rack is well ventilated and has full slide out shelves that give me full access to all the wires if I need to reconfigure anything.

My current issue with my set up is lighting. I have a desk lamp but it doesn't light up the whole desk unless I put it above the monitor or aim it at an angle across the desk. The problem with doing this is that it creates some reflections and causes some glare which interferes with me seeing the monitor. This weekend I found a solution to this problem. I went to Lowes and got some under counter lighting from Sylvania. Its a 24 inch thin strip of flexible LED lights. The Mosaic kit I got had everything I needed and more. It contained 2 24 inch strips plus a transformer and remote control. I wanted the lights below the monitor but above the keyboard so it would light up the desk but not shine in my eyes. I ended up mounting the LED strip in a 1/2 inch aluminum U channel that I had painted flat black. The result was perfect.

I attached the U channel to the bottom of my monitor with some Velcro. This worked good and gives me the light I need with out any glare. The remote that came with the LEDs even allow me to change the light level and color so I can get just the right amount of light I need with out any glare.

I have a couple more improvements I want to make to my workspace one that may involve a linear actuator so when there is not much to share on the bike front I will share my winter projects in case anybody else might find them useful. 

We're on a Highpoint to Hell

When I got into my car Saturday morning my iPod starting playing Going to Hell by the Pretty Reckless which was strangely appropriate for the day. There is one line that really stuck in my head.

                          For the vows that I break, I'm going to hell!

Visiting all the county highpoints has made for a tough riding season and as I'm accustom to doing I may have not been entirely truthful about the difficulty of some of the rides. (i.e. I am a lying bastard). However the last couple of weeks I have lead some nice flat rides which has redeemed me a little. I thought I was done with the hillier rides for this season but I was wrong.

Laura who has been having chronic problems with the gearing on her Synapse (the bike not the ones in her brain) finally determined the problem was a bracket on the frame that could not be repaired. Because of this she got a new frame at no cost and wanted to try it out on some hills. We had talked about this on the way home from last weeks trip and decided to head up to Califon from Hillsborough. Laura came up with a route that was mostly rolling hills with one steep long climb in the middle. The climb was up Parsonage Lot Road which I had never done although I had planned a ride up that road a few years ago but got sick and asked Laura to lead it for me.

The turn out to the ride was larger than expected there were 8 of us total. The ride toward Califon was on familiar roads past the Solberg air port then across 22 and towards Rockaway Rd. A few more turns we were going up Parsonage Lot. It is a 400 ft climb in 3/4 of a mile. It was a tough hill and I was in the low gears of my triple all the way up but we have done a lot worst this year. It has been a few weeks since I did any climbing and I definitely a little out of shape.

This climb is up the side of Hell Mountain. In keeping with the sprint of doing something stupid we went up a dead end street just to say we got to the top of Hell Mountain. I took my normal high point picture even though this is not a real county high point but at least I can now I can say I have been to the high point of hell.

I didn't know why it was called Hell Mountain. I assumed that it was because of some horrible massacre or series of unexplained deaths. I did a little research and it turns out the name is as stupid as us riding to the top of it. According the the Tewksbury historical society...

"The original German/Dutch settlers named it "Heil" (which means high in German) Mountain as it was the highest part of the area. When the map was being made, the ink dotting the 'i' dripped and it looked like it was Hell instead of Heil"

So it is called Hell Mountain because of an early form of the typo.  In any case I don't see us going back to hell as there are easier more scenic ways to get to the same place. From the top of hell we made our way down the mountain using Sawmill Rd and Fox Hill. Fox Hill is a very scenic road but I didn't stop for any pictures because most of the leaves were down and the overcast skies made every thing look murky.

We made a quick stop at the Oldwick General store before heading home. Laura's new bike seems to be working well. You can see more details on the new bike here

Lows and Highs

Done, Done and Done. My quest to reach all the county high points in the state was completed this weekend on a trip to Cape May county. I did not get to Hudson, Essex, Union county high points because there is no safe way to ride to them. If I am up in north Jersey this winter I may stop at these high point just to say that I have been there but that is probably not going to happen.

