Bike Nivana

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The Bicycle Club of Philadelphia (BCP) Fall Foliage bike weekend is consistently one of the best bicycle experiences there is. I have done this trip two times before and wrote about it HERE and HERE If you like to ride a bike and be around other bikers then this is a trip to bike nirvana.

The BCP has been doing this trip for many years and have created a perfect combination of roads, accommodations and programs to satisfy any biker. In concept the trip is simple. They rent all the rooms in Hampton Inn and Holiday Inn, they provide cue sheets for 50 different rides from 15 to 100 miles, they provide all the meals and snacks you could want but most importantly they provide an atmosphere for bikers to gather and have fun.

The main difference between the BCP bike weekend and other bike trips or events, like Bike Virginia, is that instead of the focus of the event being a set of routes to ride the focus of the BCP bike weekend is providing the resources for the bikers that come here to explore the area by bike any way they want. This provides a more open ended experience that is easier for each person to tailor to fit the experience they want to have.

This year I got Jim, Jack and Dorthy to join me for the trip. When we got there on Friday afternoon. We meet Al in the parking lot. After changing into our bike cloths we took off for a 30 mile ride to the town of New Oxford. This is a ride I have done before but it is a scenic rolling route with a good rest stop with home made doughnuts and pastries. I felt a little slow but attributed that to being stiff from the 3 hour car trip. I also find it hard to start a ride in the middle of the day.

When we got back the 200+ bikers that were filling up the hotels. My friend Tim from Kentucky and one of his friends had decided to come to this trip so I talked to him and made plans to meet him for dinner. The Friday dinner was much better this year. Instead of a pot luck meal it was a catered meal in the hotel conference room of ziti, eggplant, salads and assorted side dishes. They set up tables so we could sit down and socialize as we were eating. As is usual this provides a great way for everybody to talk and get to know each other. It was great exchanging stories with people I don't know but share a passion with.

The hardest part of this weekend is deciding what rides to do as there are so many choices. You can just choose a route from one of the ride sheets provided or go on one of the rides that are lead by members of the BCP. For people who don't know the area or don't normally go out on their own this can be a little intimidating but since most of the people on this trip had done it many times it easy to get advice or find people to follow no matter what kind of riding you want to do.

Since I had been out here before I decided to help by leading a ride on Saturday to Westminister MD. I made the ride sound a little faster and harder than it was going to be. Its not that I wanted to scare people off the ride but I wanted to make sure people would not get on a ride that was over their ability and not have a good experience.

So Saturday morning I was out in front of the hotel looking for people who wanted to join my ride. I ended up a small group of mostly PFW people (Jack, Jim, John, and Al) my friend Tim and this guy West from BCP. It was around 45 degrees when we started but sunny when we started. After going through the town by the hotel we headed south and into the hills. The first main climb was past a reservoir before continuing on into endless farmlands.

It is probably peak fall season here so it was a very scenic ride. The roads were mostly traffic free and in decent shape. This terrain was hilly. There was no real long climbs but there were no flat spots and although the climbs were short that were steeper than expected. The profile for the ride has shown the climbs in the 6-8 percent range but they ended up being in the 10-12 percent range. None of them were long or hard but I'm glad I brought my Synapse. There were some epic down hills that were not only fast but had just enough curves to make them fun with out being too dangerous (Although Jack might disagree). I hit over 40 mph a couple of times as we wound our way to Westminister.

The town of Westminister is a old college town that ended up having a great little bakery that must be the hot spot in town based on the line at the counter. They had some really unique pastries as I got a piece of monkey bread. I'm not sure what is was exactly except delicious.

The ride back was almost as hilly as the ride out with one longish climb. As we stopped and gathered at the top we all whipped our GPSes to compare sizes, I mean total climbing distance. We had between 3400 to 3800 ft of climbing so far with 15 miles to go. The total for the whole ride was suppose to be 3180 so as my legs were telling me this was a harder ride than was advertised.

The last miles were more down hill than up hill but the little bumps were steep and we were all glad to be back. The ride was beautiful and Westminister is a cool town to visit so I accepted the post ride cramping as payment for a good ride.

Saturday night we went to a convention hall in Hanover for a buffet meal. There was more good conversation and good food.

My original plan for Sunday was to head to Loganville where they had a good farm market but that was more hills than any of us wanted to do. I spent time Saturday night modifying a route to the Gettysburg battlefield from the hotel. It would be a less than half the climbing with did on Saturday with nothing over 6 percent. It would also give Jim and Jack a chance to see Gettysburg.

