Code Blue

The city of Philadelphia declared a code blue on Saturday. That is when the wind chill is below 20 degrees and they open additional shelters to give homeless people the chance to get out of the cold.  This also meant that it was too cold to ride on the road so I went on Laura's ride along the Lawrence Hopewell Trail. 

Cold is a relative thing. At the start of the ride we had a surprise visit from Cheryl and who drove up with Dave C. Cheryl came up from Florida to surprise people at the PFW party on Saturday. To people who live below the mason-dixon line anything below 50 is cold. Here in NJ we don't start complaining about the cold until is gets below freezing. I have been following a person I met in Alaska who lives above the arctic circle and took the picture above. He doesn't consider it cold until it is below zero degrees fahrenheit. The picture is of methane bubbles frozen in a lake. The lake freezes from top to bottom and since the top freezes first the methane bubble from decomposition get stuck in the ice. As each layer freezes another set of methane bubbles is trapped. Its a beautiful scene but unless you don't mind a couple of months without the sun and can tolerate 20 to 30 degrees below zero it not a place you want to live. I will enjoy pictures like this from the warmth of my home.

Today's ride was the beginning of the winter riding season. We will try to be on the road when we can but when it gets close to freezing we still find ways to get out for a ride. The Lawrence Hopewell trail is a good choice for cold weather riding. The path is well maintained and a good part of it is in the woods so you get some breaks from the wind. 60% of the trail is paved and the rest is packed gravel so it is an easy surface to ride on with any bike with wide tires.The main problem with the trail is that it isn't really marked very well. If you don't know where you are going it is easy miss a turn and get off the trail. I have done the trail 6 times and got lost 4 of the 6 times.

We started from the parking lot by the corner of Princeton Pike and Provinceline Rd. Laura had a good turnout for a cold day. The first mile is on dirt through the woods before we hit a paved path thorough Lawrenceville and across 206 on our way to Mercer Meadows. This part was open and where we felt the wind as we made it to the high point of the ride that delineates the Delaware and Raritan watersheds.

From there we went around Rosedale Lake on our way towards Pennington. The Lawrence Hopewell Trail isn't completely finished and stops on Wargo Rd. I usually take Bayberry to ETS to pick the trail up again but Peter said they just completed another section of the trail so we headed up Pennington Rd to the new section which goes from Pennington Rd over towards Carter Rd. When the trail ended again we were on Carter Rd which some one suggested we take to Cleveland which we did. From there Laura wanted to go down Provinceline over the a new bridge. This part of Provinceline is closed to cars.

The bridge was pretty and gave us a good view of the river. This however required us to climb a short but steep hill then take a grass trail to get to ETS and back on the trail to our starting point. This was a good detour and it is good to see that they continue to add sections to the trail to complete it. This is an enjoyable ride on a cold day so we will probably do it again sometime this winter.