Since Cape May is an hour and a half to 2 hours away for most of us it made sense to make a weekend out of it. I had tried to do this during the summer but the difficulty in getting a reasonable priced hotel and everybody to agree on a date made me reschedule this to the early fall.

I got 5 people to join me for the weekend including Laura, Jim. Ed, Jack and his girl friend Dorthy. Many, many emails were exchanged to organize this trip which started from Bordentown where we all met. It was then an hour and a half drive down to the starting point at Belleplain State park. A few of us had done a century down here about 7 years ago but hadn't been back since.

We started from a parking lot at Nummy lake and headed out of the park the way my mapping software and NJBikeMap said there were roads. However the maps didn't match the actual roads so I just kept heading in the general direction of where I wanted to go and eventually made it back to the roads on the route. There are a lot flat and quiet roads to ride through mostly pine forests. Its not very scenic but does provide easy stress free riding.

The only scenic part was at the end of the Maurice River where there is a view of the bay and a small unnoticeable light house called East Point Light.

The route I had planned was a 62 mile figure 8 with a Wawa at the middle of the figure 8. We stopped there at 20 miles where we meet a bunch of dirt bikers on an 80 rally ride through the dirt and sand roads of the woods. We spent a few minutes talking to one of the bikers at the Wawa sharing experiences of our different forms of biking.

From there is was a 25 mile loop through Dividing Creek and Port Norris. Besides some more empty roads and pine forests there wasn't much to see here. The last time I was in this part I saw a lot of strange blue color lakes filled with some kind of chemicals but none were seen today.

There was one sand road I had to detour around as it wasn't marked correctly on the map. This brought us past a couple of people restoring an old 1940s train for reuse. We spent some time talking to them before moving on and going through the town of Buckshuem which is part of a song about strange sounding NJ towns.

At the Wawa Jack called Dorthy to see where she was. She had done a ride on her own since she didn't think she could keep up with us. It turned out she was just across from the Wawa heading back to the park.

From the Wawa it was a couple straight semi flat roads back to the start. Along the way we got to the actual high point of Cape May county which was suppose to be 60 ft but I got 86 ft on the GPS.

At the end we had 66 miles and maybe 600 ft of climbing. It sounds like an easy ride compared to what we have done but I still felt pretty beat at the end.

For the over night we went to Ocean City were we got a few rooms in the Biscayne Suite hotel. The rooms were spacious with a living room and large bedroom. For $90 a night it was better than expected although some of the bedding was little too mushy for good sleep. We had dinner at a decent Italian restaurant which was empty like the rest of the town. We took a walk on the boardwalk where there were only a few open stores.

Sunday we got up bright and early and headed to Smithville for our second ride of the weekend. The route I did was similar to the ride I usually do from Batsto I just changed the starting point. This was more quiet roads and pine forests. The only thing of note was that at one point my GPS said we were 100 ft below sea level. I'm not sure if I believe the GPS but it was just an excuse to take a "Low Point Picture"

By the time we got back we had just over 50 miles. We then said good bye and headed our separate ways home.

I still don't know if the theme of riding to all the county high points was a good idea or not. It did lead to some fun rides, a few stupid ones, and some rides that got us to roads that sucked. It is amazing to me that after 20 years of riding around NJ I can still find new routes and new roads to ride. I guess the best thing that came of this quest is a continued appreciation of how many good roads there are to ride here and a new set of adventures to remember and tell stories about. Of course the quest wouldn't have been as fun if I didn't have people just crazy enough to join me and share in the fun and pain of the adventure.

I am lucky to have a good set of friends who enjoy biking together and trying different things. We may come from different backgrounds, careers and riding experiences and we all may be a little odd in our own way but we enjoy riding together. I don't know if I will even have a themed set of rides again but I would like to try to do more trips like this next year because its always a good time.