Sunday morning was a warm 60 degrees and sunny. It felt like early June and I was able to ride in a short sleeve jersey with out tights. I was a little stiff at the start and could feel the tightness in my legs but once we got rolling I was not worried about not being able to finish the ride. The route to Gettysburg was rolling but much easier then Saturday. I could feel the miles of the last two days so was taking it easy by downshifting quicker and spinning more than I usual do. The only real climb was up little round top which gave us a view of the battle field and its many monuments.

We then took a brief tour around the rest of the park with a stop at the Pennsylvania monument before heading into town for a rest stop.

After the break is was an easy ride back to the hotel. This really is beautiful country to ride in and like the last two time out here I wish I could spend more time here instead of heading back to the real world.

As always this was a great weekend. Linda and the rest of the BCP team really know how to make a hassle free trip. The best part was spending extra time with people I normally bike with and being able dedicate a full weekend to all things biking. We are already talking about doing this trip again next year and even doing the BCP spring trip to Danville. So although I may no longer be in bike nirvana I know I will visit again soon.

Fall Colors

For the third time in four weeks we had rain for part of the weekend. I had planned a fall foliage ride for Saturday but wind and rain made me move the ride to Sunday. I posted the ride on the blog and sent out an email to the usually crew but for one reason or another most of the crew could not make it so only Laura was able to join me.

Sunday was sunny but still very windy. When I got to Bulls Island the front parking lot was full as today was the annual Bucks County Covered Bridge ride. This was the second week in a row that there was a crowd where I wasn't expecting it. The plan was to head through Doylestown to Peace Valley. We did this route which is a keeper.

As we crossed the bridge to the PA side the fall foliage was in full bloom. We stopped for photos on the bridge and noticed how much the bridge was swaying in the wind. Then it was more pretty foliage as we went up Flecy Dale. Then uphill to  and through Doylestown and  more uphill to the top of Peace Valley.

I think the hills felt harder than they were because of the wind which was hitting us from the front and side. At Peace Valley we hopped on the bike path for a ride around the Lake stopping for a couple of more pictures.

The best view was from the dam looking towards the boats on the far shore. I zoomed to get a better picture but it didn't have enough zoom to get a good shot.

So we rode over and I got a close up shot of the bright red tree. which was not as bright close up as it was from the dam

From there It was our steepest climb of the day as we headed toward Perkasie. I didn't take the usual route which requires short climb up a 20% grade but instead explored some new roads which turned out to be traffic free and scenic. As we got into Perkasie we rain into a crowd of bikers on the Covered Bridge ride.  We took a break, in town, at the Down to Earth Cafe which is a hipster wana be place with decent food.

The ride back was easier after we shook off the Covered Bridge riders who seem to be stopping at inconvenient places along the road. There were still a few hills on the way back but we had a tail wind pushing us along.

As we road along the farmlands the sky and clouds really stood out so we stopped for a couple of pictures but still didn't capture what it really looked like.

The last part of the ride was back down Flecy Dale which is one of the prettiest roads especially in the fall so we took a few more pictures before finishing the ride.

This route felt a lot hillier than the 2400 feet that ridewithgps said we went. It was probably wind that make it feel harder but it was a scenic ride so this will be on the calendar next fall. I hope I can get some more people to join me next time.

Unexpected Traffic

If you want some quiet flat roads to ride in the pinelands then you can head towards Chatsworth NJ... unless it is the third weekend in October since the town hosts one of the largest cranberry festivals in NJ that weekend. This was a fact that I was not aware of when Laura asked me for a route from Mansfield for her Saturday ride. I gave her a route we did back in July when it was 90 +. After looking over the route I made a couple of tweaks one to check out Chatworths lake and two to shorten the ride a little.

After 3 weekends of riding in or with the threat of rain we had a sunny forecast. It was a cold 45 degrees but was going to warm up quick.  Laura had a good group of people show up including one new face. Since the last time we did a ride out of here we had a crash I did the holy kickstand thing. I don't know if it helps but it can't hurt. I decided to try out the new bike trail in the park to get to Island Rd. It was wide nicely paved and cuts out half of the bumpy Island Rd so I would use it again the next time I'm down this way.

I decided not to wear a jacket so for the first 10 miles it was a little cold. We maintained a good pace as we wound through Browns Mill and on to Lebanon State forest. After a quick break at the ranger station we headed towards Chatsworth. As we headed down towards town I thought it must be garage sale day for the town since there were a lot houses with stuff for sale in their driveways.

As we got closer to town there was more and more traffic. It became obvious that some kind of festival was going on. There were cars parked along the road a least a mile from town and the road had bumper to bumper traffic. There had to be a least 10,000 people walking around the different tents and food stand set up. It took us 10 minutes to get through the middle of town and back to riding again.

