This would have been a really hard ride to lead without a GPS since there were turns every tenth to quarter of a mile. Doing this with a queue sheet would have been impossible. I have a Delorme PN-40 which is 10 years old and no longer made but it still works great and I haven't found anything better to use to lead a ride. It was easy for me to just have the map on the screen and follow the overlay of the route on the map. Jim, Laura, and Bob Garmin GPSes were in various states of distress during the ride and none of them was able to follow the route or recover when I went off the planned path. Technology is great when it works but when it doesn't it really distracts from the ride.
And it was a good ride on a beautiful day. The heat wave finally broke and today we had dry, cool and sunny weather. The rides through all the back roads and neighborhoods to get to Tyler State park was nicer than I expected and the couple of busy roads I was worried about had shoulders and not much traffic. The only problem we had was Jim almost running into me right before the entrance of Tyler State park as he was not paying close attention as I slowed down for a light. He reacted just quick enough to avoid a disaster. Even though he smoked his breaks and skidded his tires he did it with out going down and taking the rest of us with him.
The ride through Tyler was scenic and different than our usual rides here which are almost always in winter on a frozen landscape. It was nice to get a few pictures with out snow in them for once. I veered of the planned route here to take a easier way up the hill and stay closer to the river as it is more scenic. At the top of the hill we left the park and zig zagged through another residential neighborhood to get to the normal roads we ride in Bucks county.
One of Jacks suggestions for the ride was to go over Jericho mountain on Eagle road because he hadn't done that in a while. Eagle road is one of the steepest hills in the area and the hardest way to get over the mountain but Jack was the host so over Eagle we went. Eagle is a half mile assent in the 10-15% range and is steepest towards the top. I'm glad I was able to make it over as it proves that I'm in decent shape but there is no real view at the top and so there is no pay off for the climb except a screaming downhill.
After Eagle we made our way toward one of Jacks old houses which was up a slightly annoying hill.
Jack spent a few minutes telling us about the house and all the work he had done on it before we headed to New Hope for our break.
The way back after break was a slow steady climb back up to the ridge and then some rollers along Street road. There was a bridge out that we had actually to go around because the road crew wouldn't let us through. There was only really one tough hill on the way back as I took Thompson Mill to get back over Jericho mountain. Jack joked that he wanted to Eagle the opposite way over Jericho but "No" I wasn't going to do that.
Eventually we made our way back to River road and Jack lead us back to his place where we hung out afterwards. We rarely get together after rides because most of time we all have other things we usually need to do. Blake and Cheryl joined at the house after their ride and I spent some time catching up with them.
Jacks new house is a nice place to hang out. He has pool to cool off in and plenty of places to sit in the shade in the backyard. We all dove into the pool after the ride and I used my camera to grab a few underwater shots. Now that we know we can ride from Jacks place hopefully we can do this again sometime as it was the perfect way to spend a day.
No comments:
Post a Comment