Weather Report

This weekends weather report was as accurate as this years presidential election predictions but before I get to this weekend ride let me share a few Easter pictures.

Each year we host Easter dinner for our families and my wife likes to do something creative for dessert. This year she made two desserts. The first one was cannoli filling inside a cup of pie crust that was covered in chocolate. They looked like eggs in a basket and tasted great.

The second one was crushed Oreo's and pudding in a cup with a orange chocolate covered strawberry making it look like carrots in the dirt.

Because I spent all of last weekend getting ready for and then hosting Easter I didn't get much riding in. I was looking forward Laura's ride and the initial weather report said sun to clouds on Saturday and torrential rain on Sunday. Even as late as Friday night Saturday still looked good.

When I got up Saturday morning it was already cloudy and dark. I checked the weather and there was already rain on the radar. It was waves of patchy rain so it might had been possible to get a ride in with out getting wet but the more I looked at it and the hourly forecast I decide I would get wet if I went riding and didn't feel like doing that especially since Sundays weather looked much better.

I checked my email and saw Jacks message asking me if I was still going on Laura's ride and told him nope. I didn't see any email from Laura or an update on her blog so I guessed she was still going despite the weather. According to her blog they did get a little wet and muddy so I think I made the right choice. I agree with her venn diagram that we are sometime crazy or stupid enough to ride in the rain but some of us are not as crazy as others and we had an open schedule on Sunday. I did feel bad bailing on the ride but don't think I'm a fink according to the official definition. It is nice to be missed though.

Because I bailed on Saturdays ride I led an off the books adhoc ride on Sunday out of Lambertville. Pete (who also bailed on Laura's ride) and Jack joined me. We did this route. It was a variation of my covered bridge ride. I wanted something hilly to get ready for weekend in Danville with the Philly bike club.

It was sunny and cool as we started our climb out of Lambertville. I wound around and eventually ended up at the middle of Federal Twist. We stopped for a moment of silence for the missing bone fragment from Jacks back. The good news, we all made it down the hill with out a crash this time. Maybe later in the season we will come down the entire hill.

At Bull's island we headed over to the PA side of the Delaware where we climbed Wismer and went over a couple of covered bridges as we made our way up and down the hills. Besides Wismer there was nothing really steep or hard but this was the most climbing I had done this year.

We took a much deserved break in Frenchtown where the sun was still out and warming us up.We were still feeling pretty good so we climbed out of Frenchtown instead of bailing out on 29. We went up Horseshoe Bend Rd which was a longer climb then I remembered. We spent some time on the ridge before coming down to Seargentville. There were some more climbing but we also had some nice downhills.

My original route had us going back to Lambertville down Alexauken Rd but Jack wanted some more miles so we did a loop through Mount Airy and did more climbing than I wanted to do. When we got back to Lambertville we had 54 miles in and about 3800. It was longer and more climbing than I was planning but I felt ok and should help me get ready for the trip. Hopefully the weather report will be more accurate for next weekend so we can get the full insane posse riding together again.

Blowing in the Wind

Today I did another off the books ride. I am going to Danville with the Philadelphia bike club in the beginning of May so I wanted to get some hill training in as Danville is a hilly area. We started from Rocky Hill and went to White House Station and back. We did this route which I have done before. This route doesn't have any killer hills but there are a lot of gradual ups and downs so it feels tougher than the 2800 feet that it was.

What really made this ride harder than it should of bin was the wind which was a constant 20 mph with gust a lot higher. For the first part of the ride it felt like we were riding up hill into the wind with no relief. Jack, Pete and Bob joined me for the ride. Pete pealed off after we got to the top of the Sourlands as he had to get home early.

As we went up Cider Mill we saw a van stopped by a field of cows. I thought the person in the passenger seat was stopping to take some pictures of the cows but as we got closer the person in the passenger seat turned out to be a little dog. So as best as I could figure the guy driving had taken his dog out for a ride to see some cows. It may seem strange but as a person who named their blog after their dog I applaud it.

By the time we got to White House Station we were pretty shot as we had been riding 30 miles into the wind with close to 2000 feet of climbing. Its early in the season so none of us have any reserves to pull extra energy from when a ride is harder than expected.

The way back was much easier since we had a tail wind most of the way. There were a few rollers on the way back but the way I had design the route there was no real tough climbs.

We were dragging in the last 10 miles but I made it back with out cramping and we came in at a reasonable pace. So although the wind made the ride harder than expected it felt good to be able to do some hills and start the process of getting back in riding shape.

Early Season Pineland Cruise

Before I talk about the ride I did today I want to tell you about a play I saw this past Wednesday. It was called "The Play That Goes WRONg". It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. It is a play within a play about an amateur troupe putting on a murder mystery play and as the title suggest everything goes horrible wrong. It is pure slapstick in the Faulty Towers/Monty Python tradition. I laughed loudly for 2 hour straight. We saw this play the week before it opened and I expect once this opens it and the review are in tickets are going to be hard to get. So if you want to see a great comedy on Broadway I suggest you get tickets soon.

Today ride was an off the books ride. I forget to put my rides in this month so I sent out an email to the usual crowd after getting an email from Laura about getting the band back together. I wanted to continue to build some miles an am not ready for any real hills so decided to do a Pineland Cruise. I moved the ride to Sunday because of wet condition on Saturday.

I had 5 of the regular join me. Laura, Joe, Peter, Jack and Chris. It was just under 50 at the start with a brisk south wind. The wind helped us get down to Browns Mill quickly. We skipped the usually stop at this Wawa as we headed through the pinelands to Vincetown were we stopped at the other Wawa.

Before the stop, we stopped at a park to use a portal potty and watch an RC helicopter do some aerobatics.

The trip back north from Vincetown was into the wind. We hit an bridge out on Smithville road but as usually we just went through it. It ended up being an easy bridge out as the bridge was actually mostly intact expect for a small piece on the left side that missing. I expect that the bridge will need a major overhaul so it may become unpassable for most of this season.

I got a little tired towards the end of the ride as we road mostly into the wind for the last 20 miles but we came in with 53 at 15.7 mph so it was a good early season ride to help build some miles.