Nine miles later we were at Nixons General store. There was a dog rescue charity selling food so I bought a brownie from them which was really good.

From Nixons we made our way through Vincetown as we headed our way back to Mansfield. Along the way Jim's chain started skipping so we stopped and found that one of the follow wheels on his derailleur was stuck. A loosing of the screw of the wheel fixed the problem but as Jim found out later the bearings on the follow wheels were totally shot.  

Regardless of the traffic in Chatsworth or the slight derailleur problem it ended up being a good ride as we got in 62 miles at a 16.8 pace. 

Rare Midweek Ride

I had planned to take a vacation day today to volunteer for some work down at our condo but that got reschedule so I decided to go for a ride since I got rained out this past weekend. I got Jack to join me and we did this route from Griggstown to Whitehouse Station and back.

I wanted to do this ride to get some hill work in since I have been doing flat rides for the past few weeks. It was a cool and foggy at the start and with the leaves turning there is no doubt that fall is here.

Customer Support

There is nothing more frustrating then having to deal with a customer support department when something you own breaks down and you needs to be repaired. The internet has made it easier to get answers to questions and fix simple problems but there are times when you need to make human contact to get a problem resolve.

Over 9 months ago the buttons on our 3 year old Samsung refrigerator stopped working. The problem didn't affect the operation of the refrigerator it just meant we could not switch between ice or water or change any other setting on the refrigerator. It took two repairmen 4 visits over 4 months to diagnose the problem which turned out to be a broken wire in the top of the door. The reason it took so long to find the problem was that is was hard to find a repairmen for a Samsung refrigerator. We have a repairman who we usually call but he could not find enough technical information to do the repair so after replacing a couple of boards he had to give up. We of course called Samsung. At first they said they would send us the name of a repairman to contact but after two weeks we hadn't heard from them we called them back and they told us there were no Samsung repairmen in our area.

A call to another Samsung number finally got us a number of a repairman who was pretty good but still took two more visit to find the broken wire. You would think that fixing a broken wire would be easy however the wire broke about 6 inches below the top of the door inside channel that was inaccessible. What was even worst was there was no way to get to the inside of the door and replace the wiring harness. The only way to fix the broken wire was to replace the entire door. At $300 + for a new door I was a little reluctant to replace it but that would be cheaper then a new refrigerator.

Three weeks after ordering the door I called the repair place to ask when the door would be in I was told that it was not just out of stock but was no longer available. This meant that there was no way to fix the broken wire. I did a bunch of online searches to try to track down a new door and found a few only to be told a few day later each time that what was shown in stock was actually not available.

Samsung customer support was also totally useless. Every time we contacted them they would send us to the same part site which clearly showed the part was no long available. When I responded to the email telling them that the part was no longer available I got response telling me they were sorry for the problem with not having to part then sent me the same form letter directing back to the same site that I told them didn't have the part.

In a desperate attempt to get some one to realize that not having parts for a 3 year old refrigerator did not inspire confidence in the Samsung brand I searched for the contact in the customer complaint department and sent out a messages to every address I could find.  Most of them came back with the same form letter I got customer support with a link to the useless parts site. However one of the messages I sent actually got a response from a real person in North Jersey that wanted more details about the problem. Once I explained the details of what the problem was and the fact that I could not get a part for a 3 year old Samsung product she was very apologetic and promised to look into it see if she could resolve the issue. I expected wait weeks to get a response but a few days later she confirmed that the part was no longer available said that she would look into getting me some kind of refund on the refrigerator even though it was out of warranty.

I sent her some paperwork on the price I paid for the refrigerator and where I got it and was told I would get some kind of refund. I expected to get some prorated amount based on what I paid and if lucky figured I would get half the original price back. I was then surprised to find that Samsung offered me a full refund of the price I paid for the refrigerator. So although the whole process was a perfect example of how horrible most customer support is, it proved that if you are persistent, I mean really persistent you might get some satisfaction out of the process. I am not happy at the design or repair-ability of Samsung appliances but have to appreciate the way they stood behind the product and provided a full refund when they really didn't have to.

We are using the refund to replace the refrigerator with a brand that won't be a Samsung. They make great TVs but I'm going to stay away from their appliances. Appliance today don't seem to be any more reliable than they were 20 years ago and they are more sophisticated  which means a lot more things can go wrong. I have an old Amana refrigerator in my garage we use during holidays that is 40 years old and still works. It even has a built in AM/FM cassette player.  They just don't make them like they use to.